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tion of an entire people; the wives and children of the Goths, their aged parents, and most precious effects, were carefully transported; and some idea may be formed of the heavy luggage that now followed the camp by the loss of two thousand waggons, which had been sustained in a single action in the war of Epirus." To his soldiers he assigned a third of the soil of Italy, and the barbarian families settled down with their slaves and cattle. The original number of the Vandal conquerors of Africa had only been fifty thousand men, but the military colonists of Italy soon amounted to the number of two hundred thousand; which, according to the calculation adopted by the same author elsewhere, involves a population of a million. The least that could be expected was, that an Arian ascendency established through the extent of Italy would provide for the sufficient celebration of the Arian worship, and we hear of the Arians having a Church even in Rome.1 The rule of the Lombards in the north of Italy succeeded to that of the Goths,— Arians, like their predecessors, without their toleration. The clergy they brought with them seem to have claimed their share in the possession of the Catholic churches ;2 and though the court was converted at the end of thirty years, many cities in Italy were for some time afterwards disputed by the heretical bishops. The rule of Arianism in France lasted for eighty years; in Spain for a hundred and eighty; in Africa for a hundred; for about a hundred in Italy. These periods were not contemporaneous; but extend altogether from the beginning of the fifth to the end of the sixth century.

It will be anticipated that the duration of this ascendency of error had not the faintest tendency to deprive the ancient Church of the West of the title of Catholic; and it is needless to produce evi1 Greg. Dial. iii, 30.

3 Gibbon, Hist. Ch. 37.

2 Ibid. 29.

dence of a fact which is on the very face of the history. The Arians seem never to have claimed the Catholic name. It is more remarkable that the Catholics during this period were denoted by the additional title of "Romans." Of this there are many proofs in the histories of St. Gregory of Tours, Victor of Vite, and the Spanish Councils. Thus St. Gregory speaks of Theodegisid, a king of Portugal, expressing his incredulity at a miracle, by saying, "It is the temper of the Romans, (for,' interposes the author, "they call men of our religion Romans,) and not the power of God."1 "Heresy is everywhere an enemy to Catholics," says the same St. Gregory in a subsequent place, and he proceeds to illustrate it by the story of a "Catholic woman," who had a heretic husband, to whom, he says, came "a presbyter of our religion very Catholic ;" and whom the husband matched at table with his own Arian presbyter, "that there might be the priests of each religion" in their house at once. When they were eating, the husband said to the Arian, "Let us have some sport with this presbyter of the Romans."2 The Arian Count Gomachar seized on the lands of the Church of Adge in France, and was attacked with a fever; on his recovery, at the prayers of the Bishop, he repented of having asked them, observing, "What will these Romans say now? that my fever came of taking their land."3 When the Vandal Theodoric would have killed the Catholic Armogastes, after torturing him to recant in vain, his presbyter dissuaded him, "lest the Romans should begin to call him a Martyr."4

This appellation had two meanings; one, which will readily suggest itself, is its use in contrast to the word "barbarian," as denoting the faith of the Empire, as "Greek" occurs in St. Paul's Epis

1 De Glor. Mart. i. 25.
2 Ibid. 80.
4 Vict. Vit. i. 14.

3 Ibid. 79.

tles. In this sense it would more naturally be used by the Romans themselves than by others. Thus Salvian says, that "nearly all the Romans are greater sinners than the barbarians ;" and he speaks of "Roman heretics, of which there is an innumerable multitude," meaning heretics within the Empire. And so St. Gregory the Great complains, that he "had become Bishop of the Lombards rather than of the Romans."3 And Evagrius, speaking even of the East, contrasts "Romans and barbarians" in his account of St. Simeon; and at a later date, and even to this day, Thrace and part of Asia Minor derive their name from Rome. In like manner, we find Syrian writers sometimes speaking of the religion of the Romans, sometimes of the Greeks,5 as synonymes.

