III: Origins of Augustinianism Within Vandal Persecution
Richard Drummond
Banned
“We are persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed”
- 2 Corinthians 4:9
Excerpt: Augustinians, from Christian Martyrs to Servants of Satan - Earbal Firciconis, College of Leptinia (AD 1880)
Writing during the reign of Meicislaus, Pius Midicensis dwelt at length on the brutality of the Vandals in their conquest of Libya. The brutality of the event was illustrated by the savagery of the Vandals and their singling out of clerics and members of the Catholic Church. Pius goes on further to describe how the Vandals tortured priests and bishops so that they would reveal the location of their churches’ wealth. Such depiction gave rise to the traditional understanding of the Vandal conquest as persecution, as an early example of what was to become the dominant characteristic of their rule in Libya, excluding the reign of Gento (455 - 82 AD).
In the early nineteenth century, Caphada Coccoitchnus paved the way for a revision of traditional interpretations of the Vandal period by presenting highly critical readings of contemporary historiography. However, since his revolutionary take on the Vandal historiographical tradition, eyes have been turned to Augustine Hipponensis for a more specific source of this historiographical tradition of the Vandals as persecutors.
Sources contemporary to the Vandal conquest (429-39 AD) did not universally reflect the religious overtones of Pius Midicensis’ account, nor did they unanimously depict the Vandals as persecutors. Rather, they focused upon the material destruction and loss along with the horrors of war. Augustine, however, was the exception; his ep. ccxxviii constituting a turning point as the first theological interpretation of the Vandals as a threat to the salvation of Nicene souls. Previous scholars who took the bishop of Hippo’s description of the Vandals at face value, and a confirmation of Possidius and Pius’ later accounts, missed an important point: Augustine’s transformation of the potential violence and destruction by an unnamed bishop, in a lost letter quoted by Augustine, into certainty. Augustine, looking back on his life’s work against heretics and Donatists, considered the imminent Vandal conquest as the destruction of a century of efforts by the Nicene Church to triumph over its ecclesiastic foes in Libya. This is undoubtedly why he interpreted the arrival of the conquerors as spelling the eternal death of Nicene Christians, and cast the future actions of the Vandals as certain persecution in waiting.
Possidius lived during the Vandal conquest and suffered exile at the hands of the Vandals. He too included Augustine’s ep. ccxxviii in his Life of Augustine and yet did not explicitly label the conquest as a persecution. Rather, it was Prosper of Aquitaine, another of Augustine’s pupils, who resurrected the depiction of the Vandals as persecutors. Another stage in the creation of the Vandal historiographical persona was reached with Quodvultdeus, the bishop of Carthage, being exiled to Campania in 439. Witnessing the increasing success of the Vandal Church in attracting converts amongst Nicenes, Quodvultdeus diverged from Augustine’s teachings and adopted an eschatological and millenarian perspective in his depiction of the Vandals as precursors of the Antichrist. All these viewpoints finally came together in the account of Pius Midicensis, who was too young to witness the conquest himself. Thus, in reply to the anonymous bishops seeking advice in the face of the invasions, Augustine established the framework that became prevalent in Nicene sources’ depiction of the viewpoint such as Possidius, Prosper, Quodvultdeus and Pius Midicensis.
The Vandal conquest was not a peaceful event; it was an event of unquestionable violence that led to the death and suffering of thousands. Famously, Coccoitchnus proclaimed the violence as ‘the standard practices of war’. This labelling of such violence as typical in such circumstances was not an attempt at excusing it or even dismissing it as unimportant; it was simply that contemporary valuation should not be applied to interpretation of the past. An example being the rape of nuns by Vandals as attested by the rescripts of Pope Leo. Such behaviour, though unfortunate, was a regular occurrence in both ancient warfare and still continues into contemporary times. The tetralogy of war - theft, rape, murder and arson - was after all not unique to the Vandals. The cruel conquests of the Vandals is not up for debate, whether or not they deliberately targeted the Nicenean Church is the question.
Augustine’s account of the Vandals contrasts to other accounts from contemporary observers, primarily because Augustine was only able to observe the conquests up to the fall of Hippo Regius after which he passed away. Other contemporary authors, for example Quodvultdeus, wrote after the Vandal conquest of Carthage which was a turning point resulting in the more hostile depictions of the exiled bishop. Another contemporary author would be Hydatius who is unique in that he documents their passage through the Iberian Peninsula before they crossed into Libya. Hydatius’ account reveals that Priscillianists, not Vandals, were the main concern, from a religious perspective, for Nicene clerics at this time. However, his account of the Vandals’ crossing into Africa follows African sources which transmitted the Augustinian interpretation of the Vandals as heretical persecutors.
Following the Vandal crossing into Africa in 429 CE, Augustine's colleagues grew restless in the face of the imminent invasion. A certain Quodvultdeus, not to be confused with the future bishop of Carthage,wrote to Augustine to get his advice on the behaviour that bishops should adopt in the face of the Vandal advance. He sought support from Augustine for his desire to flee his city. Augustine responded by saying that he should stay where he was as long as there were faithful to minister to, citing Psalm xxxi, ‘Be our protecting God and fortified place’. This was a significant shift in tactic from the previous Christian tradition to obey Matthew x.23, ‘But when they persecute you in this city, flee to another’. Augustine going against the precept of Scripture caused Honoratus of Thiaba to write to Augustine from which we see the earliest descriptions of the Vandal conquest of Africa. Honoratus’ descriptions of the horrors of the conquests was entirely speculative and did not include religious motivation and yet it was these claims which later accounts expanded upon. The bishop of Hippo’s reply only helped to blur the distinction between potential and reality while adding a theological interpretation of the conquest on top, thereby providing a conceptual framework for understanding the Vandals as persecutors.
