Bishops of Africa

ON THE HOLY BISHOPS OF AFRICA: DONATIAN AND PRÆSIDIUS AND MANSUETUS AND GERMANUS AND FUSCULUS AND LÆTUS, CONFESSORS, AND A MARTYR,

BISHOPS IN AFRICA.

After the year CDLXXXIII.

HISTORICAL COLLECTION.

Donatian, confessor, African Bishop (S.)

Præsidius, confessor, African Bishop (S.)

Mansuetus, confessor, African Bishop (S.)

Germanus, confessor, African Bishop (S.)

Fusculus, confessor, African Bishop (S.)

Lætus, martyr, African Bishop (S.)

BY J. L.

§ I. The Martyrologies; the Acts from St. Victor of Vita; bishops who were confessors, suffering in the same persecution as the Saints.

In the Little Roman Martyrology the memory of the confessors Donatian and the rest is today celebrated. I have named only one bishop distinguished by the laurel of martyrdom and four by the glory of confession as companions of St. Donatian, The eulogies in the classical Martyrologies, because Ado, Usuard and the other martyrologists join no more to him; although the author of the Little Roman, the leader of them all, could by the word the rest have understood more, about whom the discourse will return below. This is Ado's announcement: In Africa, of the most blessed confessors and bishops Donatian, Præsidius, Mansuetus, Germanus, Fusculus, who in the Vandal persecution in Africa, by order of Hunneric the Arian king, for the assertion of Catholic truth were most harshly beaten with cudgels and condemned to exile. Among whom also a bishop named Lætus, a strenuous and most learned man, he burned to death by fire after long squalors of prison. Then too, sending out executors by public decree through the various provinces, when the bishops had been gathered at Carthage as though for a council, he closed on one day all the churches of Africa, and made over the whole substance of the bishops and of the churches to his own bishops. Almost all Ado's words Notker transcribed.

[2] Usuard contracted the eulogy of Ado in this manner: taken from the most trustworthy Work of St. Victor of Vita; In Africa, of the blessed confessors and bishops Donatian, Presidius, Mansuetus, Germanus, Fusculus, who for the assertion of Catholic truth were most harshly beaten and driven out into exile. Among whom also a bishop named Letus, a strenuous and most learned man, was burned to death by fire after long squalors of prison. I add the text of the Roman Martyrology alone, which the Church now uses, although it differs little from that of Usuard. In Africa, of the holy bishops Donatian, Præsidius, Mansuetus, Germanus and Fusculus, who in the Vandal persecution, by order of Hunneric the Arian king, for the assertion of Catholic truth were most harshly beaten, and driven out into exile. Among whom also a bishop named Lætus, a strenuous and most learned man, was burned to death by fire after long squalors of prison. Ado, whom the younger martyrologists followed, took his eulogy of the Saints from the History of the Vandal persecution under the kings Genseric and Huneric, piously and faithfully written by St. Victor bishop of Vita. I call that author saint, because our Cuper sufficiently vindicated this title for him in volume IV of August from page 628. I name him bishop of Vita, not of Utica; because that he was bishop not of the latter, as many have thought, but of the former see, is put beyond all doubt in the same place, page 629 and following. Then on page 630 it is demonstrated that the holy writer committed his History to writing in the year 487, that is, three or four years after the exile of SS. Donatian and his fellow confessors and the martyrdom of St. Lætus, as will become plain from what is to be said. The golden Work of St. Victor came to light from the Paris press in the year 1694 by the labor and study of Ruinart, well known to the learned; whose edition I shall use, as being more accurate than the rest.

