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chap, xxxvii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 91 Imperial edicts, against the heretical congregations, the clergy, and the people, who dissented from the established religion. If the rights of conscience had been understood, the Catholics must have condemned their past conduct, or acquiesced in their actual sufferings. But they still persisted to refuse the indul- gence which they claimed. While they trembled under the lash of persecution, they praised the laudable severity of Hunneric himself, who burnt or banished great numbers of Manichseans : 9i and they rejected, with horror, the ignominious compromise that the disciples of Arius and of Athanasius should enjoy a re- ciprocal and similar toleration in the territories of the Komans and in those of the Vandals. 95 II. The practice of a conference, which the Catholics had so frequently used to insult and punish their obstinate antagonists, was retorted against themselves. 96 At the command of Hunneric, four hundred and sixty-six orthodox bishops assembled at Carthage ; but, when they were admitted into the hall of audience, they had the mortification of beholding the Arian Cyrila exalted on the patriarchal throne. The disputants were separated, after the mutual and ordinary reproaches of noise and silence, of delay and precipitation, of military force and of popular clamour. One martyr and one confessor were selected among the Catholic bishops ; twenty- eight escaped by flight, and eighty-eight by conformity, forty- six were sent into Corsica to cut timber for the royal navy ; and three hundred and two were banished to the different parts of Africa, exposed to the insults of their enemies, and carefully deprived of all the temporal and spiritual comforts of life. 97 The hardships of ten years' exile must have reduced their numbers ; and, if they had complied with the law of Thrasi- mund, which prohibited any episcopal consecrations, the ortho- 94 Viotor, ii. 1, p. 21, 22, Laudabilior . . . videbatur. In the Mss. which omit this word, the passage is unintelligible. See Ruinart, Not. p. 164. 95 Victor, ii. 2, p. 22, 23. The clergy of Carthage called these conditions, periculosa ; and they seem, indeed, to have been proposed as a snare to entrap the Catholic bishops. 96 See the narrative of this conference and the treatment of the bishops in Victor, ii. 13-18, p. 35-42, and the whole fourth book, p. 63-171. The third book, p. 42-62, is entirely filled by their apology, or confession of faith. 97 See the list of the African bishops, in Victor, p. 117-140, and Ruinart's notes, p. 215-397. The schismatic name of Donatus frequently occurs, and they appear to have adopted (like our fanatics of the last age) the pious appellations of Deodatus, Deogratias, Quidvultdeus, Habetdeum, &c. [See Notitia at end of Halm's edition of Victor.]