CHAPTER VI.

A.D. 252.
Coss.
P. 222.

EXPANSION OF HUMAN FEELING AND ENERGY.

I.

The Church in relation to Physical Suffering.

I. Within itself-The Berber Raid.

EVEN whilst the Council sate news arrived that many Christian maidens, wives and children1, had been kidnapped from Numidia by the Berbers. The frontier tribes, quieted last by Severus, were in movement this year and were carrying terror into the provinces.

Faultily and fatally these indigenes, ages ago rolled back by settlers from Asia and Europe, were being now ruled by fortresses, military colonies, farmers holding by servicetenure, absolute magistrates, without any attempt to interest or incorporate them. Their raids were really waves in their steady return.

In the year 252 there was a concerted general advance. Mauretania felt them. They broke out of Aures through the grand chain of fortress settlements, harrying the domains

1 Ep. 62. 5. Cyprian appeals to fathers and husbands as necessarily sympathizing. It was a raid on persons. In c. 3, p. 699, 1. 21, I demur to Hartel's reading 'vinculi maritalis amore' from the Rheims MS., which Baluze here sets aside for the better expression 'pudore vinculi maritalis' of the editions which represent lost MSS.

The Rheims MS. is not a good text,
Hartel has to set it aside constantly.

2 F. Lacroix in the Revue Africaine, vol. VII. p. 363.

3 There are and were traces of their name over all North Africa. Tissot, Géogr. de la Prov. d'Afrique, 1. p. 394. See Appendix on Cities, p. 575.

of the strongest towns, Thubunæ on the Salt Marsh, and the vast soldier-colony of Lambæsis. From the Sahara they came right through the Province itself into the terebinth woods of Tucca and to the great centre of traffic Assuras, little more than a hundred miles from Carthage.

The Christian population of at least eight sees was thus lacerated'.

As memorials of transactions so fatal ultimately to the church of Africa and to all the civilization which depended on it, clearing the ground as they did for Vandal and for Saracen, there remain in explanation of each other only scattered notices, a few inscriptions, and the sixty-second epistle of Cyprian which went with a ransom2.

This must have been a serious time for the dominion of Africa, though we know nothing direct about it. Not Cyprian but two or three unburied marbles tell us how

1 In the fourth century children were constantly redeemed from the Berbers and baptized if unidentified, V. Conc. Carth. c. 6, A.D. 398, Labbe II. 1455 (Brev. Conc. Hipp. A.D. 393, c. 39, but see also nn. on cc. 38, 39, Hefele, H. d. C. B. VIII. 109), Cod. Cann. Eccl. Afr. 72, Justell. p. 198 (ed. 1614), Labbe, II. 1308. (?pro hinc leg. huic.) In A.D. 409 we mark them kidnapping still further north at Sitifis itself, Aug. Ep. cxi. (cxxii.) 7.

2 An affecting inscription given in Rev. Afr. VII. p. 359 belongs to the year A.D. 247 (Anno Provinciæ Mauretaniæ 208) A P CCVIII D M HAVE SECVNDE PARENTIBVS TVIS DVLCISSIME FLOS IVVENTVTIS AN VA BARBARIS INTEREMPTVS MVCIA AMAR [the last four letters from Wilmanns' cast, who has s after D M, and for v a small L (?), C. I. L. VIII. ii. 9158]. A forgery claiming to be of year 254 with a curious story is given C. I. L. vIII. i. p. xxxvii., 30. Other inscriptions, belonging to the next 30 or 40 years,

relate to the defeats of FARAXEN. REBELLIS CVM SATELLITIBVS SVIS, C. I. L. VIII. ii. 9047, the chieftain from whom the Fraxinenses hod. Fraoucen are said to be called, of the QUINQUEGENTANEI REBELLES at Bougie, Salda, C. I. L. VIII. ii. 8924 (Rev. Afr. IV. p. 434), and of Babari at Cherchel, Cæsarea. ERASIS FVNDITVS BABARIS TRANSTAGNENSIBVS C. I. L. VIII. ii. 9324 (Rev. Afr. IV. p. 222. Mus. Alg. No. 74).

The Quinquegentanei disappear soon after their overthrow by Maximian (Eutrop. ix. 23). The Berbers between Sitifis and Cirta are by Pliny v. 30 (4) and Ptolemy iv. 3 (p. 111 B) called Sabarbares, Σαβούρβουρες, which is said to contain the Numidian prefix Zab (Revue Africaine, vol. VII. p. 27, &c.), but in either case with v. 1. Sababares, Σαβούβουρες, as in one of the above inscriptions. In Ep. 62. 3 Barbarorum, &c. would correctly have a capital letter.

