Sections Skipped Above
Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae (List of the Provinces and Cities of Africa)
• The Notice of the Provinces and Cities of Africa (Latin: Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae) is a Byzantine-era document listing the bishops and sees in the Roman provinces of North Africa.[1] The cause of its preparation was the summoning of the episcopate to Carthage on 1 February 484 by the Arian king of the Vandals, Huneric (477–84). The Notitia Provinciarum and Civitatum Africae [Migne Latin, PL 58.267] is the conventional title long, in Latin but it is also known as the Notitia or Notitia Africae which is in turn, abbreviated in NA.[6] it is a record of the Bishops of North Africa[7] and represents a register of the provinces and cities of Africa, and the Organization of the Catholic Church (?) in North Africa at the end of the 5th century, an important time in the development of Catholic dogma. It also by inference describes the extent of the Vandal Kingdom at that time. The Notitia lists the Catholic Bishops (nomina episcorum catholicorum) who participated in the conference held at Carthage, February 1 484,[8] convened by Huneric. It summarizes the total number of bishops, in North Africa, the number of those who died in the Vandal Persecution, those who remained alive and, among these those who were relegated [exiled] (exciled), and those who fled (fugerunt). It lists four hundred and eighty-three dioceses in seven provinces, five of which follow the secular Roman provinces. The order of the provinces seems to follow the chronological order of the creation of the primaties. Arranged according to provinces in this order: Proconsularis, Numidia, Byzacena, Mauretania Caesariensis, Mauretania Sitifensis, Tripolitana, Sardinia. It also names the exiled bishops and vacant sees, and is an important authority for the history of the African Church and the geography of these provinces. It is incorporated in the only extant
manuscript to the history of the Vandal persecution by Bishop Victor Vitensis.[2][3][4][5]
(Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae. Wikipedia. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notitia_Provinciarum_et_Civitatum_Africae>)
Prayer of Eugenius : 1st Miracle
• 2.47 But when the fire of persecution was already kindled and the flame of the attacking king burned everywhere, our God displayed through his servant Eugenius a miracle which I must not pass over. In that same town of Carthage there was a certain blind man, a citizen very well known in the town, whose name was Felix. This man was visited by the Lord and was told by him in a vision one night, when the day of the Epiphany was dawning, ”Rise, go to my servant bishop Eugenius, and tell him that I have sent you to him. And at the time when he blesses the font so that those coming to the faith may be baptized, he will touch your eyes. They will be opened and you will see the light."2S
• 2.48 Having been instructed by this vision, the blind man believed that he had been deluded by a dream, as often happens, and decided not to get up. But while he was sinking back to sleep, he was urged in the same fashion to go to Eugenius. Again he paid no attention, and a third time he was threatened, speedily and fiercely. He roused the boy who usually guided him by the hand, and went with all speed to the basilica of Faustus. When he came there he prayed with many tears and asked a deacon, Peregrinus by name, to announce his arrival to the bishop, indicating that he had a
secret of some kind to make known to him.
• 2.49 Hearing of this the bishop ordered the man to come in. Because of the feast day that was being celebrated, the hymns of the night were already resounding throughout the church as the people sang. The blind man told the bishop the story of his vision and said to him: “I will not let you go until you let me have my sight back, just as you have been ordered by the Lord.” The holy Eugenius said to him: “Depart from me, brother, for I am an unworthy sinner (cf Luke 5:8) and a wrongdoer above all men, seeing that even in these times I have been preserved."
• 2.50 But that man held onto his knees and said nothing beyond what he had said earlier: ”Restore my sight to me, as has been ordered.” Eugenius paid attention to his reverent trust and, because time was now pressing, he proceeded with him to the font in the company of the officiating clergy. There, immovable on his knees and groaning deeply, he disturbed heaven with his sobs. He blessed the rippling baptismal pool,29 and when he had completed his prayer he arose and replied to the blind man in this way: “I have already told you, Felix my brother, that I am a sinful man; but may he who has deigned to visit you act in accordance with your faith and open your eyes.” At the same time he signed his eyes with the standard of the cross, and immediately the blind man received his sight, as the Lord gave it back. The bishop kept him with him until all had been baptized in case the crowd, excited by such a great miracle, should crush the man who had received the light.