But the word certainly contains also an allusion to the faith and communion of the Roman See. In this sense the Emperor Theodosius, in his letter to Acacius of Berrhoea, contrasts it with Nestorianism, which was within the Empire as well as Catholicism; during the controversy raised by that heresy, he exhorts him and others to show themselves "approved priests of the Roman religion." Again, when the Ligurian nobles were persuading the Arian Ricimer to come to terms with Athemius, the orthodox representative of the Greek Emperor,7 they propose to him to send St. Epiphanius as ambassador, a man "whose life is venerable to every Catholic and Roman, and at least amiable in the eyes of a Greek (Græculus) if he deserves the sight of him."8 It must be recollected, too, that the Spanish and African Churches actually were in the closest communion with the See of Rome at that time, and that that communion was the visible ec

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clesiastical distinction between them and their Arian rivals. The chief ground of the Vandal Hunneric's persecution of the African Catholics seems to have been their connexion with their brethren beyond the sea,1 which he looked at with jealousy, as introducing a foreign power into his territory. Prior to this he had published an edict calling on the "Homoüsian" Bishops, (for on this occasion he did not call them Catholic,) to meet his own bishops and treat concerning the faith, that "their meetings to the seduction of Christian souls might not be held in the territory of the Vandals."2 Upon this invitation, Eugenius of Carthage replied, that all the transmarine Bishops of the orthodox communion ought to be summoned, "in particular because it is a matter for the whole world, not special to the African provinces," that "they could not undertake a point of faith sine universitatis assensu." Hunneric answered that if Eugenius would make him sovereign of the orbis terrarum, he would comply with his request. This led Eugenius to say that the orthodox faith was "the only true faith;" that the king ought to write to his allies abroad, if he wished to know it, and that he himself would write to his brethren for foreign bishops, "who," he says, may assist us in setting before you the true faith, common to them and us, and especially the Roman Church, which is the head of all Churches." Moreover, the African Bishops in their banishment in Sardinia, to the number of sixty, with St. Fulgentius at their head, quote with approbation the words of Pope Hormisdas, to the effect that they hold, "on the point of freewill and divine grace, what the Roman, that is, the Catholic, Church follows and preserves.' Again, the Spanish Church was under the superintendence of the Pope's Vicar1 during the persecutions, whose duty it was to hinder all encroach

3

1 Vict. Vit. iv. 4.

Aguirr. Conc. t. 2, p. 262.

2 Vict. Vit. ii. 13-15.
4 Aguirr. ibid. p. 232.

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ments upon "the Apostolical decrees, or the limits of the Holy Fathers," through the whole of the country.

Nor was the association of Catholicism with the See of Rome an introduction of that age. The Emperor Gratian, in the fourth century, had ordered that the Churches which the Arians had usurped should be restored, not to those who held "the Catholic faith," or "the Nicene Creed," or were " in communion with the orbis terrarum," but "who chose the communion of Damasus," the then Pope. It was St. Jerome's rule, also, in some well-known passages:-Writing against Ruffinus, who had spoken of "our faith," he says, "What does he mean by 'his faith?' that which is the strength of the Roman Church? or that which is contained in the volumes of Origen?' If he answer, 'The Roman,' then we are Catholics who have borrowed nothing of Origen's error; but if Origen's blasphemy be his faith, then, while he is charging me with inconsistency, he proves himself to be an heretic."2. The other passage, already quoted, is still more exactly to the point, because it was written on occasion of a schism. The divisions at Antioch had thrown the Catholic Church into a remarkable position; there were two Bishops in the See, one in connexion with the East, the other with Egypt and the West,-with which then was "Catholic Communion?" St. Jerome has no doubt on the subject:-Writing to St. Damasus, he says, "Since the East tears into pieces the Lord's coat. . . . therefore by me is the chair of Peter to be consulted, and that faith which is praised by the Apostle's mouth. . . . Though your greatness terrifies me, yet your kindness invites me. From the Priest the sacrifice claims salvation, from the Shepherd the sheep claims protection. Let us speak without offence; I court not the Roman height: I speak with the successor of the Fisherman and the disciple of the

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