Genseric

Vandal king (r. 428-477 c.e.)

• Born: c. 390
• Birthplace: Probably Slovakia
• Died: 477
• Place of death: Carthage (now in Tunisia)

One of the most important Germanic rulers, the Vandal Genseric invaded North Africa, sacked Rome, and hastened the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Early Life

Born into a tumultuous era, Genseric (GEHN-suh-rihk), or Gaiseric, was the son of the Vandal king Godigisel and his freed slave wife. By the time of Genseric’s birth, the Roman Empire’s unity, uneasily based on the mutual recognition of several emperors, had to be renewed constantly by force. The emperors’ use of Germanic troops to combat discord among Romans eventually got out of control, and barbarian peoples meant to serve as nonpolitical military resources gained control over large areas. The Franks and Goths would be the most famous of these groups, while eastern Germanic peoples included the Vandals, Suebi, and Alans.

The polygamy, love of war, unsophisticated nature worship and often brutish customs practiced by Germans left lasting bad impressions on the Romans. The Roman historian Tacitus regarded the illiterate Germans as savages incapable of knowledge. However, the Germans were also characterized by their rejection of slavery. Their thirst for independence, fostered by poverty, overcame the sophisticated despotism of Rome. Militarized by the unstable situation, these peoples left an indelible mark. Many geographical names (including “France,” “Burgundy,” “Lombardy,” and “England”) originated with the Germans, who conquered them. Words such as “vandal” and “frankness” became part of the English language.

Little is known of the origins of the Vandals. Tacitus used “Vandilii” as a general term for eastern Germans. Two branches of the group are later mentioned, Silings and Asdings. Driven west by the Huns, they burst into the Roman Empire on December 31, 406, when, together with the Alans, Suevi, Alamanni, and Burgundians, they crossed the icebound Rhine River near Mainz. Genseric was in his teens when this migration marked the end of Roman power north of the Alps.

This crisis began when Emperor Theodosius the Great died in 395, shortly after reconquering the West. The Empire was inherited by his underage sons, Arcadius in Constantinople and Flavius Honorius in Rome. Born in 384, Honorius was greatly influenced by his subordinates. Stilicho, a Vandal general who had married into the Theodosian Dynasty, claimed that Theodosius had bequeathed the regency of the entire empire to him. Many refuted his claim. Ambitious warlords played the opposing courts off against each other, but no one warlord had enough power to destroy his rivals. Discredited, Stilicho was assassinated in 408. Under their able leader Alaric, the Visigoths, who had crossed Rome’s borders to avoid the Huns, invaded Italy three times and sacked Rome in 410. The security and plenty that Romans had enjoyed for centuries was lost.

Barbarian bands ravaged Gaul. By 409, the Vandals, Suevi, and Alans had moved into Spain, where they divided the spoils by lot. The Silings and Alans took the south, while the Asdings and Suevi occupied Galicia. In 411, they became federati, or Roman military allies. In 416, however, the Visigoths were sent by the emperor to evict the Silings and take Galicia from the Suevi. Warfare between the Suevi and the Visigoths would continue for eighty years.

Beset by barbarian warlords and hostile Imperial claimants, Honorius’s court went into hiding in the heavily defended city of Ravenna. The fortifications on the Danube and Rhine Rivers were abandoned. Honorius was reduced to relying on armies raised by gifts to slaves and deserters. He died heirless in 423, ending a reign afflicted by revolts and usurpations. Not until 425 did his nephew Valentinian III restore the legitimate dynasty.

After the grant of Aquitaine to the Visigoths in 418, weak governments and ambitious generals regularly turned over provinces to warlords in exchange for support in whatever crisis arose. Around 420, the Asdings moved south to rejoin the Silings, who had suffered severely under Visigothic occupation. Raiding far and wide, the united Vandals were content to plunder rather than rule. Only when they had exhausted the riches of the southern Spanish region of Andalusia (Vandalusia) did they move on.

Life’s Work

In 427 the Vandals were invited to Africa by a rebellious Roman official, Bonifacius, who recruited their support against Honorius’s regent. Lured by the prospect of controlling rich North African lands, Genseric and his half brother Gunderic responded by organizing an expedition. Gunderic died before the plans were carried out, but in Genseric, the Vandals had a single leader of immense ability.

In 429, in the largest seaborne movement of Germanic peoples, some eighty thousand Vandals and Alans, including about twenty thousand warriors, landed near Tangier. Ignoring the interests of Bonifacius, Genseric laid siege to the coastal city of Hippo Regius for fourteen months; shortly before its capitulation in the summer of 430, the seventy-five-year-old bishop Augustine died inside the besieged city. Genseric overran Mauretania and Numidia (Algeria), defeating Bonifacius’s troops in 431. Seven provinces that had known peace and prosperity for centuries were given over to plunder and massacre. Although the Vandals’ destructiveness has been exaggerated, Genseric seldom gave quarter to opponents. Torture was employed to force captives to reveal hidden wealth. Stern policies were backed by the frequent use of execution. The alleged wholesale destruction of olive trees and crops is improbable, given that the Vandals intended to settle in the region.

