A man such as he had to see cities overthrown and destroyed and within them their inhabitants and their buildings on their estates wiped out by a murderous enemy, and others put to flight and scattered. He saw churches denuded of priests and ministers, holy virgins and others vowed to chastity dispersed, some amongst them succumbing to tortures, others perishing by the sword.1
Such was the bleak account of the last days of Augustine of Hippo, Africa’s greatest ecclesiastical figure, left by his biographer and protege, Possidius, bishop of Calama. The "murderous enemy’, whose rampage through Africa in the 420s ad was so vividly described by Possidius, were the Vandals. Indeed, Augustine was said to have died whilst the Vandal army was actually besieging his episcopal see of Hippo Regius.2
From the existing accounts of the invasion, mostly supplied by partisan ecclesiastical writers, it would be easy to gain the impression that the violent eradication of the Nicene Church from Africa was high on the agenda of Geiseric, the Arian king of the Vandals.3 Arianism had developed out of conflicting views within the Christian community over the exact relationship between God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For the Alexandrian priest, Arius (250-336), and many others especially in the Eastern Church, the answer was that the Son had been created by God, His Father. Thus, God the Father as Unbegotten (always existing), was separate and superior to Jesus, the only begotten. The Holy Spirit, the last component of the Trinity, had been created by the Son under the auspices of the Father - and was therefore subservient to them both.
Arius’ views, although accepted in some quarters, were strongly opposed by others in the church - particularly as they appeared to undermine the
The Vandals Andy Merrills and Richard Miles © 2010 Andy Merrills and Richard Miles. ISBN: 978-1-405-16068-1
Divinity of Jesus Christ. At the Council of Nicaea, convoked by the first Christian emperor Constantine in 325, Arius’ theological opponents won a great victory. A new creed was formulated that defined the relationship between Father and Son as being one of consubstantiality (Homoousios) - of the same substance. In other words, God existed as three persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit but only as One Being. Arius and other hard-line supporters who refused to accept this ruling were subsequently exiled by the Roman emperor Constantine and their theological work was banned.
The controversy was by no means brought to a conclusion by Nicaea, however. In the following decades imperial intervention, which often sought to affect some kind of compromise between the main protagonists, had, in fact, had the opposite effect and saw the hardening of attitudes on both sides. Many eastern churchmen were unsatisfied with the Nicene solution, which seemed to be extra-scriptural, and to deny any difference between the Father and the Son. Consequently, the ‘Homoean’ school argued that a vision of the Son as ‘like’ the Father (homoios) did better justice to the scriptural evidence. It won official imperial support under Constantius II, and the backing of enough bishops to be enshrined as doctrine at the Councils of Seleucia and Rimini in ad 359. This new settlement was rejected following the death of Constantius in 361, but was revived by Valentinian I and Valens. Only after the Council of Constantinople in ad 381, when the emperor Theodosius threw his weight behind homoousios, was Nicene Christianity firmly established as the orthodoxy. Theodosius had then set about dismantling the Arian Church in Constantinople. Demphilus, the bishop of the imperial capital, was expelled and an imperial edict banned the heresy within the Roman Empire and handed over all of their churches and property to the Nicene establishment.4
Arianism returned to prominence during the military crises of the early fifth century. The Roman army was heavily Arian, and the rise to prominence of a new generation of generalissimos changed the religious landscape of the empire. This was the environment in which the barbarian warbands developed, and it is likely that the Arianism of the Goths and Vandals was shaped by their prolonged contact with the Roman military. Traditions certainly circulated about the Arian missions to the barbarians of the Danube, which had been sponsored by the emperor Valens in the mid-fourth century, but the majority of the barbarian groups had simply adopted the religious customs of the Roman army.5 Others appear to have become Arian Christians later. The date of the Vandal conversion to Arianism is unknown and much disputed; it is commonly supposed that it was a result of coming into contact with the Arian Visigoths in either Gaul or Spain.6
