dangerous.[1] The pulpit, that safe and sacred organ of sedition, resounded with the names of Pharaoh and Holofernes;[2] the public discontent was inflamed by the hope or promise of a glorious deliverance ; and the seditious saints were tempted to promote the accomplishment of their own predictions. General toleration Notwithstanding these provocations, the Catholics of Gaul, Spain, and Italy enjoyed, under the reign of the Arians, the free and peaceful exercise of their religion. Their haughty masters respected the zeal of a numerous people, resolved to die at the foot of their altars; and the example of their devout constancy was admired and imitated by the Barbarians themselves. The conquerors evaded, however, the disgraceful reproach, or confession, of fear, by attributing their toleration to the liberal motives of reason and humanity; and, while they affected the language, they imperceptibly imbibed the spirit, of genuine Christianity.
Arian persecution of the Vandals The peace of the church was sometimes interrupted. The Catholics were indiscreet, the Barbarians were impatient; and the partial acts of severity or injustice which had been recommended by the Arian clergy were exaggerated by the orthodox writers. The guilt of persecution may be imputed to Euric, king of the Visigoths; who suspended the exercise of ecclesiastical, or, at least, of episcopal, functions, and punished the popular bishops of Aquitain with imprisonment, exile, and confiscation.[3] But the cruel and absurd enterprise of subduing the minds of a whole people was undertaken by the Vandals alone. Genseric. A.D. 429-477 Genseric himself, in his early youth, had renounced the orthodox communion; and the apostate could neither grant nor expect a sincere forgiveness. He was exasperated to find that the Africans who had fled before him in the field still presumed to dispute his will in synods and churches; and his ferocious mind was incapable of fear or of compassion. His Catholic subjects were oppressed by intolerant laws and arbitrary punishments. The language of Genseric was furious and formidable; the knowledge of his intentions might justify the most unfavour-- ↑ The epistles of Sidonius, bishop of Clermont, under the Visigoths, and of Avitus, bishop of Vienna, under the Burgundians, explain, sometimes in dark hints, the general dispositions of the Catholics. The history of Clovis and Theodoric will suggest some particular facts.
- ↑ Genseric confessed the resemblance by the severity with which he punished such indiscreet allusions. Victor Vitensis, 1, 7, p. 10.
- ↑ Such are the contemporary complaints of Sidonius, bishop of Clermont (l. vii. c. 6, p. 182, &c. edit. Sirmond). Gregory of Tours, who quotes this Epistle (l. ii. c. 25, in tom. ii. p. 174), extorts an unwarrantable assertion that, of the nine vacancies in Aquitain, some had been produced by episcopal martyrdoms.
