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Updated: May 5, 2025
But the subtle Genseric, who spread his negotiations round the world, prevented their designs, by exciting the king of the Huns to invade the Eastern empire; and a trifling incident soon became the motive, or pretence, of a destructive war.
The Goths march into Gaul, and in 414 into Spain, which had been already invaded by hosts of Vandals, Suevi, Alani, and other Germanic nations. Britain is formally abandoned by the Roman emperor of the West. Genseric, king of the Vandals, conquers the Roman province of North Africa. The Huns attack the Eastern empire.
Thus the terrible persecution inaugurated by Genseric when the Vandal host lay around the deathbed of St. Augustine at Hippo in 430 came to an end. In the interval, the African church had suffered every extremity of barbarian cruelty from the Arian invaders.
During these three centuries, running from St. Leo meeting Genseric, the pilot of St. Peter's ship has been tossed without intermission on the waves of a heaving ocean, but he has saved his vessel and the freight which it bears the Christian faith. And in doing this he has made the new-created city, which had become the place of pilgrimage, to be also the centre of a new world.
Maximus stabbed him, retaliated on the beautiful empress, and made himself Emperor. She sent across the seas to Africa, to Genseric the Vandal, the cruel tyrant and persecutor. He must come and be her champion, as Attila had been Honoria's. And he came, with Vandals, Moors, naked Ausurians from the Atlas. The wretched Romans, in their terror, tore Maximus in pieces; but it was too late.
Whatever portion of dignity the old capital of the world lent to Leo is utterly lost to Gregory. It has been one tale of unceasing misery, of terrible downfal to Rome, from Genseric to Agilulf. It may seem to have been suspended during the thirty-three years of Theodorick, but it was the iron force of hostile domination wielded by the gloved hand.
After two years a revolution deprived him of the throne, and exalted to it the equally vicious Basiliscus the man whose treachery as an eastern general had ruined the success of the great expedition against Genseric, in which East and West had joined under Anthemius. Basiliscus still more openly favoured heresy.
Leander, archbishop of Seville, and in 589 publicly professed himself a Catholic. This faith now prevailed through all Spain. The Vandals, rudest of all the German peoples, had been invited by Count Boniface, in 429, to pass over from Spain under their king Genseric to the Roman province of North Africa. They quickly conquered it entirely.
The Gothic invasion of Roman territory in the earlier period was, with the single exception of the naval expeditions of Genseric from his new African Kingdom, a continental war; and notwithstanding the partiality of Genseric for his fleet, as an arm of offence and defence, his companions and successors abandoned the ocean as an uncongenial element.
For these reasons the Vandals gladly undertook the enterprise, and under Genseric, their king, became lords of Africa. At this time Theodosius, son of Arcadius, succeeded to the empire; and, bestowing little attention on the affairs of the west, caused those who had taken possession to think of securing their acquisitions.
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