Looking back on this period, Nicene ecclesiastical writers portrayed the Vandals as Arian fanatics who had persecuted the Homoousian Church since before their arrival in North Africa.7 Once the Vandals had arrived in Africa, Quodvultdeus and other members of the Nicene ecclesiastical hierarchy represented the conversion of Homoousians as one of Geiseric’s priorities. Prosper’s account of the Vandal occupation is typical:
Neither refraining from despoiling churches, which were deprived of both their sacred vessels and the administration of priests, nor from the places of the divine cult, he immediately ordered them to be his own dwellings. Savage towards every group of captive people, but especially hostile towards the noble and religious, he did not seem to be attacking men as much as he was attacking God.8
Other accounts emphasize the devastation suffered by the African Church in the first years of the occupation. Possidius, in particular, provides a moving account of the effects of the invasion: churches remained empty and for those who sought the divine sacraments, it became difficult to find anyone administer them. Clergy were reduced to hiding in caves and other remote places, or they were stripped of their assets and reduced to begging. According to Possidius only the churches of Carthage, Hippo Regius and Cirta survived the onslaught.9
Life certainly became far more difficult for the Nicene Church in North Africa after the invasion. The gradual Vandal encroachment across the region was a cause of great alarm within African ecclesiastical circles. This can be plainly seen in a letter sent by an African bishop, Honoratus, to Augustine asking whether or not clergy should flee from these barbarians:
If it is important to remain in the churches, I do not see how we can benefit either ourselves or to our congregations, whilst before our eyes men are murdered, women raped and we are ourselves collapse under torture, whilst what we do not possess is demanded of us.10
In ad 431 Capreolus, bishop of Carthage, was compelled to write to the assembled Christian bishops at the Council of Ephesus explaining why none of their African episcopal colleagues would be in attendance:
For the prompt ability of any that could travel is impeded by the excessive multitude of enemies and the huge devastation of the provinces everywhere which presents to eye-witnesses one place where all its inhabitants have been killed, another where they have been driven into flight, and a wretched vista of destruction spreading out far and wide and in every direction.11
Geiseric’s reputation as an Arian zealot deepened shortly after the treaty of ad 435 had created a Vandal homeland around Hippo Regius. According to Prosper, the king attempted to destroy the power of the Nicene Church in his new territories by seizing the basilicas of three of the most intransigent bishops and expelling them from their cities.12 After the capture of Carthage in 439, Geiseric transferred the episcopal seat to the Arians and shut down the other Nicene churches in the city. He then stripped Quodvultdeus and his clergy and loaded them onto a leaking ship with the intention that they should drown at sea.13 This boat struggled to Naples, where the bishop settled for the remainder of his life until he died in sometime in the early 450s.14 Geiseric was also said to have exiled many other North African bishops during his period.15
Although Arianism had never been strong in North Africa, Arian clergy had begun to appear there during the last decades of Roman rule, usually as members of the personal entourages of senior military officials. This was a development that had provoked a number of public confrontations with Nicene churchmen such as Augustine.16 Quodvultdeus was quick to conflate the proselytizing activities of these Arian clergy with the Vandal takeover. In a sermon thought to have been delivered at the time of the fall of Carthage, the bishop argued that the Vandals were in fact the shock troops of Arianism and urged his congregation to resist:
Why are you silent? Your enemies who detest you, they have said that you are inferior to God, they have humiliated you by re-baptising your members. . . . Therefore Lord Jesus Christ, our David, our King, take up your war baggage and go forward to fight against him who casts reproach upon the army of the living God.17
In another homily given in Carthage, Quodvultdeus warned catechumens about the Arian missionaries who would attempt to catch them at times of weakness and despair.