• 2.51 Afterwards the miracle was made public throughout the church. The man who had been blind went forward to the altar with Eugenius to return to the Lord a thank offering for the restoration of his health, in accordance with the custom. The bishop received it and placed it on the altar. In the joy that followed, an uproar which could not be controlled arose from the people. Immediately, a messenger went to the tyrant. Felix was seized, and he was asked what had happened and how he had received the light. He explained everything in proper order, and the bishops of the Arians said: ”Eugenius did this through sorcery."
• (Victor Vitensis, Victor of Vita: history of the Vandal persecution; Translated by Moorhead, Liverpool Press 1992)
African Confessors : 2nd Miracle
• 3.29 But let us go on quickly to tell what was done to the glory of God in the town of Tipasa (Tifech) in greater Mauritania. When they saw that a former notary of Cyrila had been ordained as the Arian bishop for their town, to the perdition of souls, the entire town fled together all at once on the next sailing to Spain, leaving behind only a few who had not been able to sail.14 The bishop of the Arians began to put pressure on these people, first by blandishments and later by threats, in an attempt to make Arians of them. But they were strong in the Lord: not only did they laugh at the madness of the man who was exhorting them, but they also began to celebrate the divine mysteries in public, gathering together in a house. When the bishop found out about this, in secret he sent to Carthage a report about it which was hostile to them.
• 3.30 When this came to the attention of the king, in his wrath he sent a count with orders that the entire province was to be gathered together in the middle of the forum, and that he was to cut the tongues and right hands of these people completely off. But when this was done, thanks to the operation of the Holy Spirit they spoke, and continued to speak, just as they had spoken before. And if anyone finds this hard to believe, he should go to Constantinople now, and there he will find one of them, the subdeacon Reparatus, speaking correctly and in a faultless manner. For this reason he is held to be worthy of reverence in the palace of the emperor Zeno, and the queen in particular venerates him with an extraordinary devotion.
• (Victor Vitensis, Victor of Vita: history of the Vandal persecution; Translated by Moorhead, Liverpool Press 1992)
• [Twistleton] After several preliminary remarks, and after referring to the passage in Victor Vitensis, which I have already translated somewhat more fully, Dr. Newman translates the evidence of six writers, viz. i) Aeneas of Gaza; ii) Procopius of Caesarea; iii) the Emperor Justinian; iv) Count Marcellinus; v) Victor bishop of Tonno; vi) Pope Gregory I. [Newman, Two Essays on Biblical and on Ecclesiastical Miracles, 1892, §222-§230] Their evidence is set forth by him as follows:
• 1. AEneas of Gaza was the contemporary of Victor. When a Gentile, he had been a philosopher and a [PAGE 37] rhetorician, and did not altogether throw off his profession of Platonism when he became a Christian. He wrote a dialogue on the 'Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection of the Body ;' and in it, after giving various instances of miracles, he proceeds, in the character of Axitheus, to speak of the miracle of the African Confessors : ' Other such things have been and will be ; but what took place the other day I suppose you have seen yourself. A bitter tyranny is oppressing the greater Africa, and humanity and orthodoxy have no influence over tyranny. Accordingly this tyrant takes offence at the piety of his subjects, and commands the priests to deny their glorious dogma. When they refuse, O the impiety! he cuts out that religious tongue, as Tereus in the fable. But the damsel wove the deed upon the robe, and divulged it by her skill when nature no longer gave her power to speak ; they, on the other hand, needing neither robe nor skill, call upon Nature's Maker, who vouchsafes to them a new nature on the third day, not giving them another tongue, but the faculty to discourse without a tongue more plainly than before. I had thought it impossible for a piper to show his skill without his pipes, or harper to play his music without his harp ; but now this novel sight forces me to change my mind, and to account for nothing fixed that is seen, if it be God's will to alter it. I myself saw the men, and heard them speak ; and wondering at the [PAGE 38] articulateness of the sound, I began to inquire what its organ was ; and distrusting my ears, I committed the decision to my eyes, and opening their mouth, I perceived the tongue entirely gone from the roots ; and astounded, I fell to wonder not how they could talk, but how they had not died.” He saw them at Constantinople.
