# THE PERSECUTION OF AFRICA

THE PERSECUTION OF AFRICA

ON KING HUNERIC OF THE VANDALS, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 500, COMPOSED BY SAINT VICTOR, BISHOP OF UTICA

In “The Persecution of Africa,” Machiavelli paraphrases and recasts the opening chapters of Saint Victor of Utica’s poignant three-volume Latin Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae (The History of the Persecution of the African Province), creating a compelling piece of literature. It describes the persecution of the Roman Catholics of the North African Roman provinces by the invading Vandal kings, Gaiseric and Huneric, fanatical Arian Christians who followed the teachings of the fourth-century Alexandrian presbyter Anus. The Church in Rome rejected the Arian Christians as heretics, but as Saint Victor demonstrates in his book, and Machiavelli reflects in this piece, the Christians of Africa saw the Vandals as brutal pagans: “Those churches the Vandals did not destroy […] were transformed into temples of their religion.”

It is unclear when Machiavelli worked on this piece.

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It has been sixty years since the cruel Vandal race entered the lands of Africa, crossing the straits that separate Africa from Spain. Short and tall, young and old, more than eight hundred thousand of them came, as they themselves asserted, so that our people, frightened by their number, would relinquish any thought of defending themselves. Finding Africa peaceful and calm, filled with riches and great abundance, the Vandals indulged in every violence, as much against men as against the earth. Wherever they trod they torched, ravaged, robbed, and slaughtered, taking men prisoner and forcing them to die in dungeons under every kind of torture. Nor did the Vandals withhold their cruelty from trees and plants. What was worse, they left neither church nor saint’s tomb unscathed, torching and devastating them all. People tried to hide themselves and their possessions in valleys, forests, and caves, but to no avail, for wherever they hid they were found, robbed, and slaughtered. The Vandals attacked the churches of God and the houses of men with the greatest hatred and most fervent persecution, and wherever they found buildings locked, they hacked and hewed at them with axes as the oaks of the forest are felled, so that one could quote the verse from the Scriptures: “They behaved like men wielding axes to cut through a thicket of trees. They smashed all the carved paneling with their axes and hatchets. They burned your sanctuary to the ground.”1

How many illustrious bishops and noble priests were tortured to death, unwilling to reveal where they kept their gold and silver! And if they relinquished what they had, this only convinced the Vandals that there was more they could give. The greater the riches the persecuted surrendered, the greater the torture. Some had foul-smelling mud poured down their throats, others were forced to drink seawater, still others were given vinegar, dung, the pungent dregs of wine, and other foul-smelling liquids. The merciless Vandals bloated their victims like wineskins, nor did they have pity on girls or women. They respected neither nobility nor learning and showed no reverence to the priesthood; in fact their spirits became more feral, and the Vandals unleashed their fury most, wherever they found nobility and rank. How many eminent men of the Church, how many illustrious gentlemen, were forced to carry burdens like camels and donkeys, driven on by the Vandals with goads and prods to quicken their pace, many dying under the strain. Neither youth nor age moved the Vandals to pity, and countless infants were torn from their mothers’ breasts, sent into captivity, grabbed by their feet and dashed on the ground before their mothers’ eyes, or were even held by their legs and sliced in half. This verse could have been cited at every instant: “You will kill their young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women.”2

Buildings too immense to succumb to fire the Vandals ravaged and defaced, so that today no trace remains of the ancient beauty of many of our cities. Scores of towns are now inhabited by few, or are empty. The theaters and churches of Carthage, Celestial Avenue, and many fine buildings were destroyed, and those churches the Vandals did not destroy, like the Basilica that holds the bodies of Saint Perpetua and Saint Felicitas, were transformed into temples of their religion.3 Wherever they came upon a castle or fortress they could not besiege, they slaughtered countless men from the surrounding areas and laid them outside the walls, so that those inside were forced to surrender or die of the stench.

Countless saintly priests were tortured and killed, among them the venerable Papinianus, bishop of our city, who was scorched with burning blades of steel. Mansuetus was burned at the gates of Fornitana. The city of Hippo was besieged, whose bishop was Saint Augustine,4 a man deserving the highest praise because the stream of his eloquence flowed through all the fields of the church: but in those adverse times that stream dried up and the sweetness of his speech turned into bitter absinth. David’s words proved true: Cum consisteret peccator adversum me, obmutui et humiliatus.5 Saint Augustine had written two hundred thirty-two books, innumerable epistles, and a thorough exposition of the entire Book of Psalms and the Gospels, which are usually called homilies, the number of which is vaster than the mind can grasp.

