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Updated: May 5, 2025
"Countries but lately prosperous and populated have been changed into solitudes," said Augustin. At last, in the spring of the year 429, the Vandals and the Alani, having joined forces on the Spanish coast under their King, Genseric, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar. It was devastation on a large scale this time.
This second synod has been justly branded as a gang of robbers and assassins; yet the accusers of Dioscorus would magnify his violence, to alleviate the cowardice and inconstancy of their own behavior. The faith of Egypt had prevailed: but the vanquished party was supported by the same pope who encountered without fear the hostile rage of Attila and Genseric.
The revolutions of the palace, which left the Western empire without a defender, and without a lawful prince, dispelled the apprehensions, and stimulated the avarice, of Genseric. He immediately equipped a numerous fleet of Vandals and Moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Tyber, about three months after the death of Valentinian, and the elevation of Maximus to the Imperial throne.
His death resolved the bonds that had united the various nations of which his subjects were composed, and in a very few years domestic discord had extinguished the empire of the Huns. Genseric, king of the Vandals, sacked and pillaged the ancient capital in June 455. The vacant throne was filled by the nomination of Theodoric, king of the Goths.
Alaric, Rhadagaisus, Genseric, and Attila were the chief instruments and embodiment of the first; Martin Luther was the chief instrument and embodiment of the second. The one wrought bloody desolation; the other brought blessed renovation, under which humanity has bloomed its happiest and its best.
The great Church of Africa was suffering the most terrible of persecutions under the Arian Vandal Hunneric, the son of his father Genseric. Arian Visigoth rulers were in possession of Spain and France, of whom Euric, as we have seen, was described rather as the chief of a sect than the sovereign of a people. In all the West not a yard of territory was under rule of a Catholic sovereign.
Augustine, now an old man, who had long been Bishop of Hippo, advised him to restrain his anger, he called on Genseric, the chief of the Vandals, to come and help him to defend his province. The Vandals were another tribe of Teutons tall, strong, fair-haired, and much like the Goths, and, like them, they were Arians.
The eastern fraction of the empire still maintained a powerful navy, which the possession of the islands of the Archipelago made a necessity, while at the same time it afforded the means. The first five centuries of the Christian era afford but few events of interest in maritime warfare. The Vandals, having acquired Spain, landed in Africa, eighty thousand strong, under Genseric.
And when afterwards Genseric, at the head of his Vandals, became master of the capital, he was likewise influenced by the powerful intercession of the bishop, and consented to spare the lives of the Romans, and preserve the public buildings and churches from conflagration.
In Africa, moreover, a succession of cruel Vandal persecutors, almost equal to their original, Genseric, had shaken their tenure of the country. At the same time, the Frankish kingdom, strengthened greatly by the conversion of Clovis, was growing in power and extent a growth not interrupted by his early death in 511, at the age of forty-five.
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