• 2. Procopius of Caesarea was secretary to Belisarius, whom he accompanied into Africa, Sicily, and Italy and to Constantinople, in the years between 527 and 542. By Belisarius he was employed in various political matters of great moment, and was at one time at the head of the commissariat and the fleet. He seems to have conformed to Christianity, but Cave observes, from his tone of writing, that he was no real believer in it, nay preferred the old Paganism, though he despised its rites and fables. He wrote the history of the Persian, Vandalic, and Gothic war, of which Gibbon speaks in the following terms :”His facts are collected from the personal experience and free conversation of a soldier, a statesman, and a traveller ; his style continually aspires, and often attains, to the merit of strength and elegance ; his reflections, more especially in the speeches which he too frequently inserts, contain a rich fund of political knowledge, and the historian, excited by the generous ambition of pleasing and instructing posterity, appears to disdain the prejudices of the people and the flattery [PAGE 39] of courts.” Such is Procopius, and thus he speaks on the subject of this stupendous miracle:
”Huneric became the most savage and iniquitous of men towards the African Christians. For forcing them to Arianize, whomever he found unwilling to comply, he burnt and otherwise put to death. And of many he cut out the tongue as low down as the throat, who even as late as my time were alive in Byzantium, and talked without any impediment, feeling no effects whatsoever of the punishment. But two of them having allowed themselves to hold converse with abandoned women, ceased to speak.”
• 3. Our next witness, and of the same date, is the Emperor Justinian, who, in an edict addressed to Archelaus, Praetorian Prefect of Africa, on the subject of his office, after Belisarius had recovered the country to the Roman Empire, writes as follows : ”The present mercy which Almighty God has deigned to manifest through us for his praise and his Name's sake, exceeds all the wonderful works which have happened in the world — viz., that Africa should through us recover in so short a time its liberty, after being in captivity under the Vandals for ninety-five years, those enemies alike of soul and body. For such souls as could not sustain their various tortures and punishments by rebaptizing, they translated into their own misbelief; and the bodies of free men they subjected to the hardships of a barbaric yoke. Nay, the very churches sacred to [PAGE 40] God did they defile with their deeds of misbelief ; some they turned into stables. We have seen the venerable men who, when their tongues had been cut off at the roots, yet piteously recounted their pains. Others, after diverse tortures, were dispersed through diverse provinces, and ended their days in exile.”
• 4. Count Marcellinus, chancellor to Justinian before he came to the throne, is the fourth layman to whose testimony we are able to appeal. He, too, as two of the former, speaks as an eyewitness, and the additional circumstances with which he commences seem to throw light upon Aeneas's singular account, that the confessors spoke “more plainly than before.”“Through the whole of Africa,” he says, in his Chronicon, under the date 484, ”the cruel persecution of Huneric, King of the Vandals, was inflicted upon our Catholics. For after the expulsion and dispersion of more than 334 bishops of the orthodox, and the shutting of their churches, the flocks of the faithful, afflicted by various punishments, consummated their blessed conflict. Then it was that the same King Huneric ordered the tongue to be cut out of a Catholic youth who from his birth had lived without speech at all ; soon after he spoke, and gave glory to God with the first sounds of his voice. In short, I myself have seen at Byzantium a few out of the [PAGE 41] company of the faithful religious men, with their tongues cut off and their hands amputated, speaking with perfect voice.”
