Saint Eugenius of Carthage

The Vandals who ruled North Africa in the fifth century were Arians, and the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Victor of Vita, the historian of those years, describes the cruelties their kings practiced against the orthodox Christians of the region. ¹² Both sides claimed the name "Catholic", the encyclopedia notes, and the Arians called their opponents "Homoousians", after the word for the Son's consubstantiality with the Father that the Catholics defended. ¹

After Bishop Deogratias died in 456, Carthage had no bishop at all. ¹ Victor of Vita says the church had gone twenty-four years without one when King Huneric finally allowed an election, at the request of the Eastern emperor Zeno and of Placidia, into whose family the Vandals had married. ¹³ The permission came with a condition. Victor, who says he was present when the royal edict was read in the church, reports that the Arian bishops in the East were to have the same freedom to preach as the Catholics of Africa, and that if they did not, the new bishop, his clergy and the other African bishops would be sent among the Moors. ³ The Catholics, he writes, heard it with groans, and said that under such conditions the church did not care to have a bishop, since Christ governed it. ³ The people would not hear of waiting, and the election went ahead. ³

Eugenius was ordained amid great rejoicing. ³ Victor says that crowds of young men and girls declared they had never in their lives seen a bishop sitting on his throne. ³ The Catholic Encyclopedia credits the new bishop with wise government, charity to the poor and austerity of life, and says these won the admiration even of the Arians. ¹

Victor is specific about the charity. The church had nothing, he says, since the Vandals held everything, and yet Eugenius gave alms on a scale that seemed incredible. ³ Money never stayed with him, unless it happened to be brought at nightfall, and then he kept only enough for the next day. ³

His reputation grew, and with it, Victor says, the envy of the Arian bishops, above all Cyrila. ³ They persuaded the king to forbid Eugenius to sit on his throne or preach to his people, and to turn away from his church any man or woman who came in Vandal dress. ³ His answer, in Victor's Latin, translated here: "The house of God is open to all; no one can drive out those who come in." ³ Many of the Catholics who went about in Vandal clothes, Victor explains, did so because they served in the royal household. ³

Huneric then set torturers at the church doors. Victor says that anyone they saw in Vandal dress had a toothed stick twisted into their hair and the scalp torn away with it; some lost their sight, some died of the pain, and women were paraded through the streets with their heads stripped. ³ He adds that he knew many of them, and that none turned back. ³ The Catholic Encyclopedia says Eugenius admitted Vandals into the Catholic Church against the royal edict. ¹

Victor tells one miracle in full. A blind man of Carthage named Felix, well known in the city, was told three times in a dream on the night before the Epiphany to go to "my servant Eugenius", who would touch his eyes when he blessed the font for the baptisms. ³ He went with the boy who usually led him, found the bishop during the night office, held his knees and would not let go. ³

Eugenius answered him, in Victor's words as translated here, "Go away from me, brother; I am a sinner and unworthy." ³ But the man kept repeating his request, and the bishop took him to the font, knelt and blessed the water with loud groans, and said that he was a sinful man but that the One who had visited Felix would give him sight according to his faith. ³ He signed the man's eyes with the cross, and Felix could see. ³ Victor says the bishop kept him at his side until the baptisms were over, so that the crowd would not crush him, and that afterward Felix came to the altar with his offering. ³

News reached the king at once. Felix was taken and questioned, and the Arian bishops, according to Victor, said that Eugenius had done it by sorcery. ³ The Catholic Encyclopedia mentions the cure of a blind man more cautiously, saying only that he "is said to have" worked one. ¹

Huneric summoned the Catholic and Arian bishops to a conference, which the Catholic Encyclopedia dates to some time between 481 and February 484. ¹ Victor says that Eugenius petitioned for bishops from across the sea to be invited too, and above all from the Roman church, "which is the head of all the churches" in his words as translated here, so that the case of the one Catholic faith could be heard by men outside the king's power. ³ He was answered, in the king's name: make the whole world subject to me, and I will do what you ask. ³