[3] King Huneric, most addicted to the errors of the Arians, began to afflict the Catholic cause in Africa with barbarous cruelty, from which are transferred hither when St. Eugenius had been ordained bishop of Carthage, as is plain from St. Victor's History, book 2, number 3 and following, in Ruinart: who in the historical Commentary on the Vandal Persecution, chapter 8, number 2, shows that his consecration must be assigned to about the year 481. Having narrated the beginnings of the persecution stirred up by Huneric, St. Victor in the same place from number 8 to 13 sets forth excellent examples of Christian fortitude, namely bishops, presbyters, deacons and other members of the Church, that is, four thousand nine hundred and seventy-six: who, after they had been not so much shut up in narrow prisons as heaped together in a mass and as it were buried in their own filth, were led away by the Moors to exile in a horrible desert; into which, however, they did not all arrive, since many died on the way after being variously tortured. In the Roman Martyrology of Baronius that illustrious band, partly of Confessors and partly of Martyrs, is announced at the XII of October, reduced to 4966, although in the said History of the Ruinart edition, in the Little Roman, in Ado, Usuard and Notker the number 4976 is clearly expressed. They suffered exile and martyrdom about the year 482. For a reason to be brought forward at number 14 I believe that our saint Donatian was among the Confessors of the said band: what grievous discomforts they endured in the foulest prisons, on the journey to exile, and in the exile itself, I do not here relate one by one; since the narrative of St. Victor, who describes them exactly, was given in volume III of July from page 498, where St. Eugenius bishop of Carthage is treated of, and will doubtless be reprinted at the XII of October.

[4] So great a number of Catholics visited with exile and martyrdom was the prelude of a greater persecution. the contests of our Saints Huneric plans, says St. Victor at number 13, harsher things against the Church of God, so that he who had cut off some members might destroy the whole body by mangling it. For that cause he commands by edict the Orthodox bishops of all Africa to assemble at Carthage on the day of the Kalends of February next following, to dispute with the Arians about the faith, and to prove from the sacred Writings that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Now the edict was given on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of June, in the seventh year of Huneric's reign, which was of Christ 483. When the Catholic prelates had received the edict, St. Eugenius of Carthage answered in the name of his fellow bishops and by common counsel, that the cause not of Africa only, but of the churches of the whole world was being handled, and that therefore the bishops from overseas also ought to be called to the conference. This he did

Eugenius, not because there were lacking in Africa men who could refute the objections of the adversaries: but that those might come who, being strangers to their domination, might have greater confidence of liberty, and might likewise announce to all lands and peoples the calumnies of our oppression. But he, who was weaving deceits, would not hear reason, contriving by frequent argumentations to harass with various persecutions whatever bishops he had heard were learned. He had already sent to the exile of Vibiana, for the second time, the bishop Donatian, after a hundred and fifty cudgel-strokes had been laid on him, and likewise Præsidius of Sufetula, a man sharp enough. Then too he cudgeled the venerable Mansuetus, Germanus, Fusculus and many others. So St. Victor at numbers 15 and 16; who, with a few things interposed, relates that St. Eugenius restored sight to a certain blind man, when at the feast of the Lord's Epiphany he was administering baptism with solemn rite according to the custom of the African church.

[5] of the Saints and of others Then he pursues his narrative at number 18 thus: That calumnious day of the Kalends of February, appointed by the same Huneric, was now drawing near. There assemble the bishops not only of all Africa, but also of many islands (subject to him), worn out with affliction and grief. Silence is kept for many days, until meanwhile he should separate [] all the skilled and most learned men, to be done to death by trumped-up calumnies. For one from that very choir of the learned, named Lætus, a strenuous and most learned man, after long squalors of prison he burned to death by fire, reckoning that, by striking fear with such an example, he would crush the rest. At length there is a coming to the conflict of disputation, namely to the place which the adversaries had chosen. Of the things which St. Victor narrates to have happened in the famous meeting at Carthage, I transfer hither only the following, mention of which will recur at number 16. Cyrila, the pseudo-patriarch of the Arians, seeing that the Catholic bishops were the better prepared for the conflict, wished by all means to decline a hearing by various cavils. Which our men foreseeing beforehand, had drawn up a little book on the faith, drawn up decently and sufficiently enough, saying: If you desire to know our faith, this is the truth which we hold.* Here is subjoined the said little book, or profession of faith of the Orthodox prelates, which constitutes the third book of St. Victor's History, and in which it is excellently proved from the sacred Scriptures against the Arians that there is one nature or substance in God, subsisting in three Persons, and consequently that Father and Son and Holy Spirit are rightly called consubstantial.

