disputants were separated, after the mutual and
ordinary reproaches of noise and silence, of delay and precipitation, of
military force and of popular clamor. One martyr and one confessor were
selected among the Catholic bishops; twenty-eight escaped by flight,
and eighty-eight by conformity; forty-six were sent into Corsica to cut
timber for the royal navy; and three hundred and two were banished to
the different parts of Africa, exposed to the insults of their enemies,
and carefully deprived of all the temporal and spiritual comforts of
life. The hardships of ten years' exile must have reduced their numbers;
and if they had complied with the law of Thrasimund, which prohibited
any episcopal consecrations, the orthodox church of Africa must have
expired with the lives of its actual members. They disobeyed, and their
disobedience was punished by a second exile of two hundred and twenty
bishops into Sardinia; where they languished fifteen years, till the
accession of the gracious Hilderic. The two islands were judiciously
chosen by the malice of their Arian tyrants. Seneca, from his own
experience, has deplored and exaggerated the miserable state of Corsica,
and the plenty of Sardinia was overbalanced by the unwholesome quality
of the air. III. The zeal of Generic and his successors, for the
conversion of the Catholics, must have rendered them still more jealous
to guard the purity of the Vandal faith. Before the churches were
finally shut, it was a crime to appear in a Barbarian dress; and those
who presumed to neglect the royal mandate were rudely dragged backwards
by their long hair. The palatine officers, who refused to profess the
religion of their prince, were ignominiously stripped of their honors
and employments; banished to Sardinia and Sicily; or condemned to the
servile labors of slaves and peasants in the fields of Utica. In
the districts which had been peculiarly allotted to the Vandals, the
exercise of the Catholic worship was more strictly prohibited; and
severe penalties were denounced against the guilt both of the missionary
and the proselyte. By these arts, the faith of the Barbarians was
preserved, and their zeal was inflamed: they discharged, with devout
fury, the office of spies, informers, or executioners; and whenever
their cavalry took the field, it was the favorite amusement of the march
to defile the churches, and to insult the clergy of the adverse faction.
IV. The citizens who had been educated