At the conference the Arian patriarch Cyrila sat on a high throne, and when the Catholics objected that there was no impartial judge, all the Catholics present were ordered beaten with a hundred blows each. ³ Victor gives Eugenius's cry, translated here: "Let God see the violence we suffer, let Him know the affliction we endure from our persecutors." ³ Cyrila then said he did not know Latin, and the Catholic bishops answered that they knew he had always spoken it. ¹³ He avoided the debate, and the Catholics handed in the statement of faith they had prepared. ¹³ The Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Victor says Eugenius drew up that confession of faith for the bishops and that Victor's history preserves it; its article on Eugenius thinks his Exposition of the Catholic Faith was probably the text submitted. ¹²

The Catholic Encyclopedia says the persecution that followed sent forty-six bishops to Corsica and three hundred and two into the African deserts. ¹ Eugenius was among the second group. ¹ Victor says Huneric chose to put him in the hands of Antonius, an Arian bishop of a town near the desert by the province of Tripoli, because he knew how fierce the man was. ³ Antonius kept him closely guarded and let no one in to see him. ³ Eugenius, now old, mourned the persecution, wore a hair shirt and slept on the bare ground, and was struck by paralysis. ³ Antonius, Victor says, forced harsh vinegar down his throat, and it made him worse; but the mercy of Christ, he writes, afterward restored him to health. ³ Before he left Carthage, the Catholic Encyclopedia adds, he wrote a letter of consolation and encouragement to his flock, which survives in the works of Gregory of Tours. ¹

His clergy suffered with him. Victor says that while their bishop was in exile the clergy of Carthage, about five hundred or more, many of them small boys who served as lectors, were beaten, starved and driven into exile. ³ The 1897 Roman Martyrology commemorates them with him, naming the archdeacon Salutaris and Muritta, second among the church's ministers, both of whom had confessed the faith three times. ⁵

Huneric's successor, Gunthamund, let Eugenius go back to Carthage and reopen the churches. ¹ After eight years of peace, Thrasamund came to the throne and renewed the persecution, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, and arrested Eugenius and condemned him to death. ¹ The sentence was changed to exile in Gaul, where the Arian Alaric was king. ¹

The Catholic Encyclopedia places that exile at Vienne, near Albi, in Languedoc, and says Eugenius built a monastery there over the tomb of the martyr Saint Amaranthus and lived a life of penance until he died on July 13, 505. ¹ The current Roman Martyrology records his passing at Albi in Aquitaine, and says he was sent into exile in the Vandal persecution, "distinguished for faith and virtue" as it is translated here. ⁴

His writings, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, included the Exposition of the Catholic Faith that Huneric demanded, an apology for the faith, a dispute with the Arians quoted in part by Victor, and petitions on behalf of the Catholics. ¹

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Eugenius of Carthage, so none is given here. ¹³⁴⁵

The feast of Saint Eugenius of Carthage is July 13, the day he died in 505. ¹⁴ The current Roman Martyrology enters him on that day at Albi. ⁴ The Roman Martyrology of 1897 also kept him on July 13, remembered "in Africa" together with the clergy of Carthage who were exiled with him. ⁵

He became bishop of a church that had been told, in the same edict, that it could have a bishop, and that if the condition attached was not kept he would be sent among the Moors. ³ He took the office on those terms. ³

When he was told to turn away people in Vandal dress, he said that the house of God was open to everyone. ³ People were maimed at his church doors for coming in, and Victor says none of them turned back. ³

He kept nothing for himself beyond the next day. ³ When a blind man asked to be healed, he called himself a sinner and unworthy, and then did what was asked of him. ³

He spent most of his years as bishop under threat, and two long stretches in exile, one of them in the keeping of a man who wanted him dead. ¹³ He ended his life far from Carthage, in a monastery in Gaul, doing penance. ¹⁴