3 Index, Corp. Inscrr. Latt. II. p. 1081 (published since the previous para

a year or two later the Bavares under four united native princes wasted Numidia as far up as Milev. There, and again on the Mauretanian frontier, they were violently checked by C. Macrinius Decianus, proprætor. He defeated at the same time other great leagues or clans' of them, as the Quinquegentanei, who fell on Mauretania itself; and while he claimed the credit of the capture and execution of Faraxen2, almost a chieftain of romance,-like the present Berber chiefs, 'who look as if thawed out of marble statues of Roman emperors, it would seem that the actual seizure of him and his whole staff was the exploit of Gargilius Martialis, an officer who had served in Britain and now commanded the loyal Moorish cavalry. Still further west Auzia, now Aumale, must have been in peril, for when, in A.D. 260, Gargilius himself was destroyed by a Berber ambush, Auzia commemorated by a statue his former act of 'valour and vigilance.'

The redemption of captives, like the portioning of orphans, had long been among the Romans a favourite work of liberality-'most worthy of the gravity and greatness of the senatorial order".'

There was nothing specifically Christian, nothing novel in the collection which was promptly made at Carthage for

graph and its note I were written), considers that the victories of Decian belong to the years 253 and 254. He was 'Legatus duorum Augustorum Numidiæ,' i.e. of Valerian and Gallien, in A.D. 260, to which year the movement itself belongs. See the inscriptions, C. I. L. VIII. i. 2615 (at Lambesis), ii. 9047 (Auzia), and compare ii. 9045. Mark the expressions 'provinciam Numidiam vastabant,' 'insidiis Bavarum decepto."

1 Gen. Creuly shews that Babares included Quinquegentanei and Fraxinenses, Rev. Archéol. 1861, p. 51. See also Tissot I. 458, II. 790.

the victims, except the number and poverty of the contributors. But this novelty was Christian. The motives which they had found irresistible were 'that the captives 'were living shrines of deity; that Christ was in them and 'they in Christ; that such an event was a probation not only ' of sufferers but also of sympathizers; that all looked for a 'Judgment in which sympathy would be the main subject of 'enquiry.' If He will then say 'I was sick and ye visited me,' much more will the Redeemer say 'I was captive and ye redeemed me.' How full Cyprian's mind was at this moment of these topics we shall recognize as we proceed.

Nearly eight hundred pounds was subscribed by the community, and by the sitting bishops; by these partly on behalf of their poor churches. The list of donors, sent into Numidia, was accompanied by the request that they might be commemorated at the sacrifices and in private prayers, and with an assurance of further help should the need, as was too likely, recur.

Of Genuineness Geographical.

A beautiful incidental proof of the genuineness of our documents comes out here. The relief is sent from Carthage to eight Numidian bishops, Januarius, Maximus, Proculus, Victor, Modianus, Nemesianus, Nampulus, Honoratus, but there is no mention of their

sees.

Now in the list of the Council of 256 four of these reappear as bishops of two Numidian sees which are named and two Provincial; viz. Januarius of Lambæsis and Nemesianus of Thubunæ, Victor of Assuras and Honoratus of Tucca. These towns with Auzia give the geographical line I have indicated, which is itself a sign of accuracy. What forger of another age and country could have marked for himself upon his map a line of barbarian advance and then have forborne to indicate it, but in a wholly unconnected document have attached to the sees which marked that line the names of some of his fictitious bishops? Behind this line toward Mt. Aures

1 Ep. 62.4 'sestertium centum millia nummum. Gronov. lib. de sest. n. 18' Hartel. The two xvth century extant MSS. of this epistle scarcely justify

Hartel in reading 'sestertia centum milia nummorum,' nor do Baluze's quotations prove it to be possible.

lie several Cyprianic sees, such as Thamugadi, Mascula, Theveste, and beyond it Gemellæ, Badias, and others; some of these no doubt were the other four sufferers. In another place I shall shew how the order of the names in Councils (a matter of seniority) corresponds with other indications.

2. The Church in relation to Heathen Suffering.-The Plague.

And now the formation and compacting of the Christian community have for some time engrossed us. Meanwhile changes have passed over the aspect which that community presented to the world. That community owed and owned a duty to all unconverted humanity-not only a duty to absorb it with all possible rapidity into itself-but a duty also towards the part not within any given time likely to be absorbed. That enquiry into social morals which most taxed the philosophical power of paganism had been overtaken by a code, or the principle of a code, which exempted no man from active benevolence. The doctrine of Grace operating upon and cooperating with the human will to reconstruct character, the embracement of eternal life and reward, the earthly pattern of Christ and the passion of reproducing it, above all the experienced and attested union of the individual spirit with Him during the present existence, placed the Christian, so soon as he began to realize this new range of Ideas, in an attitude of fresh and unexpected energy towards every person and every contingency with which he came in contact. This realization had been to the practical comprehension of the convert Cyprian an affair of perhaps a few weeks'. This realization was what he excelled in impressing on other Even the East appreciated this action of his on the community. He educated the whole moral tone, dissipated ' undisciplined ignorance of doctrine, brought order to the lives 'of men',' says Gregory of Nazianzus. We have watched him

men.

1 Pont. Vit. 3.

2 Greg. Naz. Or. xxiv. 13. ...Oos ἅπαν ἐπαίδευσε καὶ δογμάτων ἀπαι·

δευσίαν ἐκάθηρε, καὶ ἀνδρῶν βίους ἐκόσμησε.