Saint Eugene of Carthage

The brilliance of his holiness dazzling the eyes of the heretics, they began to repent of having suffered his election, and to persecute him openly. The king forbade him to preach to the people and to allow men and women dressed as Vandals into his church. Eugene was not troubled by this prohibition, but replied constantly that the church, being the house of God, must be open to all who came to worship Him there. Huneric, irritated by this answer, had executioners placed at the door of the church: as soon as they saw men or women dressed in the Vandal fashion entering, they would pull them violently with hooks that tore out their hair and even the skin of their heads; this cruelty caused some to lose their sight and many others their lives. They then led through the city the women whose hair and skin had been thus torn away, thinking by this frightful spectacle to shake the Catholics and make them abandon their religion; but, as there was not one of these holy Martyrs who did not rejoice to suffer this ignominious torment for the honor of Jesus Christ, their example, far from breaking the courage of the faithful, animated them on the contrary to remain constant in the confession of the consubstantial Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Then, Huneric, to reduce the officers of his court who were Catholic, deprived them of their wages, even of food, and subjected them to field labor in a scorching heat. It was a torture that must have been intolerable to delicate persons; but grace made them triumphant over the weaknesses of nature, and all endured these sufferings with joy. There was among them a man who, for several years, could not use one of his hands: these barbarians pressed him more than the others to work. In this extremity, he began to pray with his companions, and God, hearing them, restored movement and life to this paralyzed hand. This was only the prelude to the general persecution. Huneric, after having put his closest relatives to death to secure the kingdom for his children, expressly forbade all those who were not Arians to serve in his palace or to exercise public functions.

One cannot say what the solicitude of our holy pilot was in such a furious storm. Fearing that any of the faithful, through apprehension of torture and death, might relax in their duty, he imposed upon himself continuous fatigues to visit them, console them, fortify them, lift them up in their despondency, and fill them with the thought and hope of eternal goods. The Catholics of the court, supported by his exhortations and by the grace of God, showed themselves firm to the end in their trial: it was necessary to condemn them to banishment. There was not a single one who did not depart joyfully from Africa to go to the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, where, nevertheless, they knew they would be treated very cruelly. However, Huneric's fury igniting more and more, he resolved to attack the priests and bishops, so that with the shepherds oppressed, it would be easier to scatter and slaughter the flock. But fearing that Emperor Zeno might treat the Arian bishops and priests in Constantinople in the same way he would treat the Catholics in Africa, he sought inventions to make them perish under pretexts other than that of religion. One of his artifices was to assemble all the virgins consecrated to God, and to compel them, through horrible tortures, to say that the bishops and ecclesiastics had abused them and corrupted them. Indeed, they were suspended in the air with ropes, very heavy weights were placed on their feet, and their breasts, backs, and ribs were burned with red-hot iron blades: but all these cruelties could never tear from the mouths of these holy maidens such a black slander, which, while blackening the ministers of Jesus Christ, would have covered them themselves with opprobrium and infamy. Most died in the torments, and those who survived remained bent for the rest of their lives.

This detestable invention having failed, Huneric threw off the mask entirely and suddenly relegated to the deserts bishops, priests, deacons, and other Catholics, to the number of four thousand nine hundred and seventy-six; some were burdened with illness, and others so advanced in age that they had become blind. Among the latter was Saint Felix, Bishop of Abbir, who had forty-four years of prelacy saint Félix, évêque d'Abbir Paralytic bishop exiled to the desert by Huneric. and was so paralyzed in all his limbs that he did not even have the use of his tongue. The king was begged to exempt him from this journey, since it was impossible to transport him and his death could not be long delayed. But this cruel man replied proudly: 'If he cannot be carried, let his feet be tied with ropes to a pair of oxen, and let him be dragged to the place I have ordered.' Thus, no one in this holy troop was exempt from such an inhumane edict. We would dwell too long if we were to stop to describe the evils they endured on the way, the outrages committed against them by these barbarians, the deprivation of all aid to which they were reduced, and above all the heroic constancy with which they suffered such a terrible persecution. One saw women carrying or dragging their children, who were still only young clerics, in the wake of the holy confessors, so that they would not be deprived of sharing in their crowns. One saw