[6] prelates whom Huneric punished with exile and other penalties: St. Victor thus begins his fourth book: Who (the Arian bishops), when our little book was being read, could by no means bear with their eyes the light of truth offered them, raging, roaring with their voices, and taking it grievously that we had called ourselves Catholics by our own name. And straightway, lying, they suggest to the king about us that we had made an uproar, fleeing a hearing. Who at that same hour, being inflamed and believing the lie, hastened to do what he wished. And having his decree already drawn up, and secretly sending his men with that same decree through the various provinces, while the bishops were stationed at Carthage, he closed on one day the churches of all Africa, and made over as a gift the whole substance of the bishops and of the churches to his own bishops, and subjected all Catholics of whatever condition, unless before the Kalends of June they should desert the true faith, to the same penalties which the emperors of old had decreed against the Arians and other heretics. There is subjoined the edict of the impious king, given on the day of the Kalends of March at Carthage in the year 484. Then it is narrated how cruelly and by what unworthy methods the venerable bishops were treated for the faith and divinity of Christ, with what injuries they were visited, by what fraud circumvented, and how hard an exile at last they were forced to endure in Africa or in Corsica. St. Victor's account, which I have just touched upon briefly, Cuper published at the XIII of July, inserted in the Acts of St. Eugenius bishop of Carthage from number 33. I here renew the memory of those illustrious prelates who after the meeting at Carthage were variously harassed and driven into exile; because, although a place among the heaven-dwellers of this day is not granted them, yet to some they may seem not unworthy of it. But of this matter more will be treated, when I shall have premised some things about a precious monument of sacred antiquity which Ruinart subjoined to St. Victor's History and the other ancient little works at page 123, and which will be cited again and again in the course of the Commentary.

[7] The monument which I just now mentioned bears this title: [according to the Notitia of the African church in the persecution of that tyrant] Here begin the names of the Catholic bishops of the various provinces, who came to Carthage [] by royal command to give an account of the faith on the day of the Kalends of February, in the sixth year of king Huneric. This Catalogue I shall henceforth call the Notitia of the African church, because it has obtained that name among the learned. Ruinart in his Notes, page 217, warns that the Laon manuscript codex which he used has faultily in the title in the sixth year of king Huneric; whereas it ought to be read in the VIII year: for from St. Victor it is certain that Huneric in the seventh year of his reign proclaimed the conference of Carthage, to be held in the following year on the Kalends of February. At the end of the Notitia the sum of the prelates mentioned in it is reckoned thus: And so all the bishops of the various provinces amount to the number CCCCLXVI. There is added: Of whom there perished to the number LXXXVIII… There remained to the number CCCCLXXVIII. It must be read, as will presently appear, CCCLXXVIII. There follows: Banished to Corsica, to the number XLVI. Banished here, to the number CCCII. Fled, to the number XXVIII. Suffered, to the number 1. Confessor, to the number 1. All of which taken together make up CCCLXXVIII bishops, who remained. To these add LXXVIII who perished, and thou wilt equal the sum CCCCLXVI adduced in the first place. If, however, thou shouldst reckon separately all the prelates brought forward in the Notitia, thou wilt find only CCCCLXI who are named, and two anonymous ones in the province of Byzacena, whose sees are expressed. But since from what has been said it is manifest that the reading of the number CCCCLXVI is genuine, it remains that from the Notitia* the names of five bishops and of three episcopal sees have fallen out.