• 5. Victor, bishop of Tonno, in Africa, Proconsularis, another contemporary, and a strenuous defender of the”Three Chapters” (Latin: Tria Capitula), which were condemned in the Fifth Ecumenical Council, has left behind him a Chronicon also, which at the same date runs as follows : ”Huneric, King of the Vandals, urging a furious persecution through the whole of Africa, banished to Tubunnae, Macrinippi, and other parts of the desert, not only Catholic clerks of every order, but even monks and laymen, to the number of about four thousand, and makes confessors and martyrs, and cuts off the tongues of the confessors. As to which confessors, the royal city where their bodies lie attests that after their tongues were cut out they spoke perfectly even to the end. Then Laetus, bishop of the Church of Nepte, is crowned with martyrdom, &c. It is observable from this statement that the miracle was recorded for the instruction of posterity at the place of their burial.”
• 6. Lastly, Pope Gregory I. thus speaks in his Dialogues : “In the time of Justinian Augustus, when the Arian persecution raised by the Vandals [PAGE 42] against the faith of Catholics was raging violently in Africa, some bishops, courageously persisting in the defence of the truth, were brought under notice ; whom the King of the Vandals, failing to persuade to his belief with words and offers, thought he could break with torture. For when in the midst of their defence of the truth, he bade them be silent, but they would not bear the misbelief quietly, lest it might be interpreted as assent. Breaking out into rage, he had their tongues cut off from the roots. A wonderful thing, and known to many senior persons, for afterwards, even without tongue, they spoke for the defence of the truth, just as they had been accustomed before to speak by means of it. These then, being fugitives at that time, came to Constantinople. At the time, moreover, that I was myself sent to the emperor to conduct the business of the Church, I fell in with a certain senior, a bishop, who attested that he had seen their mouths speaking, though without tongues, so that with open mouths they cried out, 'Behold, and see ; for we have not tongues and we speak.' And it appeared to those who inspected, as it was said, as if their tongues were being cut off from the roots, there was a sort of open depth in their throat, and yet in that empty mouth the words were formed full and perfect. Of whom one, having fallen into licentiousness, was soon after deprived of the gift of miracle.”
• [Twistleton] Dr. Newman then recapitulates the evidence as [PAGE 43] follows :”Little observation is necessary on evidence such as this. What is perhaps most striking in it, is the variety of the witnesses, both in their persons and the details of their testimony, together with the consistency and unity of that testimony in all material points. Out of the seven writers adduced, six are contemporaries ; three, if not four, are eye witnesses of the miracle ; one reports from an eyewitness ; and one testifies to a permanent record at the burial-place of the subjects of it. All seven were living, or had been staying at one or other of the two places which are mentioned as their abode. One is a pope, a second a Catholic bishop, a third a bishop of a schismatical party, a fourth an emperor, a fifth a soldier, a politician, and a suspected infidel, a sixth a statesman and courtier, a seventh a rhetorician and philosopher. ‘He cut out the tongues by the roots,’ says Victor, Bishop of Vite ; ‘I perceived the tongue entirely gone by the roots’ says Aeneas ; ‘as low down as the throat,’ says Procopius ; ‘at the roots,’ say Justinian and St. Gregory. ‘He spoke like an educated man without impediment,’ says Victor of Vite ; ‘with articulateness’ says Aeneas, ‘better than before ’; ‘they talked without impediment,’ says Procopius; ‘speaking with perfect voice,’ says Marcellinus ; ‘they spoke perfectly even to the end,’ says the second Victor ; ‘the words were formed full and perfect’ says St. Gregory."
• (Twisleton, Edward Turner Boyd. The Tongue Not Essential to Speech; With Illustrations of the Power of Speech in the African Confessors. London: J. Murray, 1873, p. 36-43)
