CHAPTER XIV

PERSECUTION BY HUNERIC

THE same writer, when treating of the affairs of the Vandals, has recorded most important occurrences and worthy of perpetual memory, which I now proceed to mention. Huneric, the successor of Genseric, and a professor of the creed of Arius, entertained most cruel intentions against the African Christians, in the endeavour to convert by force the maintainers of the orthodox doctrines to the opinions of the Arians. Those who refused compliance, he destroyed both by fire and various modes of death, and some he deprived of their tongues. The latter, Procopius says that he himself saw, when they had taken refuge at the imperial city, and that he maintained a conversation with them in the same manner as with unmutilated persons: that their tongues were cut out from the root; nevertheless their speech was articulate, and they conversed distinctly; a new and strange marvel, of which also a constitution of Justinian makes mention. Two of these persons lapsed, as Procopius himself writes. For on their desiring commerce with women, they were deprived of their speech, since the grace of their martyrdom had abandoned them.