mutilation, or confiscation of property, according to the degrees of guilt.[1] Early in the next reign, however, their turbulence appeared to be so incurable as to call for a re-*enactment of almost all the disabilities under which they lay after Justinian's first decree against them.[2]
It was, of course, a foregone conclusion that in Africa and Italy after the conquest the Arians should be a proscribed sect. No sooner had the Vandal Kingdom passed under the Byzantine rule than the same measure was meted out to the previously dominant religionists, as the African Catholics had generally received at their hands under Genseric and most of his successors. Dispossessed of all their churches and divested of civil rights, they were directed by the Emperor's edict to "consider themselves as humanely treated in being suffered to live at all."[3] In Italy the revulsion was less decided as, owing to the tolerant policy of Theodoric, the Orthodox Church in that country had not been disturbed. No special legislation, therefore, is extant, and it appears that the Italian Arians were only despoiled on occasion under some specious pretence in order that their riches might go to swell the treasury, as frequently happened in the case of their conquerors of the East.[4] Although Jews were held in abhorrence by the Emperor and his Catholic subjects, they were allowed to adhere to their traditional faith within certain limits.[5] Thus such a
- ↑ Jn. Malala, p. 487.
- ↑ Nov. cxliv.
- ↑ Nov. xxxvii; Procopius, Anecd., 18.
- ↑ Agnellus, Lib. Pontif., Agnellus, 2; Procopius, Anecd., 11. At Ravenna all the Gothic churches, with their contents, were handed over to the Catholics. Presumably there were very few Arian congregations left in Italy. The Exocionite Arians at CP. (Goths) were always respected; Cod., I, v, 12; Jn. Malala, p. 428.
- ↑ Cod., I, ix; x.