[8] Tillemont, in volume 16 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 567, thinks that the author of the Notitia designated by the word perished 378 bishops suffered for the faith, who are distributed into various classes. those prelates who, succumbing to the persecution, fell away from the faith. I would establish Tillemont's opinion with other arguments than those which he himself brings forward, if I thought it necessary here. Among the CCCLXXVIII bishops who remained in the Catholic faith, XLVI suffered violent exile in the island of Corsica and CCCII in Africa. Among the latter there will be reckoned in the following § SS. Donatian and Præsidius, who were forced into exile before the conference of Carthage. About SS. Mansuetus, Germanus and Fusculus I shall say nothing positively except that they went into exile. Those who, when the conference was ended, were forcibly carried off into Corsica and to various places in Africa, had to cut wood and till the fields, on the testimony of St. Victor at the end of book 4. The XXVIII prelates whom the author of the Notitia says fled, I suppose withdrew into voluntary exile, before the others, of whom St. Victor just cited treats, were thrust into it by force. This is certain about them, that because they were Catholics they lived banished from their sees, and that their churches were closed and their goods handed over to the Arians: for that deadly edict of Huneric, mention of which was made at number 6, was promulgated against them all. That one man who is said to have suffered is our martyr St. Lætus. Although all the rest deserve the honorable name of confessors; yet in the Notitia it is asserted that there was confessor, to the number 1. Tillemont, cited above, believes this to be he who among the bishops of Numidia is mentioned as the seventy-sixth thus: Domninus of Moxori, to the mine, that is, condemned to dig in the mines.

[9] The Martyrologies later than the Little Roman, out of the bishops who suffered exile and other penalties for the faith, who in the Notitia of the African church are set at the number CCCLXXVIII, [Of these the younger martyrologists report only six, following the author of the Little Roman, who many others,] announce at the VI of September no others as Saints than Lætus the martyr with the confessors Donatian, Præsidius, Mansuetus, Germanus and Fusculus. Yet Ado did not pass over the rest in entire silence, when he subjoined this to their eulogies: Then too Huneric, sending out executors by public decree through the various provinces, when the bishops had been gathered at Carthage as though for a council, closed on one day all the churches of Africa, and made over the whole substance of the bishops and of the churches to his own bishops. These or similar things Notker, the Plantin Bede and other younger martyrologists also added; but all in such a manner that, not otherwise than Ado, they are to be judged as having been unwilling to commemorate the remaining bishops as Saints, but as having wished only to relate the impiety of Huneric, the persecutor of the Church. But how is this announcement of the Little Roman Martyrology to be expounded: Of the confessors Donatian and the rest? Is the word the rest to be restricted to his five companions only? In St. Victor's History it is read that Huneric, after the proclamation of the conference of Carthage, harassed with various persecutions whatever bishops he had heard were learned. The first of these are named SS. Donatian and Præsidius, beaten with cudgels and driven into exile. There immediately follows: Then too he cudgeled the venerable Mansuetus, Germanus, Fusculus and MANY OTHERS. Behold here the sacred historian has joined many other learned prelates as companions to St. Donatian, excluded from their number and from that of the Saints by Ado and his followers; but whom I judge to have been comprehended under the general word the rest in the Little Roman, whose author first announced St. Donatian with his companions.

[10] nay, perhaps he meant to announce all at the 6th of September. Nay, I have a suspicion that the author of that same Roman comprehended under the word the rest all the bishops whom Huneric in the year 483 summoned to the conference of Carthage, and visited with exile and other penalties for the cause of the true faith. St. Victor celebrates three bands of confessors ordered into exile by Huneric; namely 4976 Catholics of both sexes, of every age and condition, whom I mentioned at number 3; the bishops, of whom the discourse now is; and all the clerics of the church of Carthage with their bishop St. Eugenius, who were nearly five hundred in number or more, as the same St. Victor writes in book 5, number 9. Of these three classes of confessors I find none in the Martyrologies older than the author of the Little Roman, who announced the last at the XIII of July thus: Of SS. the confessors Eugenius the bishop and all the clergy of the church of Carthage; the first at the XII of October in this manner: In Africa, of the holy Confessors, four thousand DCCCCLVI, etc. Why then should he not by this brief eulogy also — Of the confessors Donatian and the rest — have wished to report that most noble troop of the said Prelates, and to constitute St. Donatian as it were their leader, because he is first mentioned by St. Victor as one against whom Huneric raged? Yet because this conjecture is very uncertain, and all the other martyrologists attribute only five Companions to St. Donatian, nor could I prove with sufficient certainty that Ado, who first determined their number, restricted the announcement of the Little Roman to too few, I should not dare to extend it to more, and to give a place among the Saints of this day to those whom no writer of the sacred calendars manifestly sets forth as such. These things therefore being dismissed, I return to our six

