s which
they had alleged, the obstinacy of the schismatics must be inexcusable
and voluntary; and the emperor Honorius was persuaded to inflict the
most rigorous penalties on a faction which had so long abused his
patience and clemency. Three hundred bishops, [18] with many thousands
of the inferior clergy, were torn from their churches, stripped of their
ecclesiastical possessions, banished to the islands, and proscribed by
the laws, if they presumed to conceal themselves in the provinces of
Africa. Their numerous congregations, both in cities and in the
country, were deprived of the rights of citizens, and of the exercise
of religious worship. A regular scale of fines, from ten to two
hundred pounds of silver, was curiously ascertained, according to the
distinction of rank and fortune, to punish the crime of assisting at
a schismatic conventicle; and if the fine had been levied five times,
without subduing the obstinacy of the offender, his future punishment
was referred to the discretion of the Imperial court. [19] By these
severities, which obtained the warmest approbation of St. Augustin, [20]
great numbers of Donatists were reconciled to the Catholic Church; but
the fanatics, who still persevered in their opposition, were provoked to
madness and despair; the distracted country was filled with tumult and
bloodshed; the armed troops of Circumcellions alternately pointed their
rage against themselves, or against their adversaries; and the calendar
of martyrs received on both sides a considerable augmentation. [21]
Under these circumstances, Genseric, a Christian, but an enemy of
the orthodox communion, showed himself to the Donatists as a powerful
deliverer, from whom they might reasonably expect the repeal of the
odious and oppressive edicts of the Roman emperors. [22] The conquest
of Africa was facilitated by the active zeal, or the secret favor, of
a domestic faction; the wanton outrages against the churches and the
clergy of which the Vandals are accused, may be fairly imputed to the
fanaticism of their allies; and the intolerant spirit which disgraced
the triumph of Christianity, contributed to the loss of the most
important province of the West. [23]

[Footnote 17: See Tillemont, Memoires Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 516-558;
and the whole series of the persecution, in the original monuments,
published by Dupin at the end of Optatus, p. 323-515.]

[Footnote 18: The Donatist Bishops, at the conference of Carthage,
am