10. This the general of our forces learned when he entered as a captive the same city of the enemy that he had boasted he would enter that same day as victor. He proved indeed the words of the prophet: "For a man's way is not his own, nor is it in his own power to walk and direct his steps.'' Since he thought his actions were under his own control, he could neither direct his steps nor find the way of safety. So we read: "He poureth contempt upon the prince and causeth him to wander in the wilderness where there is no way. . . . He has been brought to nothing, even as the waters which run continually." In him, indeed, in addition to his actual misfortune, the present judgment of God was clearly shown. He has endured all the sufferings that he had boasted he would inflict on others. Because he trusted that the enemy could be taken without God's aid and consent, he has himself been captured; he claimed foreknowledge and wisdom and has met with disgrace for his presumption; he himself has worn the chains he prepared for others.
What clearer proof, I ask, could there have been of the judgment of God, than that the general who boasted of plundering should be counted as booty; that he who counted his triumph already won should be led in another's triumph ---- be surrounded, seized, and bound, his arms twisted behind his back; that he should see those hands tied whose prowess he vaunted; that he should become a spectacle for women and children, see barbarians making sport of him, endure the derision of both sexes, and though he had |202 the greatest pride in his bravery, meet a coward's death? Would that this might have been a speedy cure for his wrongdoing, without longer suffering! But, as befits the greatness of his punishment, wasted by the days of his captivity and by the prolonged anguish of a barbarian prison, he was reduced to such misery that he roused the pity of the enemy, and this most men think harder and more bitter to bear than the imprisonment itself. Why did these things happen? Surely because, as I have already indicated, the enemy were humble before God, whereas we were rebellious; they believed the victory lay in his hand, we that it lay in our own ---- a sacrilegious and wicked conception that makes our sin so much the worse and more injurious to us. Lastly, we learn from an authentic report that the king of the enemy himself lay on haircloth and prayed up to the very day of the conflict; when battle was imminent he lay in prayer, and rose only to fight. Before he assumed command in the battle he fought in prayer, and so went forth to the fight with confidence in a victory already earned by his prayers.
11. Moreover, the experience of the Vandals was not dissimilar: when our people went against them in Spain and had as much confidence in a complete victory as they had recently against the Goths, the same overweening pride engulfed them in the same disastrous ruin. Then the words of the prophet were fulfilled for our army: "The Lord shall reject thy confidence and thou shalt not prosper in it."
For we trusted in our own wisdom and strength against the |203 command of the Lord, who said: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither the mighty man in his might, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord."
So we have not been conquered undeservedly, for the enemy sought better aid than we did. While we prided ourselves on arms and auxiliaries, on the side of the enemy the Book of the Divine Law opposed us. To its help most of all the fear and terror of the Vandals then resorted, to oppose to us the Divine Word and to open up to those who came against them in rivalry the writings of the Sacred Book which may be called the very voice of God. At this point I ask: who of our number ever did this, or who would not have been derided if he had thought it should be done? He would have been scorned indeed, as almost all religious acts are derided among us. Then what value can our claim to a religious title have for us, what use is it to say we are catholic, to boast that we possess the true faith, to despise the Goths and Vandals, reviling them as heretics, when we are living in a truly heretical depravity? The words of the Divine Scripture addressed to the Jews who trusted in the law are most fittingly applied to us: "How do you say, 'We are wise and the law of the Lord is with us?' . . . Trust ye not in lying words, saying, 'The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these.' For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye oppress not the stranger and the fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this place, then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers for ever and ever.'' By this surely it is shown that if we do not amend our ways, it is useless for us to vaunt our claims to Catholicism.
Enough of this has been said already, and more must perhaps be said later, though there seems little need to discuss the point |204 further, since the judgment of God is constantly manifested. Recent history shows his verdict both upon us and upon the Goths and Vandals; they increase daily while we diminish; they gain in power while we are humbled; they flourish and we wither away. So the words of the Holy Scriptures concerning Saul and David may be truly spoken of us also: ''David waxed stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul waxed weaker and weaker." For the Lord is righteous, as the prophet says: "He is righteous and his judgments are upright."