venerable old men dragging themselves, crawling so to speak on the ground, so as not to be separated from this blessed army of servants of Jesus Christ. If weakness or illness stopped some of them, the soldiers immediately pricked them with the points of their javelots or threw stones at them to force them to walk faster; finally, they were placed in the hands of the Moors, who led them into a forest, where the greater part died, whether from the wounds they had received or from hunger, thirst, and all kinds of miseries. Nothing is more touching than the sad farewells of the people of Carthage to their priests: they accompanied them as far as they could and said to them with tears in their eyes: 'To whom do you leave us while you run to martyrdom? Who will baptize our children? Who will give us penance? Who will deliver us from our sins through the benefit of reconciliation? Who will bury us after death? Who will offer the divine sacrifice with the ordinary ceremonies? Why are we not permitted to go with you!'

Saint Eugene, not having been included in this first edict, had remained in Carthage, where he continued to encourage the faithful and inflame them with the desire for martyrdom. But he continued to be persecuted in various ways. Thus, on the day of the Ascension, May 19 of the year 483, while our holy prelate was celebrating the holy mysteries in his cathedral church, an order from the king was brought, commanding all the bishops of Africa who believed in the consubstantiality of the Word to be in Carthage on the following February 4, to discuss with his venerable bishops (this is how he called those of his sect) the faith they defended, and to prove it by the Holy Scriptures. His design in these words was very malicious; for he knew well that the Catholic bishops could not allege a passage of Scripture where the word consubstantial was found; they would therefore be obliged either to renounce this word and the dogma it expresses, or he would have a pretext to persecute them, since they would have despised Scripture. The reading of this order greatly afflicted the whole assembly of the faithful; the joy of the feast was changed into mourning, the canticles into lamentations, the prayers into groans and tears. Nevertheless, they deliberated on what was to be done in such a pressing conjuncture, and all decided that Saint Eugene would present a petition to try to divert this public conference, or to make it as useful to the Catholics as the Arians wanted to make it damaging to them. It therefore contained that the Catholics did not flee from the discussion at all, having always been the first to ask for it; but, as the cause of the faith was common to all the Churches, they could not enter into it without the knowledge and participation of the bishops from overseas. Thus, the Catholics prayed the king, if he wished for a conference on religion, to see fit that the bishops of other countries be present, so that the decision might be made by the universal consent of the prelates. Huneric replied: "Let Eugene make me monarch of the whole universe, and I will grant him what he asks." "That is not necessary," said Eugene; "it suffices that the king write to his friends," that is to say to the king of Italy, who was Odoacer, an Arian prince, "to let the bishops come, and I will write to our colleagues" (he means the bishops of Italy, Gaul, and Spain) "to pray them to make this journey, so that being all assembled, and especially the one of the Roman Church who is the head of all the Churches, they may show him the true faith." This proposal was very reasonable, since one could not hold an assembly to decide a fundamental point of the faith without all the bishops, and especially the one of the first See, being notified; but our holy prelate was also thinking of another utility: it was that the foreign bishops, having seen with their own eyes the oppression in which the Church of Africa was, would have borne witness to it everywhere and would perhaps have procured some remedy for it. However, Huneric, irritated by this response, sent several bishops into exile, after having had them whipped and beaten very cruelly; he also forbade all his subjects to eat with the Catholics: which divine Providence permitted, so that the orthodox would not be corrupted by too much commerce with the heretics.

