Little is known about the religious policies of Gunthamund, Huneric’s successor to the throne. What evidence there is suggests that the new king was generally better disposed towards the Catholic faith than his predecessor had been. Gunthamund restored the shrine of Agileus in Carthage and allowed bishop Eugenius to return from exile. Eugenius’ then intervened and facilitated the recall of the exiled Catholic clergy and the re-opening of their churches.119
In 496, Gunthamund’s brother Thrasamund became king, a development that had far-reaching implications for the African Nicene Church. The new monarch quickly showed that he was not willing to accept the religious status quo that appears to have operated for much of his brother’s reign. Unlike his predecessors, the new king was clearly interested in theological debate. His assault on the Nicene Church was founded in the deeply held belief that it was his duty to expunge the Homoousian creed from Africa whilst at the same time doing nothing to jeopardize the stability of his thriving kingdom. Building on the initiatives of Huneric, Thrasamund sought to ensure that the Arian Church posed a serious challenge to popularity of the Nicene faith among the Romano-African population, both as a pastoral and intellectual force. The twin tenets of his campaign were the reintroduction of harsh measures against the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy whilst maintaining good relations with the Romano-African lay elite; his intention was to detach these two groups from one another.120
Thrasamund used exile to remove a considerable number of bishops from their sees. After the Nicenes had ignored a previous royal edict that forbade the consecration of new bishops, Thrasamund ordered the mass expulsion of 60 or more bishops to Sardinia in 508/509, including Fulgentius of Ruspe.121 The majority of these exiles remained on the island until 523 ad (although Fulgentius himself was recalled to
Africa for a period of two years between 516/517-518/519 ad).122 Simultaneously, extensive effort and resources were put into the conversion of the Nicene congregations who were left behind. What seems to have particularly concerned contemporary Homoousian commentators was that the chief weapon that would be used in this new campaign was persuasion rather than persecution. One observed that:
Between harsh persecutions, there were deceptive measures trying, sometimes by terror, at other times by promises, to force Catholics to deny that Christ was equal to God the Father.123
Thrasamund further refined a strategy that had first been used against the Nicene Church by Huneric. The king ordered that a theological debate was to be held with Fulgentius of Ruspe, the best African Nicene theologian of the time. The bishop was specially recalled from exile between 517 and 519 so that he could take part in this discussion. Where Huneric had satisfied himself with the prospect of a mass debate between the assembled bishops of the two churches, however, Thrasamund put himself forward as Fulgentius’ Arian disputant. First Fulgentius was given a book containing ten objections that the king had levelled regarding the question of the Trinity - issues which suggest that the king had a good knowledge of the Homoousian position.124 The Life of Fulgentius portrayed its hero’s responses to these questions as an emphatic victory for the Nicene champion. It suggests that Thrasamund was so out of his depth that he sought an unfair advantage by insisting that his reply to Fulgentius should only be read out to him once:
For he was afraid that Fulgentius would put the king’s words into his own responses as his arguments were refuted and that, in the eyes of the whole city (Carthage), he would be ridiculed again as having been bested.125
Later, after Fulgentius had overcome him, despite this considerable handicap, Thrasamund was supposedly so cowed that he had to rely on one of his own bishops to write a response, before eventually packing the turbulent priest off to Sardinia. This last action was made on the recommendation of his Arian ecclesiastical advisors who feared Fulgentius’ continued presence in Carthage would lead to their defeat.126
The extant text of Fulgentius’ responses to Thrasamund tells a somewhat different story. Fulgentius’ fulsome praise of Thrasamund’s intellectual prowess might reflect nothing more than the courtly language that needed be used when addressing a monarch, but the transcript of the debate itself shows that Fulgentius sometimes struggled to answer some of the Vandal king’s more challenging questions.127 Thrasamund clearly knew his Homoousian theology.