Prelates, whom it is certainly established from the Martyrologies to be held in the Church for Saints and to be venerated on the VI of September.

elsewhere, he should thereafter overcome*

* to Carthage

§ II. The sees of the holy Prelates; various observations upon their contests.

[ ] Four bishoprics are assigned, over one of which St. Donatian probably presided: In the Notitia of the African church four bishops occur who bear the name Donatian, namely of Veselis and of Tegla in the province of Numidia, of Elis in Byzacena, and of Usinada in the province of Mauritania Cæsariensis. One of them is the same as our St. Donatian; if however this passage of St. Victor is not faulty in Ruinart: He had already sent to the exile of Vibiana, for the second time, the bishop Donatian, … and likewise Præsidius of Sufetula. Pierre-François Chifflet, who published his history at Dijon in the year 1664, and various writers who inserted that passage into their works, have the Vibianian, so that the sense is that St. Donatian was bishop of Vibiana. And indeed St. Victor may seem to have wished to express the see of St. Donatian as Vibiana, just as he expressed that of St. Præsidius as Sufetula. If it be so, this Saint administered a bishopric otherwise not known even by name, so far as I know, to any authors who have illustrated the sacred or profane geography of Africa; and he is to be reckoned among the three prelates whose names and sees are wanting in the Notitia. But this in my opinion ought not to be so easily conceded at once: and the great obscurity of the place Vibiana, such that its bare name has become known from St. Victor alone, casts some suspicion that it was not distinguished by an episcopal see. Ruinart writes that the holy Prelate was sent for the second time to the exile of Vibiana, following four manuscript codices and two printed ones; in which, as may be seen in the Notes, page 171 and following, there is Vibianense or Vinianense. According to this reading, which pleases me more, the Saint is not to be distinguished from some one of the four Donatians whose episcopal sees I have adduced from the Notitia of the African church, but the Vibianian place of exile is to be sought in those solitudes of Africa in which he was in exile the first time. See below at number 14.

[12] Among the bishops of the province of Byzacena the twentieth is thus inscribed in the Notitia: [The sees of SS. Præsidius, Mansuetus, and Germanus, the father of St. Leontia M., are certain; but that of St. Fusculus is uncertain:] Præsidius of Sufetula, into exile. This is our very St. Præsidius; since St. Victor too calls him bishop of Sufetula. Among the prelates of the said province of Byzacena the fourth is noted Mansuetus of Asufenia, and the thirty-first Germanus of Peradamia. These two are beyond all doubt the same as our SS. Mansuetus and Germanus, because each name is mentioned only once in the Notitia. Leontia, the daughter of saint Germanus the bishop, is praised by St. Victor in book 5, number 1, among the Martyrs crowned in Africa after the conference of Carthage in the year 484, and inscribed in the sacred calendars at the VI of December. I shall believe St. Leontia M. to be the daughter of our St. Germanus, afterward bishop of Peradamia, until another prelate of the same name in Africa is assigned who could have been the saint's father. But of what see was St. Fusculus bishop? Ruinart in his Notes, page 172, says: Fusculus it has not been possible to find, unless perhaps he was Filtiosus of Aggarita, mentioned by the author of the Notitia in the twenty-ninth place in the same province of Byzacena. Certainly in Usuard's autograph there is Fulcolus for Fusculus. In the Usuardine codices of our museum it is almost everywhere Fuscolus, nowhere Fulcolus, not even in the Prat codex, which the Benedictine Fathers recently published as Usuard's autograph. With Baronius' Roman I have written Fusculus, because so it is read in St. Victor. If the conjecture of Ruinart adduced should please less, suppose the Saint to be one of those omitted from the Notitia.