Do not permit the Arian heretic to revile the Church. He is a wolf: recognise it. He is a serpent: smash his brains in. He flatters but he deceives. He promises much but defrauds. ‘Come’, he says, ‘I will protect you. If you are in trouble, I will feed you; if stripped bare, I will clothe you. I will give you money; I will arrange it so that you receive a daily allowance.’18
However, an elision of the initial aims of Geiseric in North Africa and the Arian Church should be treated with some scepticism. Other accounts of Vandal Arianism suggest that the adoption of the faith was largely pragmatic. In the mid-sixth century Jordanes claimed that the Vandals had offered to convert if the emperor promised to help them against their enemies.19 A rumour had also spread about that Geiseric had, in fact, only abandoned the Nicene faith for Arianism whilst in Spain, implying that he was something of an opportunist.20 Although personal belief most probably did play some part in the adoption of Homoian Christianity by Geiseric, there were other motivations too. Christianity was the religion of the Roman Empire and, as we have seen, part of Geiseric’s success was his ability to appropriate and adapt different aspects of Roman political, economic, military and cultural structures. As Peter Heather has suggested a particular attraction for the leader of a fairly recently integrated grouping was the position that Christian emperors had enjoyed as divinely appointed rulers. Thus:
The Empire offered Geiseric both a model of an entwined Church and
State, and Homoean theology an appropriate but different brand of
Christianity with which to recreate the model for his own purposes.21
However, initially at least, Geiseric and the Vandals targeted the African Nicene Church because of its wealth, and not because of any particular religious fervour.22 Some churches were handed over to the Arians but Nicene land and other assets were also kept by Geiseric and his family, or distributed amongst the Vandals.23 Many of the accounts provided by Nicene ecclesiastical figures of the worst excesses of the occupation focussed on the confiscation rather than destruction of church property; this implies that economic opportunism rather than strongly held belief was the dominant motivation behind these actions.24
As his hold on Proconsularis became more secure, Geiseric would increasingly use religious affairs, and particularly the threat of the persecution of the Nicene Church in Africa, as a way of leveraging concessions out of the various claimants to Roman imperial authority in the west. The appointment of Deogratias as Nicene bishop of Carthage in 454 was almost certainly determined by diplomatic considerations, perhaps a desire to secure the marriage of Huneric to the emperor Valentinian Ill’s daughter, Eudocia.25 When that marriage alliance failed to secure him the status amongst the other power brokers in the western Mediterranean that he desired, Geiseric once more changed his domestic religious policy by not replacing Deogratias when he died in 457.26
Despite the somewhat resigned tenor of many of the descriptions of the Vandal invasion provided by the ecclesiastical community, it is clear that many of their accounts were intended to help defend the integrity and authority of their church from the Arians. For African Homoousians, their ace in the hole was Augustine of Hippo, who in death would prove himself to be as formidable opponent of heresy as when he was alive. Possidius’ biography of Augustine, for example, was primarily written as a way of instructing African Nicene clerics how to respond to the Arian Vandals in what was a post-Augustinian world. In particular, the work placed a heavy emphasis on Augustine’s diligence in respect to fulfilling his pastoral duties - travelling around Africa, writing letters, ministering to his people as both a priest and a judge.27 This was a model that its author clearly considered that African Nicene clerics should follow themselves.28 Moreover, a long letter from Augustine to Honoratus, bishop of Thiave, on how to face the Vandal challenge, that takes up nearly 20 per cent of the whole biography, was certainly included as part of this strategy.29 In highlighting Augustine’s commitment to the ascetic, and particularly, monastic life, Possidius was placing such practices at the centre of Nicene resistance to the Vandal Arian challenge, a development that would have important implications towards the end of the Vandal epoch.30