Moreover, God, to raise their courage and confirm them more and more in the faith of the most holy Trinity, performed a great miracle through the prayers of Saint Eugene. There was in Carthage a blind man named Felix, who was known to everyone; he was warned by God, in three visions, to go and present himself to Bishop Eugene, when he would bless the baptismal fonts, so that he might restore his sight by the laying on of his hands. He therefore had himself led to the bishop, and, having explained to him the order he had received from heaven, he conjured him, with tears, not to refuse him a grace that depended only on his kindness. Saint Eugene at first pushed him away, telling him that he was not a man to perform miracles, and that his sins were too great to claim a thing so difficult and so high above nature; but the blind man pressing him ever more insistently, he finally yielded to his prayers, and made the sign of the cross on his eyes: at the same moment his sight was restored, to the great astonishment of all the people who were present. This miracle spread immediately throughout the city; Huneric, who was informed of it, wanted to verify it for himself and had the blind man brought to him. He used all sorts of means to recognize the veracity of the fact or rather to obscure its glory; but he found nothing in it but what was very sincere and very true. The Arians, outraged with spite, came to find him, told him that it was only an effect of magic, and that Eugene was very learned in it. He was blind enough or rather impious enough to believe it; thus, far from diminishing the persecution, he increased it even more and conceived a mortal hatred against our Saint.

When the day of the conference arrived, several orthodox bishops were in Carthage. Huneric, to intimidate them, first had one arrested, named Letus, who was one of the most learned of the clergy, and, by the greatest of all perfidies, he had him burned alive in the middle of the city. But his execution gave more desire than fear to the other bishops, who would have wished to accompany him in his torment. Everything happened in this assembly with extreme injustice and violence: all the Catholic prelates were made to stand, they were each given a hundred blows with a stick, they were refused judges and notaries who could bear witness to what would happen there; and the impious Cyrola, who called himself patriarch of the Arian churches of Africa, came there with the pomp and ma jesty Cyrola Arian patriarch of Africa, opponent of Eugenius. of a prince, and sat there on a high throne, as if he had been the master of all the bishops. The prelates being assembled in such an iniquitous order, it would have been with much justice that the orthodox would have refused to enter into discussion: but, far from doing so, they themselves pressed to begin it. The Arians, who did not want it, broke it off on false pretexts, and made the king believe that the Catholics had forced them into it.

Saint Eugene, who had foreseen this artifice, addressed the king himself, and presented him with a writing where all our faith touching the mystery of the consubstantial Trinity was admirably well explained. This precaution was of no use. Huneric, who was only looking for a pretext to ruin the religion.

gion, immediately had an edict published (484), by which the churches of the Catholics were closed, their goods confiscated, their assemblies forbidden, and their writings condemned to the fire. So that one had to resolve either to follow the impetuosity of the heretics or to leave one's house, goods, and offices as prey. The cruelty of the tyrant did not stop there: those who would not yield to his unjust pretensions were physically tormented; illustrious African women were publicly stripped; the right hand and the tongue were cut off from a great number of Catholics, who, having retired to Constantinople, did not cease to speak as well as if they had had a tongue. There was even among them a young boy, mute from birth, who began to speak as soon as his tongue had been cut out. Almost all the bishops who had remained in Carthage, and whose goods this barbarian prince had seized, were driven from the city, without being permitted to take with them food, money, or clothing; and, what surpasses all belief, all persons were forbidden to receive them into their houses, barns, or stables, or to give them food, so that, wandering miserably in the countryside, without bread and without shelter, they might perish from hunger and all kinds of hardships.

Although reduced to begging for their lives and remaining exposed to the insults of the weather around the city walls, they resolved not to move away, for fear that it might be said they had avoided the combat. It happened in these circumstances that the king went out to see some reservoirs: all the bishops went to meet him, saying: "What have we done to be treated thus? If we have been assembled for a conference, why strip us, mistreat us, deprive us of our churches and our houses, make us die of hunger and cold, drive us from the city, and reduce us to sleeping on a dung heap?" Huneric, looking at them with an angry eye, and without listening to their remonstrances, ordered his mounted guards to ride them down. Several were wounded, especially the old and the weak.