12. We are judged by the ever-present judgment of God, and thus a most slothful race has been aroused to accomplish our destruction and shame. They go from place to place, from city to city, and destroy everything. First they poured out from their native land into Germany, which lay nearest them, a country called barbarous, but under Roman control. After its destruction, the country of the Belgae burst into flames, then the rich estates of the luxurious Aquitanians, and after these the whole body of the Gallic provinces. This ruin spread gradually, however, in order that while one part was being visited with destruction, another might be reformed by its example. But when has there been any amendment among us, or what part of the Roman world, whatever its affliction, is corrected by it? As we read: "They are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become useless." And in like manner the prophet cried out to the Lord, saying: "Thou hast stricken them but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction; they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.'' |205
How truly this applies to us the present situation shows. Gaul long endured devastation; did Spain, her near neighbor, mend her ways? Not undeservedly, since they showed no fear whatever, and no reform, the people of Spain began to catch fire from the flames by which the Gauls were consumed. The worst and most evil aspect of all this is, as I have said before, that the fires which, to speak figuratively, consumed the bodies of these sinful men, did not burn away their vices.
Thus God has been compelled by our crimes to scatter the enemy's forces as a scourge for our sins, from place to place, from city to city, and to send nations aroused almost from the very ends of the earth even across the sea, to punish the crimes of our people in Africa. Why was this? Having been led forth from their own country, could the Vandals not have remained within the Gallic states? Could fear have prevented these tribes from abiding there, who had already devastated all the land without injury from us? But suppose they had cause for alarm in Gaul, why should they have feared to settle and stay in Spain, where they had completely crushed our armies in battle, where they were already triumphantly victorious, having reached such a height of valor as to learn that after trial in a war long anticipated, the strength of the Roman state, even with barbarian reinforcements, could not equal theirs?
13. They could have stayed there, then, and were not afraid, but surely the heavenly hand that had dragged them thither to punish the vices of the Spanish compelled them also to cross the straits to devastate Africa. In fact, they themselves confessed that they did not act of their own volition, for they were driven and urged on by a divine command. From this we may learn how great are our misdoings, since to destroy and punish us the barbarians are compelled |206 to move against their will, following the words of the devastator of the land of Israel, the king of the Assyrians, when he said: '' And now without the will of the Lord am I come up against this land? The Lord said unto me, 'Go up against this land, to destroy it.' "And elsewhere the Sacred Word says: "Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: 'Behold, I will send and take Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon, my servant, and when he cometh, he shall smite the land of Egypt.' "
From this we may know that all things which are afflicted are indeed smitten by the judgment of God; their overthrow, however, as I have often remarked, is due to sin. So whatever is done on account of sin is not to be ascribed to God, since a deed is rightly ascribed to that cause which has made it unavoidable. For example, a murderer sentenced to death by the judge is actually punished by his own crime; a thief or a man who has committed sacrilege is consumed not by the flames that burn his body, but by his own sin. Whence we see that the Vandals did not cross to Africa because of God's severity but because of the sins of the Romans in that country. By their grave and long continued iniquity these people were forcing the Vandals to come before they actually left their native land. Therefore we must understand that only God's mercy postponed the punishment so long due, and their misdeeds and crimes at length brought upon these sinful people the chastisement they deserved. Or are we to believe that they did not deserve their fate? Have any people better deserved ruin than these, in whom all sorts of shameful and indecent lust have flourished at once? For the rest of the world, though bound by some disgraceful vices, has some virtue still remaining: men who are subject to drunkenness are free from malevolence; those who live in a fever of lust do not suffer from raging greed; finally, many who are |207 accused of physical incontinence are commended by the simplicity of their minds. But among the people of Africa, with few exceptions, you will find none with an equal measure of good and evil, for almost the whole population is evil. So the purity of their original nature has been shut out and their vices have, as it were, created a new character among them.