What more can I say? After much cruelty, Gaiseric6 besieged and conquered the great and beautiful city of Carthage, reducing to servitude its ancient liberty, so forthright and noble, and all its senators to slaves. Gaiseric decreed that the people had to bring him all their gold, precious stones, and rich vestments; in a short time he deprived them of all that their fathers and grandfathers had left them. Gaiseric divided the provinces among his generals, keeping the most important ones for himself. The emperor Valentinian managed to defend and hold on to some of the provinces, but Gaiseric seized them after Valentinian’s death.7 At that point Africa was his, as were the islands that lie between Africa and Italy—Sicily, Sardinia, Majorca, and Minorca—which he occupied and defended with his customary arrogance. Nevertheless, he later ceded Sicily to Odoacer, the king of Italy, in exchange for a tribute.8

As Gaiseric had power over Africa, he commanded that the Vandal chiefs expel all the bishops and noblemen from their territories. This order was carried out, and many distinguished men of the cloth and noblemen became Vandal slaves. Quotvultdeus, the bishop of Carthage, and a great number of men of the church were robbed of everything, put on ships, and sent away from Africa. By the mercy of God they made their way to Naples in Italy, while Gaiseric converted to his own religion the Restituta Cathedral, where their bishops had always officiated, plundering all the other churches inside and outside Carthage, particularly two beautiful cathedrals of Saint Cyprian the Martyr,9 one where his blood was shed, the other where he was buried, in Mappalia. Who can remember without tears how that cruel tyrant ordered the bodies of our saints to be buried without solemn psalms? And while these things were being done, the men of the church who had not yet left for exile from the African provinces that he had divided among his generals decided to meet with King Gaiseric, to beg him to show compassion. They gathered and went before the king, who was in the land of the Massyli,10 and beseeched him to allow their Christian people to stay in Africa and eke out a living there. To this the king replied: “I am resolved not to leave a single man of your name and tribe in this land, and you have the impudence to beg for mercy?” He would have thrown them all immediately into the sea, but his barons pleaded that he refrain from such an evil act.

Despondent and miserable, the men of God retreated, and began secretly administering the divine rites whenever and wherever they had the opportunity.

1. Machiavelli quotes Psalm 74, lines 5–7, from the Vulgate in slightly altered Latin: Quasi in silva lignorum securibus consciderunt [Vulgate: exciderunt] ianuas eius [Machiavelli adds: in id ipsum], in securi et ascia deiecerunt eam, incenderunt igni sanctuarium tuum.

2. Machiavelli quotes II Kings 8:12 in strongly altered Latin: Dixit inimicis incendere se fines meos, interficere infantes meos et parvulos meos elisurum ad terram.

3. Saint Perpetua, a young Carthaginian noblewoman, and her slave Felicitas were martyred in 203 CE during the Roman persecution of Christians and were among the foremost martyred saints of the North African Roman provinces. The Vandals were ardent Arian Christians (followers of the doctrines of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius), who differed in doctrinal matters from the Roman Catholic Church, particularly regarding the divinity of Christ.

4. Saint Augustine (354–430 CE), one of the Latin Fathers of the Church and a leading Christian theologian, died during Gaiseric’s siege of Hippo Regius (in today’s Algeria).

5. Psalm 39:1 (Vulgate 38:2): “I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. I was mute with silence.”

6. King Gaiseric of the Vandals (d. 477 CE) crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 428 CE and conquered a large part of Roman North Africa.

7. Roman Emperor Valentinian III (419–55 CE). Saint Victor of Utica writes in The History of the Persecution of the African Province: “They then divided the conquered provinces among themselves, Gaiseric keeping Byzacena, Abaritana, as well as Gaetulia and part of Numidia, while he gave his army Zeugitana, or Proconsularis. Emperor Valentinian still held the other provinces that Gaiseric had tried to assail, but after Valentinian’s death all of Africa was his.”

8. King Odoacer (c. 433–93 CE) was the first barbarian king of Italy, the beginning of whose reign in 476 CE is considered the end of the Western Roman Empire.

9. Saint Cyprian (200–58 CE). AS Bishop of Carthage he was a major spiritual leader during Rome’s persecution of North African Christians. After his execution he became the first bishop-martyr of Africa.

10. A dominant Numidian tribe to which King Massinissa of Numidia had belonged.