However, as Saint Eugene, with Saint Vindemialis an saint Vindémial Bishop of Capsa, martyr alongside Eugenius. d Saint Longinus, whose banishment had been slightly deferred due to the universal respect held for them, continued to perform great miracles, Cyrola, leader of the Arians, unable to prove the falsity of these miracles, resolved to perform one in appearance to maintain the credit he held among his own. He therefore gave fifty gold pieces to a poor man, on the condition that he would feign blindness, and that, finding himself in his path in a public square, he would beg him, in the name of God, to lay his hand upon his eyes and restore his sight. The matter being thus arranged, Cyrola, who then had himself accompanied by the three prelates we have just named, passed, as if by chance, before this false blind man, who, having the cue, immediately cried out: 'Listen to me, blessed Cyrola, hear me, holy priest of God; take pity on my blindness, let me feel the power that God has given you, and which so many lepers, cripples, and dead have experienced.' The heretic, stopping at these words, said to him: 'As proof that the faith we profess is true, may your eyes be opened at this instant.' God heard this blasphemy; and, to show its impetuosity in the presence of the crowd that the heretic had gathered on purpose to be witness to his imaginary miracle, He truly made blind the one who was pretending to be, and caused him such great pain in his eyes that he could not bear it.

This blow of divine justice uncovered all the deceit, for this wretch, feeling the violence of this pain and seeing himself deprived of sight, began to shout that Cyrola had corrupted him and had given him money to play the blind man, and that, not being one, he had become one by a just punishment from God. 'Impostor,' he said to this impious man, 'you wanted to deceive men, and God has justly confounded you. You wanted to pretend to restore my sight, and you are the cause that I see no more; here is the money you gave me, restore to me the sight you have taken away.' But the power of God did not stop there; it completed the miracle, it made the triumph perfect: for, the new blind man having turned toward the Catholic bishops, and having begged them to have pity on him, although he was unworthy of any mercy, they said to him: 'If you have faith, all things are possible to him who believes.' — 'I believe,' he replied, 'in God the Father Almighty; in Jesus Christ, Son of God, equal to His Father; in the Holy Spirit, coeternal and consubstantial with the Father and the Son; he who does not believe that they all three have one same substance and one same divinity, may he suffer the same punishment that I endure!' Upon this confession, the bishops deferred to one another the honor of making the sign of the cross over his eyes. Finally, Vindemialis and Longinus placed their sacred hands upon his head, and Saint Eugene made the sign of the cross and said aloud: 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one true God in three persons equal in power and majesty, may your eyes be opened and recover sight.' As soon as the last word was pronounced, the pain of this wretch ceased, and he began to see clearly as before. Such a great prodigy covered the Arians with shame and gave the Catholics cause to reproach them for the darkness of their heresy and the malignity of their imposture.

Huneric, instead of recognizing by this the falsehood of Arianism and converting, entered into a greater fury against the three bishops who had just confounded this heresy in such a striking manner. He had Vindemialis and Longinus put to torture; they were tormented cruelly, by being pricked with goads, burned with blazing torches, and having their bodies torn with iron claws, and finally he had them put to death. As for Saint Eugene, he condemned him to be beheaded, while nevertheless giving a secret order to the executioner not to carry out this sentence if, at the moment he raised his arm to decapitate him, he saw him resolved to suffer death, because he did not want him to be honored by the Christians as a martyr. Eugene was therefore led to the scaffold and placed in a position to receive the blow; but as he appeared then more constant than ever, and even protested that he regarded this death as a blessed entry into eternal life, he was immediately untied and relegated to a small desert place near the city of Tripoli.

It was there that he suffered a martyrdo m much Tripoli Place of Eugene's first exile under Huneric. more cruel than death. This province had as governor a proud and barbaric man named Anthony, who took pleasure in having this holy Bishop in his power to satisfy his passion against him. He had him locked in a very narrow dungeon, where he allowed no one to go and console him.