[13] St. Lætus was bishop of Nepte. Baronius on today's announcement in the Roman Martyrology noted this concerning St. Lætus the martyr: He was bishop of the city of Leptis, as St. Isidore of Seville writes in the History of the Vandals. For Leptinensis or, as it is elsewhere, Leptensis, Isaac Vossius and Philippe Labbe, the editors of the said History of St. Isidore, put Neptensis. And that this is the true name of the city in which St. Lætus M. sat, I have learned both from the Chronicle of Victor of Tunnuna, who is older than St. Isidore, in which at the third consulship of the augustus Zeno he is called bishop of the church of Nepte, and from the Notitia of the African church, in which only one Lætus occurs, and he Neptitanus; and he is noted as fourteenth among the bishops of Byzacena. Who at that time, in which St. Lætus was martyr of Nepte or Neptita, were bishops of the two Leptises, namely the greater and the lesser, the same Notitia teaches; in which among the Byzacenes the thirty-sixth is read Fortunatianus Leptiminensis, that is, of Lesser Leptis; and the first among the Tripolitans Calipides Leptimagnensis, that is, of Greater Leptis. Whoever desires to know more about the episcopal sees hitherto mentioned, let him consult Ruinart's learned Observations on the Notitia of the African church so often praised.

[14] The several things which St. Victor That St. Donatian was twice in exile under Huneric St. Victor affirms in these words: He had already sent to the exile of Vibiana, for the second time, the bishop Donatian. The tyrant, as was said at number 3, about the year 482 condemned to exile 4976 Catholics, some of whom the same St. Victor expressly testifies to have been bishops, naming among these Felix of Abbir. Among the number of those prelates I judge St. Donatian also to have been, and consequently that the first exile which he bore under Huneric happened about the year 482. The reason is, that between the consecration of St. Eugenius bishop of Carthage — which, being performed in the year 481, marks the beginning of the persecution — and the second exile of St. Donatian, which cannot be deferred beyond the beginning of the year 484, that most exact writer of the same persecution mentions no other bishops punished with exile than those who were among the said 4976 Confessors. All these, he says at number 8, Huneric destined to the exile of the desert, to be led thither by the Moors, who inflicted martyrdom on many along the way, as he narrates at number 12. The rest arrive at the places of the wilderness, in which, being settled, they receive barley to eat like beasts of burden. Where also there is said to be so great a multitude of venomous creatures and scorpions that it seems incredible to those who do not know. If thou shouldst think with me that in Ruinart's edition it is rightly read that St. Donatian was twice sent to the exile of Vibiana, and shouldst at the same time admit — which prudently it does not seem to me can be denied — that the Saint was the first time in exile in those deserts of Africa; thou must also confess that the Vibianian place of exile was situated in those same deserts: which thou wilt more probably place somewhere in Mauritania, because that band of glorious exiles, to which I have joined St. Donatian, was carried off by the Moors into those parts.