Equally worrying for Nicene writers had been the evolution the Arian Church into an identifiably African rival on both a pastoral and theological level. Initially it appears that the majority of the Arian bishops and clergy in Vandal Africa had been outsiders - either barbarians or Romans from other parts of the old empire. Those who were indigenous had tended to hail from rather modest professional backgrounds.128 By the early sixth century, however, the situation had begun to change and a number of more prominent converts threatened to mark a tipping point within the establishment. These included Fastidiosus, a former Catholic monk and clergyman and Mocianus, a teacher of rhetoric.129 There is also the intriguing testimony of an anonymous Arian theological tract, a Commentary on the Book of Job (Commentarius in lob) that has recently been convincingly ascribed to the early decades of the sixth cen-tury.130 The writer of this work was clearly well educated in both Latin and Greek Christian and non-Christian literature. The prose style of the tract is also unusually eloquent and the exegetical scholarship assured enough that the author could comfortably compare the Greek Septuagint Bible with a variety of Latin translations.131 It seems likely, therefore, that the author of Commentary on the Book of Job was either a member of the Romano-African elite or a well-educated member of the highest echelons of Vandal society.132 In his exhortations that they should attend church more regularly, the author sounds like Augustine, Cyprian and the other North African Christian writers of old and indeed might have held a position in the clergy or a bishopric.133
In the Commentary the Homoousians are referred to as a potent threat that spread through the world like shadows stalking and attacking the true (Arian) church.134 This suggests that the writer was very aware that his fellow Arians were hard-pressed in the eastern empire. The commentator condemns the Nicene position on the Trinity, and also warns his audience that they should not visit the churches of the ‘heretics’ or take communion with them.135 The text also contains other well-formulated rejections of the Augustinian tenets that had dominated the North African Church in the decades before the Vandal invasion. These include the theology on grace and original sin, both issues on which Augustine’s position had never been very well received.136
The emphasis in the text on matters such as marriage, family relations, organizing inheritances, burial practices, curses and estate management further suggests that this was not intended for a cloistered audience but as a text that would be pertinent to the lives of a congregation made up of diverse socio-economic constituencies.137 It appears that by the early sixth century, the Arians had become a serious rival to Nicene claims that they there were the true church of the Romano-African population. Tellingly, Fulgentius complained bitterly that Arian opponents had stolen sections of his own condemnation of Donatism and passed them off in their own sermons.138
The sophisticated threat that a genuinely African Arian Church now posed is exposed in the surviving account of one of the most high profile public confrontations in which Fulgentius was involved. His opponent was the Arian priest Fabianus, and the dispute probably took place in Carthage sometime between 523 and 533. That Fulgentius recognized Fabianus as a formidable opponent is evident from the Nicene bishop quoting the scriptures directly from the Greek.139 In another sign that Fabianus was well educated, Fulgentius made reference to his pretensions to be a scholar of Latin literature and even went as far as quoting from the Aeneid at him.140
The tactics utilized by the Arian Church were also given a strongly African flavour by their adoption of strategies that had been used to great effect by Augustine, particularly against the Donatists.141 Nicene opponents were to be directly engaged and challenged to public debate whenever possible. As a tactic it was clearly designed to demoralize and undermine, and the correspondence of Fulgentius shows that it clearly worked in this instance. The reaction of many Homoousians was similar to that of many of the Donatists in the early fifth century, who had been intimidated by the challenge that was issued to them and retreated into silence. Moreover, the new Arian campaign also appears to have used the dispensation of charity and a stronger pastoral ethos to win Catholics over.142
During the long period of exile, Fulgentius regularly acted as the chief spokesman and letter-writer for the Nicene bishops as they fought to maintain ecclesiastical discipline and doctrinal orthodoxy across the sea in Africa.143 Fulgentius was obliged to send a number of letters and treatises to Catholic correspondents who urgently requested responses to questions and objections put forward by Arians. A letter to a certain Donatus set out the background to the latter’s request.
You say that a question was proposed to you by certain Arians concerning the Father and the Son. They asserted that the Father was greater and the Son less. But you, because of your ignorance of divine letters in which you have been given less instruction, did not come up with anything with which you might answer them in defence of the true faith. . . . Wishing to be better prepared to answer, you ask that, instructed by our words, armed with the divine words, you know how you may be able to counter the heretics who wish to attack our faith.144
Fulgentius’ need to furnish his correspondents with theological defences against Arian proselytizing was no different to the situation that had faced Quodvultdeus and his colleagues in the middle of the fifth century. But the frequency of these Arian challenges appears to have markedly increased. Donatus was certainly not the only one of Fulgentius’ correspondents who felt under pressure from Arians.145 One lady reported that the nature of the Trinity was now a popular topic at dinner par-ties.146Another sent Fulgentius a copy of a sermon delivered by a certain Fastidiosus, an Arian convert and former Catholic monk, in order that the bishop might refute the work.147
Given the strength of the challenge that Arianism now presented to the Nicene Church, and the enforced absence of many of the senior ranks of the Nicene Church, it is unsurprising that a sense of deepening crisis appears to have begun to develop amongst African Nicene circles. This was further exacerbated by the closing of the Catholic churches in Zeugitana: if Nicenes wished to worship they had to do so in Arian churches.148 Even the highly partisan Life of Fulgentius makes reference to its hero having to give counsel and even re-baptize those who had lapsed and converted to Arianism:
Those who had already been re-baptised he taught them to lament their mistake and he reconciled them. Others he warned lest they destroy their souls in exchange for worldly gains. Those who he perceived to be close to perdition, he calmed with soothing words, so that because of his kind words, they were ashamed to go through with their planned evil and turning back, they began to do penance. Others strengthened by his words and renewed in their faith by the salt of teaching confuted the Arian heretics with confidence.149
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