14. Indeed, aside from a very few servants of God, what was the whole territory of Africa but one house of vice, like that bronze vessel of which the prophet said: "Woe to the bloody city! to the bronze vessel whose scum is therein, and whose scum hath not gone out from it, because the blood shall not go out from it!" He compared the city, as we see, to a bronze vessel and its iniquity to blood, that we might know that the iniquity of the people in a city is like blood seething in a brazen pot. And again, not unlike this is another saying of the Sacred Word: "The houses of Israel have all been made a mixture before me of brass and iron and tin and lead, in the midst is silver mixed with the mass. Therefore say this; thus saith the Lord God: 'Inasmuch as ye are all made one mass I shall blow upon you and melt you in the fires of my wrath.' "
How are the very dissimilar metals that the Scriptures have named melted together in one furnace? Surely in the diversity of metals the unlike qualities of men are figured. Thus even silver, that is, metal of the nobler sort, is cast in the same fires as the rest because men have debased the gifts of their nobler natures by their degenerate lives. Even so we read that the Lord spoke also of the king of Tyre through his prophet: ''Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, 'Thus saith the Lord God: thou hast been the seal of likeness, and a crown of beauty in the delights of paradise ; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius and topaz and emerald.' " Again he says: |208 ''With silver and with gold hast thou filled thy treasuries, from the multitude of commerce hast thou filled thy storehouses." Do not all these things seem to have been said expressly of the people of Africa? Where are greater treasuries, where is greater commerce, where are fuller storehouses? "With gold," he says, "hast thou filled thy treasuries from the multitude of thy commerce." I add more: Africa was once so rich that the abundance of her commerce seems to have filled not only her own treasuries but those of the whole world as well.
What did the prophet say next? '' Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, because of the multitude of thine iniquities have I cast thee to the ground." How does this apply to the power of Africa, and how does that land seem to have been laid prostrate on the ground? How except that when she lost the height of her former power, she also lost her almost celestial honor? "And I shall bring forth," said the prophet, "a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee." ' What could be truer than this? The fire of sin went forth from the midst of their iniquity, and devoured the happiness of former times. "And all they that know thee among the people shall be sore afflicted over thee." We might think that this phrase did not apply to them, were it not that the destruction of Africa is the sorrow of the human race. "Thou art become destruction," said the prophet, "and never shalt thou be any more." It is only too well known that everything in that province has been completely destroyed; all that we can do is to prevent those evils which are now being punished from being continued forever.
15. May God in his merciful kindness not permit this! Indeed, as far us the deserts of our crimes are concerned, there is no reason |209 why he should not. What misdeeds are not constantly committed there? I shall not speak of them all, for their enormity is such that they cannot be known or discussed. I shall talk chiefly of the obscene nature of their indecencies, and, which is more serious still, of their acts of sacrilege. I pass over their insane greed, a vice shared by the whole human race; I pass over their inhuman avarice, an evil characteristic of most of the Romans; let their drunkenness be left unmentioned, since it is common to noble and base alike; let swelling pride be omitted, for this is so particularly the province of the rich, that they would perhaps think they were losing something of their just due if anyone else wished to claim any share in it. Finally, let almost all the wickedness involving frauds, forgeries and perjuries be passed over, for no Roman city was ever free from these evils. Yet this crime was the especial prerogative of all the people of Africa. For just as the filth of a boat is washed down into the bilge water in its depths, so vices seem to have flowed into their habits from the whole world. I know of no wickedness that did not abound there, whereas even pagan and barbarous nations, though they have evil ways especially characteristic of their own races, still do not merit reproach in all things. The race of the Goths is treacherous but chaste, the Alans unchaste but not treacherous; the Franks are deceitful but hospitable, the Saxons savage in their cruelty but admirable for their chastity; to conclude, all races have their own peculiar vices accompanied by their own good qualities. But among the people of Africa practically without exception there is nothing but evil. If inhumanity is the subject of our accusation they are inhuman; if drunkenness, they are drunken; if falsehood, they are most false; if deceit,, they are unexcelled in deceitfulness; if greed, they are surpassingly greedy; if perfidy, theirs is unequalled. Their impurity and blasphemy must not be confused with these other sins, since in the evils of which I have spoken above they have surpassed the vices of other nations, but in these they have outdone their own. |210
16. To speak first of their impurity ---- who does not know that all Africa has always flamed with the torches of obscenity, so that you would think it not a land and abiding place of men, but an Aetna of unclean fires? As Aetna has always seethed with certain inner flames of heat implanted in it by nature, so also has Africa with the abominable fires of fornication. I do not wish you to believe my words alone in this matter, but to seek the corroboration of the whole human race. Who can fail to recognize that all the people of Africa are unchaste unless they happen to have been converted to God, and changed by their religious faith? This however is as rare and strange as to see a Gaius who is not a Gaius or a Seius who is not a Seius. It is as unusual and rare for an African not to be unchaste as for him not to be an African.