[15] When Huneric in the month of May of the year 483 had summoned to Carthage all the Catholic prelates established throughout all Africa, about all of them that they might be present at the conference to be held with the Arians on the 1st of February of the following year, St. Donatian returned from his first exile. There returned also St. Felix bishop of Abbir, of whom there will be treatment at the XII of October: for in the Notitia of the African church, or Catalogue of the Orthodox bishops who came to Carthage by royal command, he occupies the second place among the prelates of the Proconsular province. There returned also St. Præsidius, if he was the companion of St. Donatian in his first exile; which is uncertain. Hear again and weigh the words of St. Victor: He had already sent to the exile of Vibiana, for the second time, the bishop Donatian, after a hundred and fifty cudgel-strokes had been laid on him, and likewise Præsidius of Sufetula, a man sharp enough. Although the obvious sense of this passage is that not only St. Donatian, but also St. Præsidius was banished by Huneric a second time to the exile of Vibiana, yet I doubt whether that sense is conformable to the author's mind, who perhaps only wished to signify that St. Præsidius was relegated to the exile of Vibiana with St. Donatian, on whom alone the penalty of that same exile was imposed a second time. That clause, after a hundred and fifty cudgel-strokes had been laid on him, I refer to both Saints. St. Victor writes that at the same time SS. Mansuetus, Germanus and Fusculus were beaten with cudgels: who a little after narrates that St. Eugenius in the year 484 at the Lord's Epiphany restored sight to a blind man. Whence it is known that the holy Confessors suffered no later than about one month before the Kalends of February, on which day Huneric had ordered the conference to be held at Carthage.

[16] Here perhaps someone will ask where the five holy Confessors were beaten with cudgels, he mentions, and whence the first two, namely SS. Donatian and Præsidius, were sent into exile? Was it at Carthage? So I should prefer to answer to both questions; because concerning most of them there can be no doubt that their names are had in the Notitia of the African church, or Catalogue of the bishops who came to Carthage [] by royal command to give an account of the faith on the day of the Kalends of February in the year 484. Nor does it stand in the way that they were punished with exile and strokes of the cudgel one or even several months before that day: for the cause why they came to Carthage earlier than the other bishops could, among others, have been that they had been summoned by St. Eugenius, primate of all Africa, that they might lend their labor to composing that excellent and sufficiently lengthy little book against the Arians on the consubstantiality of the three Divine Persons, which, as St. Victor affirms above in our number 5, the Orthodox bishops drew up before the meeting at Carthage; at which it was also recited, or at least began to be recited. One may suspect that, while that little book was being composed, our Bishop confessors were called in; since the sacred historian commends their learning, praising St. Præsidius especially for sharpness of intellect. St. Lætus the martyr also could have been summoned, whom he calls a strenuous and most learned man*.

[17] It is certain that St. Præsidius was the companion of St. Donatian are discussed as he departed into exile for the second time: but whether SS. Mansuetus, Germanus and Fusculus accompanied him too is not clear from the history of St. Victor; who testifies only that these were beaten with cudgels when Huneric sent the former into exile. Yet I should not think that the three latter holy Prelates were present at the conference of Carthage: for the tyrant had understood them to be learned men, who, on St. Victor's testimony, about the beginning of February separated all the skilled and most learned men from the others who were to be present at the conference, to be done to death by trumped-up calumnies. But he inflicted death on no one except St. Lætus, whom after long squalors of prison he burned to death by fire; for at the end of the Notitia so often mentioned it is said only suffered, to the number 1. And the reason why he separated from the rest, by exile, prison, and other means, those bishops whom he knew to be most fit for defending the true faith against the Arians, was without doubt that which Baronius brings forward in the Annals at the year 484, number 47, namely that those who were left to celebrate a meeting of this kind, being less skilled, might yield and lose the cause, and so Arian impiety might raise trophies of victory over the Catholic faith.

[18] and by observations Although SS. Mansuetus, Germanus and Fusculus were not driven into exile at the same time as SS. Donatian and Præsidius, yet there can be no doubt that they went into exile: because that most iniquitous sentence which Huneric passed after the conference of Carthage at the end of February in the year 484 compelled all the bishops of the whole of Africa who persevered in the true faith, cast out from their churches and sees and stripped of all their goods, to live as banished men. But it remains ambiguous to which class of exiled bishops they are to be referred; whether to that of those who of their own accord deserted their sees or fled into voluntary exile; or rather to that of the others who after the promulgation of the said sentence were forcibly carried off as exiles to the island of Corsica or to various places in Africa, and forced to endure the servitude either of cutting wood or of tilling the fields. Yet because, according to the author of the Notitia, as may be seen at numbers 7 and 8, the number of voluntary exiles was small if it be compared with the number of the others who had to endure a violent exile; thou wilt reckon the three holy Prelates rather with the latter than with the former; and thou wilt also have the Martyrologies in favor, in which they are asserted to have been condemned to exile, or driven out.

