of the Vandals. [93] II. The practice of a conference,
which the Catholics had so frequently used to insult and punish their
obstinate antagonists, was retorted against themselves. [94] At the
command of Hunneric, four hundred and sixty-six orthodox bishops
assembled at Carthage; but when they were admitted into the hall of
audience, they had the mortification of beholding the Arian Cyrila
exalted on the patriarchal throne. The 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. [95] 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. [96] 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, [97] and the plenty of Sardinia was
overbalanced by the unwholesome quality of the air. [98] 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. [99] 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 sev