So general is the vice of impurity among them that whoever ceases to be indecent seems to be no longer an African. I shall not discuss the individual cities nor mention all the different localities, for fear of seeming to search out examples too curiously. I shall content myself with one city instead, the chief of all the cities of that land, and in a way the mother of them all, the eternal rival of Rome's citadel, of old in arms and courage, afterwards in splendor and dignity. It is Carthage of which I speak, the greatest rival of the city of Rome, and a sort of Rome in the African world; she alone suffices as an example and witness of my words, since she has contained within herself all the resources and governance of statecraft in the world.
There you would find all the appurtenances of the public offices, schools of the liberal arts, the studies of the philosophers, training schools in languages and ethics; there also were military forces and the powers that control the army, there was the office of the |211 proconsul, there the daily judge and ruler of the province ---- in name, indeed, proconsul, but in power a very consul; there lastly were the administrators of the state properties, their honors differingfrom one another in rank and name ---- procurators, as I may call them, of the public streets and crossroads ---- governing all the wards of the city and all sections of the people. With this one city we may well be content as an example of the others, and as evidence of their condition, so that having seen the character of the city where the officials have always been of the highest grade, we may infer what those towns were like that had the supervision of less honored men.
At this point I almost repent of my promise made above, to omit almost all the vices of the people of this province and to speak chiefly of their obscenities and blasphemies. For I see the city overflowing with vice, boiling over with every sort of iniquity ----full indeed of people, but even fuller of dishonor, full of riches but fuller still of vice; men striving to outdo one another in depravity and lust, some vying with their mates in rapacity, others in indecency. Some are languid with wine, others distended with feasting-, some garlanded with flowers, others smeared with unguents, all wasted by various forms of dissipation, but sunk in the same mortal error. Not all, indeed, were intoxicated with winebibbing-, but all were drunk with their sins.
You would judge such a people lacking in sanity, not in full possession of their senses, steady neither in mind nor in gait, attacking each other in a mob like drunken men. Now we must consider also another charge of a serious kind, unlike this in its nature but not unlike it in gravity, unless its greatness sets it in a different class. I mean the proscriptions of orphans, the afflictions of widows and the crucifixion of the poor. All these made their moan daily to God, and prayed for an end of their sufferings. Nay, what is worse, they were sometimes driven by their bitter woes even to pray for the arrival of the enemy. These have now at last obtained from |212 God the privilege of enduring with the rest such ruin from the barbarians as they formerly suffered alone from the Romans!
17. But let us pass over these matters, for they may be paralleled in practically every part of the Roman world, and I promised to mention them only briefly. As to the unchastity and impurity which I have been discussing, would these not have been sufficient of themselves to destroy Africa? What part of the state was not full of indecency, what street or bypath was not a place of shame? Lust had so cut off most of the crossroads and streets with its snares, and entangled them with its nets, that even those who utterly abhorred such vices could scarcely avoid them. You might compare them to brigands lurking in ambush and snatching their spoils from passers-by; they so hedged in the paths, the winding roads and byways with their close-set traps, that scarcely anyone could be cautious enough not to fall into some of their treacherous snares, however many he escaped. All the citizens reeked, if I may use the expression, with the stench of lust, all inhaled the fetid odors of their mutual impurity. Yet this horrid condition inspired no loathing in them, for the same plague had infected them all. You would think the city a sinkpot of lust and fornication, like the muck collected from the offscourings of all the streets and sewers. What hope could there be in such a place, where, except for the temple of the Lord, there was nothing to be seen but filth?