There were other Nicene responses to the difficult circumstances that now faced them. For much of the Vandal tenure in Africa, exile proved to be a cruel but effective weapon against the ecclesiastical leadership of the Nicene Church, but these churchmen did their best to overcome this obstacle. Quodvultdeus’ writings suggest that his long sojourn in Naples had led to his increasing marginalization from contemporary affairs in Africa. His most significant work, the Book of Promises and Predictions of God (Liber de Promissionum), was written in Italy in the later 440s. In it, Quodvultdeus used scriptural testimonies to show his audience that they needed to put aside the pleasures of the world and to prepare themselves for the coming apocalypse. The exiled bishop insisted, through a multitude of biblical illustrations, that Arianism in Africa was the harbinger of the apocalypse, and that his audience needed to start paying attention to his warnings:
And the apostle John says: ‘You have heard that Antichrist is coming; now there are many antichrists’ [1 John 2.18]. And he shows who these are: ‘They went out from us’, he says, ‘but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would certainly have remained with us’ [1 John 2.19]. He is exposing all heretics and especially the Arians whom we now see seducing many either with temporal power or with the industry of an evil genius or with a certain moderation of temperance or the deception of all sorts of signs.31
Quodvultdeus also hints at the concerns that lay behind these dire warnings. After providing a theological rebuttal of Arianism, the exiled bishop spelled out the mortal dangers of succumbing to the pressure of their missionaries. Conversion to Arianism would end in damnation in the eternal fire of the apocalypse.32 The re-baptism that the Homoians insisted upon merely led to multiplication rather than the absolution of sins.33 However for those who repented quickly salvation could still be attained:34
Accordingly every person re-baptised by heretics, whether he voluntarily cast off Christ his vestment [Gal. 3.27] or faltered in persecution, lost the Christ clothing that he had. Therefore while there is time let him return despoiled and naked, repenting before his merciful father, who orders that the best robe and the ring of dignity be given back at once to the returning prodigal son [Luke 15.22].35
Quodvultdeus identified his intended readership through his description of their favoured pastimes - fishing, board games, mimes, acrobats, plays, singing, feasting with flowers and music - activities particularly associated with wealthy educated young laymen.36 It has been argued that his target was the noble Roman youth in Ostrogothic Italy, but there is reason to think that it was their Romano-African counterparts that he was primarily addressing.37 The longer that Quodvultdeus and other Nicene clergy remained in exile, the bolder the claims that had to be made in order to sustain the interest and attention of their distant African congregations.
That the Book of Promises was so packed full of scriptural testimonies was also a deliberate strategy on the part of its author. One of the major criticisms levelled at the Homoousian position towards the Holy Trinity was that it relied heavily on non-Christian philosophical terms such as ousia (substance) and homoousios itself (consubstance). In contrast, the Arians or Homoians shunned such language and instead insisted on solely using terms that appeared in the scriptures.38 Large quantities of African-authored anti-Arian literature that explicitly made extensive use of exempla from the scriptures to support the Nicene position began to appear.39 The text Against Varimadus (Contra Varimadum) is one such example: a strong rebuttal of a series of objections to the Homoousian position ascribed to an Arian deacon, Varimadus.40 The tract was written by an anonymous African exile in Naples, and reads like an instruction manual of how to counter Arianism:
If they say to you ‘the Son is not equal to the Father’, you reply thus ‘If the Son is not equal to the Father, then why did John the Evangelist testify about him in this manner, “Therefore”, he said, “the Jews persecuted Jesus and they sought to kill him, because not only did he break the Sabbath and he also called God his father, making himself equal to God.” ’41
The author of Against Varimadus was clearly anxious to demonstrate the strength of the scriptural testimony that could be used against the Arians.42
This emphasis on scriptural quotations in African anti-Arian tracts continued for much of the second half of the sixth century and was clearly intended to protect African Homoousians from proselytizing Arians.43 It was not just treatises and quotation crib sheets that were produced. One text purports to reproduce the exchanges from a debate between the Nicene bishop Cerealis of Castellum and an Arian bishop Maximinus in Carthage, which may have taken place in the 480s.44 As might be expected, biblical authority was a key theme of the Nicene case, at least as it is presented here; as one scholar has recently commentated: ‘He [Cerealis] proceeds to drown Maximinus in a deluge of scriptural citations drawn from almost every book in the bible and interspersed with brief commentaries, thereby reducing his opponent to silence.’45
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