In ep. ccxxviii. 4, Augustine quotes the words of ‘a certain bishop’ who wrote: ‘If the Lord commanded us to flee in those persecutions in which the fruit of martyrdom is found, how much more ought we to flee useless sufferings when there is a hostile invasion of the barbarians?’. It seems that for the bishop, be it Quodvultdeus or Honoratus, that the arrival of the Vandals was a hostile invasion, a war of conquest, without any specific religious motivation. These passages make a clear distinction between martyrdom and useless sufferings, the latter describing the current Vandal context. The mention of Spanish bishops who fled after their flock had themselves left shows the same basic point that the Vandals were causing devastation, but without religious motivation.
The letter also included a brief description of what Catholics might expect from the Vandals. Augustine thus quotes the certain bishop as writing: ‘If we must remain in the churches, I do not see what good we are going to do for ourselves or for the people other than seeing men being slain, women being raped, churches being burned, and ourselves not faltering under torture when they ask of us what we do not have.’ Augustine answered: ‘and yet on account of these events, which are uncertain, we ought not to commit the certain wrong of abandoning our duty, without which the destruction of the people is certainly not in matters of this life but in those of the next life.’ Augustine correctly acknowledged that the Vandals had not yet committed any of these actions and that the author simply feared potential actions, a crucial detail missed by previous scholars.
Augustine wrote that 'when he who can escape does not flee from the onslaught of the enemy and so does not abandon the ministry of Christ, without which men could neither live a Christian life nor become Christians, he finds a greater reward of love than he who flees, not for his brethren's sake but for his own, and when taken captive does not deny Christ but suffers martyrdom'. This implies that the invasion would result in Vandal attempts to force captives to ‘deny Christ’ putting resistors to death. By adding this religious element, Augustine's depiction of the conquest turned it into a holy war. In addition, by insinuating that the Vandals would create martyrs, Augustine implied that they were already persecutors. The original worries related to a war of conquest from the unknown bishop did not contain these theological concerns. In turning the useless sufferings of the unnamed bishop into martyrdom, moreover, Augustine gave the main function of martyrdom: to give significant meaning to meaningless suffering. This was nothing new for Augustine, who had already argued that any average Christian could find an opportunity for martyrdom in daily activities, as when bed-ridden Christians resisted having recourse to amulets.
A key question is why Augustine insisted on this religious subtext when he had excused essentially the same list of atrocities as the woes of war for the Visigothic sack of Rome in the City of God. The difference is the local, African, ecclesiastical context in which Augustine had been a key player throughout his episcopal career. Augustine's concept of the two cities is at the centre of his thinking on the barbarian invasions. In the words of Augustine's biographer, Possidius, 'the man of God did not believe and think as other men did regarding the causes from which this most fierce assault and devastation of the foe had arisen and come to pass'. Possidius is here undoubtedly referring to the more earthly worries that dominated Honoratus of Thiaba's account and his own, which might well have been the norm at the time. For Augustine, spiritual death was far worse than the violence of invasion, which explains his argument that clerics ought to remain alongside their community no matter what. This also explains Augustine's transformation of the invasion into a theological conflict, for the Vandals were Homoian Christians.
Augustine connects the Vandals with the devil, anticipating that they might incite Nicenes to convert to their faith, as Quodvultdeus will later attest. Augustine refers to Athanasius as a positive example of a bishop who fled in the right circumstances because he was personally persecuted; therefore he did not have a flock to tend to. It seems hardly coincidental that Athanasius was also 'persecuted' by a Homoian ruler, Constantius II (337-61 AD), and Augustine specified that 'the Catholic faith was defended against the Arian heretics by his voice and zeal'. Augustine's polarising interpretation, however, was unique among contemporaries of the Vandal conquest, for it is only later, through the accounts of Prosper of Aquitaine, Quodvultdeus and Pius Midicensis that Augustine's version became the consecrated Nicene vision of
events. By contrast, the contemporary accounts of Capreolus and Possidius focused on earthly concerns.
SUMMARY:
455: Gento is installed as King of the Vandals and Alans.
482: Gento, King of the Vandals and Alans, is overthrown by a noble coup.
455: Gento is installed as King of the Vandals and Alans.
482: Gento, King of the Vandals and Alans, is overthrown by a noble coup.
LIST OF MONARCHS:
Kings of the Vandals and Alans
Hasdingian Dynasty
Kings of the Vandals and Alans
Hasdingian Dynasty
- Gaiseric: 2 November 439 - 13 March 453 (13 years, 4 months, 11 days)
- Huneric: 13 March 453 - 28 June 455 (2 years, 3 months, 15 days)
- Gento: 28 June 455 - 17 October 482 (27 years, 3 months, 19 days)
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