[19] are illustrated. Saint Isidore of Seville in the History of the Vandals thus mentions the martyrdom of St. Lætus, in Labbe, volume 1 of the Bibliotheca of Manuscripts, page 71: Then Lætus, bishop of the city of Nepte, whom the stain of the Arian contagion could not defile, suddenly obtained the heavens as a victor. Victor of Tunnuna, older than St. Isidore, in his Chronicle at the third consulship of the augustus Zeno, which falls in the year of Christ 479, says: Then Lætus, bishop of the church of Nepte, is crowned with a glorious martyrdom on the IIX Kalends of October. At this day Castellan in the Universal Martyrology announced St. Lætus separately, fixing his passion in the year 479. At the VI of September he had rightly assigned the year 484, in which he consummated his martyrdom, as appears more manifestly from the History of St. Victor of Vita than that it need be proved. As the year, so also the day, Tillemont thinks was wrongly determined by Victor the chronographer, in volume 16 of the Monuments, page 559, asserting that it seems clear to him from St. Victor the historian that St. Lætus was crowned about the month of February of the said year 484. But I do not yet sufficiently perceive how from his words, which as reported at number 5 may be considered, it can be clearly demonstrated that Victor of Tunnuna erred when he writes that the Saint obtained the crown of martyrdom on the XXIV of September. Among the ancient authors I have found nothing either about the life of the five holy Prelate confessors after they departed into exile, or about the place, time, or manner of their death. It is not probable that any of them died before the year 484, in which St. Lætus suffered: and therefore above, at number 1 of this Commentary, I placed in the margin that all passed to a happier life after the year CDLXXXIII.

[20] The said Victor of Tunnuna in his Chronicle, which he carried down to the reign of Justin II or the year 565, [It cannot be safely believed that the emperor Justinian made war on the Vandals at the exhortation of St. Lætus.] has these things at the fourth consulship of the augustus Justinian: The emperor Justinian, at the visitation of Lætus the bishop, who was made a martyr [] by Huneric king of the Vandals, sends an army into Africa against the Vandals, with Belisarius the master of the soldiery as commander, etc. Similar things, doubtless taken from the same Victor's Chronicle, are read in St. Isidore of Seville cited above. But Procopius of Cæsarea, older than both, who was living at Constantinople when Justinian in the year of Christ 533 undertook the war against the Vandals, asserts that a certain bishop came thither from the East at God's warning, by whose exhortation the emperor was stirred up to decree that war. Procopius, published in Greek and Latin at Paris in the year 1662 by our Claude Maltret, narrates the matter thus in book 1 On the Vandal War, chapter 10: The emperor, having assented to the speech of John the prætorian prefect dissuading the expedition, remitted his great zeal for war. Then a certain man of the order of priests whom they call bishops, having set out from the East, said that he had things to communicate with the augustus. Being brought in to a conference, he asserted that he had received these commands from God in his sleep; that he should go to the emperor and accuse him, because, when he had undertaken to deliver the Christians of Africa from tyranny, he had afterward been deterred by an empty fear. But, he said, thus said the Lord: "I will be present with him as he wars, and will subject Africa to his rule." Which being heard, the augustus could not contain himself, but gathered soldiers and ships, prepared arms and provisions, and commanded Belisarius that he should gird himself for the army, to be led into Africa on the very first day. Belisarius finished the war with wonderfully happy success: for, Carthage being taken and Gelimer, the last king of the Vandals, defeated, he subjected Africa to Justinian, who restored the Catholic religion in it to its pristine state. But that that emperor was led to make war upon the Vandals at the visitation of Lætus the bishop*, as Victor of Tunnuna writes, cannot be safely believed, unless the weightier authority of Procopius, who opposes it, be set aside.

* Carthage

* who was made a martyr