The invincible confessor of Jesus Christ had found a way, before entering, to write to the faithful of Carthage a letter burning with the zeal and fire of divine love, to strengthen them in the profession of the Catholic faith against all the threats and torments of the heretics. "I ask you with tears," he said, "I exhort you, I conjure you, by the fearful day of judgment and by the formidable light of the coming of Jesus Christ, to remain firm in the profession of the Catholic faith... Preserve the grace of one baptism and the anointing of the chrism. Let no one among you suffer himself to be rebaptized." He spoke in this way because the Arians of Africa, similar to the Donatists, rebaptized those who embraced their sect. He protests to the faithful that in case they remain unshakable, distance and death will not prevent him from being united to them in spirit; but that he will be innocent of the blood of those who perish, and that his letter will be read against them before the tribunal of Jesus Christ. "If I return to Carthage," he adds, "I will see you in this life; if I do not return, I will see you in the other. Pray for us, and fast, because fasting and almsgiving have always moved the mercy of God: but remember above all that it is written that we must not fear those who can only kill the body."

When he saw himself enclosed, he applied himself entirely to meriting the graces of heaven for his people through his groans and prayers. Not content with the inconveniences of his prison and the mistreatment he received at every moment, he added voluntary austerities, wearing a very harsh hair shirt and sleeping on the bare ground. After some time of such a painful life, he fell into a paralysis that brought him to the brink of death. Anthony, being warned, came immediately to his prison, not to relieve him or to share in his pain through feelings of natural compassion, but to feast his eyes on the spectacle of his suffering. He even wanted to hasten his death by having vinegar put into his mouth. But what was supposed to advance the end of his days restored his health through a miraculous effect of divine Providence. Thus, our Saint remained banished and a prisoner until the death of Huneric, which was the most tragic and detestable that has ever been seen on earth; for Saint Victor of Utica says that worms ate and consumed him while he was still alive. Saint Gregory of Tours adds that he went into a frenzy, that he ate his own limbs, and that the sun was eclipsed at his death by three-quarters of its globe, as if to testify to a horror of his crimes; and Saint Isidore of Seville writes that his entrails came out of his body, and that he had the same end as the miserable Arius, whose doctrine he had supported so strongly.

Saint Eugene of Carthage was recalled to his Church in 487, by Gunthamund, in the third year of his reign. In the tenth year, this prince, at the prayer of Saint Eugene, opened the churches of the Catholics and recalled all the priests of the Lord from exile. Thus, the churches were open for ten and a half years since they had been closed by virtue of the edict of Huneric. Gunthamund having died in 496, his brother Thrasamund succeeded him. Although he professed to seek the truth of dogmas in Scripture, God did not permit him to find it. He applied himself, during his reign, to perverting the Catholics, not by the rigor of torture, but by giving money, honors, and employment to those who embraced Arianism, and by granting them impunity for their crimes. But besides artifice and seductions, he also had his ministers employ the rigor of persecution. They arrested Saint Eugene in Carthage and condemned him to lose his life with Saint Vendemialis and Longinus. Saint Vendemialis, who was bishop of Capsa in Africa, died by the sword: but the tyrant, envying the crown of martyrdom for Saint Eugene, had him asked, at the moment he was about to be beheaded, if he was indeed resolved to die for the Catholic faith. The holy bishop replied that he was, and that it was living for eternity to die for justice. Then Thrasamund had the sword stopped and relegated our Saint to Albi, an archiepiscopal city in Upp er L Albi City in Gaul where Eugene spent his final days in exile. anguedoc, a province that still obeyed Alaric, king of the Goths, an Arian like Thrasamund.

It was there that God, after having granted some time of rest to His faithful servant, who had so generously fought for His glory, finally ended all his battles with a happy death. His soul went to heaven to receive the crown of confession and martyrdom that he had so justly earned, and his body was buried with great honor in the monastery he had built at Viance, near Albi, which has since taken the name of the holy martyr Amarand, buried in that place. This was on July 13 of the year 505. Saint Gregory of Tours assures that several miracles occurred at his tomb.

Acta Sanctorum. — Cf. Godescard, Baillet, etc.