Yet why should I except the temple of God? The church was, to be sure, completely under the care of the priests and clergy, whom I prefer not to discuss. I am bound by reverence for my Lord's ministry, and think that those men who served at the altars alone preserved their purity, as we read that Lot stood alone on the mountain when the people of Sodom perished. As for the people, however, who among such countless numbers was chaste? Chaste, did I say? Who was not guilty of fornication, or adultery, and that too without ceasing? Therefore must I cry out again ---- what hope could there be in that people? One adulterer sometimes |213 pollutes a whole church congregation, but there you could scarcely find one chaste man among thousands, if you searched most diligently, even in the church.
I have much more than this to say. Would that what I have said included the whole accusation, and that these men in their indecency had been content to satisfy their lust with fornication of fallen women only! Their fault was still more serious and wicked than this, for nearly all the vices of which the blessed apostle Paul complained so bitterly existed in Africa. "The men leaving the natural use of women burned in their lust toward one another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." Was it not of barbarous and savage races that the blessed apostle spoke? Nay verily, but of us, that is, expressly of the Romans, whom indeed the people of Africa, since they were not able of old to overcome them in power and might, have now outdone in the only way left to them, to wit, in lust. Whoever thinks he has a right to be angry at my words should rather be incensed at the apostle, for what I have said of the character of the inhabitants of Africa, he once said of their masters, the Romans.
18. Perhaps the vices of which I spoke were hidden, or the men in charge of the public morals in different places took care that the diffusion of such crimes should not sully the eyes of the people. If this had been done, however many had been defiled by the actions themselves, all would not have been injured by the sight and thought of them. However disgraceful a vice is, it does not as a rule deserve full credence when it is committed secretly. But to commit the greatest sins and feel no shame for what one has done, demands censure passing that of the sins themselves. What more prodigious wrong could have been performed there? In a |214 Christian city, in a church which the apostles founded by their teachings, which martyrs had crowned by their passion, men took upon themselves the functions of women, without any shame to cloak their action, without the shield of modesty; as if their sin would be too slight if only the authors of these evils were stained by them, through the public knowledge of their vice it became the wrong-doing of the whole city. The entire city saw this and suffered it, the judges saw and condoned it, the people saw and applauded, and thus when fellowship in disgraceful lust was spread through the city, the general consent made it common to all. But, you say, perhaps there was at length an end to the evil and some emendation of the wrong. Who could believe or even hear calmly that men converted to a feminine passivity not only their natural functions but even their looks, their step, their clothing and everything characteristic of the male sex and appearance? So completely was nature reversed in them that although nothing should be more shameful to men than to seem to have any feminine characteristics, nothing seemed to certain of these men more disgraceful than to seem in any respect masculine.
19. You may argue that this disgrace was that of a few men only, and what was not perpetrated by the majority could not injure all. Indeed, I have said before that very often among the people of God the crime even of one man has been the ruin of many, as the people were betrayed by the theft of Achar, a pestilence arose from the jealousy of Saul, and a plague came from the numbering of the people by the blessed David. For the church of God is like an eye. If even a little mote fall into the eye, it blinds the whole sight; so, if even a few men in the body of the church |215 act indecently, it darkens the whole light of the church. Therefore the Savior called the chief part of the church its eye, saying: ''The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness," Whence the apostle asked: ''Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?" I should not say, however, that there was in Africa a little of this evil, but overmuch, not that most of the people there were effeminate, but that the effeminacy of the few was the corruption of the many. Even if there are few who live disgracefully there are many who are stained by the filth of the few. As one harlot makes many commit fornication, so the abominable unions of the effeminate few infect the vast majority of the people.