By 435 Genseric had concluded a treaty with Imperial authorities who made the Vandals federati in Numidia. Only Carthage held out. After the city’s destruction following Rome’s defeat of Hannibal, the great city of Carthage had been rebuilt as the capital of Roman Africa. The surrounding region, Africa Proconsularis, became vital to Rome’s grain supply. Wealthy Romans maintained vast estates, which they rarely saw, in the region. By Genseric’s time, decades had passed without an emperor having visited Africa. Africa’s economic and strategic importance was taken for granted by the Romans but was well known to the Vandal invaders. Foreshadowing what was to come, the Roman general Gildo had cut off Rome’s grain shipments during a dispute in 397.

In a surprise attack, Genseric captured Carthage on October 19, 439, giving the Vandals a major naval base and a stranglehold on Rome’s food supplies. As feared as Attila’s horsemen, Vandal fleets made Genseric master of the western Mediterranean. By 442, Rome was forced to acknowledge Genseric in a second treaty that gave the Vandals North Africa.

Having spent a generation harried by stronger groups throughout Europe, Genseric was determined not to be moved again. He therefore ran a regime that was aggressive externally and harsh domestically. Although he continued to use many Roman administrators, he asserted an independent stance toward the Empire, especially terms of religion. He confiscated estates belonging to the Imperial court and Roman landlords. His tyrannical regime was hated by both his Vandal subjects and the local inhabitants, who were crushed by heavy taxation. The kingship became hereditary, based on succession by the oldest living male. Consistent with his autocratic nature, he even attempted to establish a new chronological era dating from his capture of Carthage.

Meanwhile, Rome’s decline continued. Like Honorius, Valentinian III had little political aptitude. His early years were beset with intrigues over succession. Spoiled, hedonistic, and overshadowed by his mother and his general Aetius, he ironically oversaw the accumulation of papal authority, particularly that of Leo the Great. Attempting to neutralize the Vandal threat, he betrothed his sister to Vandal prince Huneric. Having murdered Aetius to assert power in his own right, he himself was assassinated by members of his bodyguard in 455.

After his death, the decay of Rome accelerated. Northern Gaul fell to the Franks, the only Germans to succeed in building an enduring state. Southern Gaul and Spain were ruled by the Visigoths, and Africa by Genseric. Eventually, Ostrogoths captured Italy itself. Preserving classical civilization, Greek-speaking “Eastern Romans” ruled the eastern Mediterranean from Constantinople.

A few months after Valentinian’s assassination, Genseric descended on Rome. Pope Leo was able to convince him to choose peaceful occupation over bloody massacre. Heaps of treasure were carted off to Carthage, and thousands of citizens, including the widow and daughters of the recently murdered emperor, were made captives. However, Genseric spared the city from destruction. In 468, Genseric crowned his achievements by destroying a naval expedition sent jointly by the Eastern and Western emperors.

Vandal and Roman societies were separated by religious differences. As a sign of independence and a way of avoiding domination by the Roman clergy, most Germanic groups had converted to Arianism, which questioned Jesus Christ’s divinity. Genseric brought an organized Arian clergy to Africa. Allied with the Donatists, a rival Christian sect, he and his successors instituted vengeful persecutions against Catholics. Churches were burned, and all Catholic gatherings were forbidden. Bishops and priests were deported. After two decades of persecution, Valentinian III intervened, and Genseric allowed Catholic bishops to be installed. When the bishop of Carthage died two years after Valentinian’s murder, the election of a new bishop was forbidden. Genseric presided over another twenty years of repression, particularly of Catholics surviving within the administration.

Significance

After a fifty-year reign, Genseric died in 477 and was succeeded by his even more fanatical son, Hunneric. After Catholic bishops refused to convert to Arianism, Huneric applied Roman laws against heretics. The bishops were exiled. Members of the Catholic laity found every trade closed to them. Huneric died within months, but forced baptisms, martyrdoms, and tortures continued. African Catholicism was left with no bishops, no churches, and hardly any priests. Persecution ended only when Hilderic, the son of Huneric and a captive daughter of Valentinian III, came to power in 523. Meanwhile, Mauritania and Numidia were abandoned to the Moors.

The pro-Catholic Hilderic was half Roman, the last descendant of the old Imperial family of Theodosius. He enjoyed friendly relations with the emperor Justinian, and he recalled bishops and restored churches. Incurring the wrath of the Arian Vandal nobility, he was overthrown and murdered in 532. Justinian intervened with a large force. On September 14, 532, the Imperial general Belisarius defeated the Vandals at Ad Decimam, took Carthage, and easily subdued one district after another. By 539, Vandal rule in Africa had ended.

Unlike the Goths and Franks, the Vandals were unable to put down deep roots. They made no lasting cultural contribution and left almost no records. Those Vandals who survived became Roman slaves, intermingled with the peoples of North Africa, and disappeared from history. Nevertheless, Genseric was one of the most able, and unscrupulous, of all Germanic leaders. His conquest of Roman Africa irreversibly weakened the Empire and the North African church. A feeble Roman-Christian North Africa survived the barbarian onslaught, only to succumb to seventh century Muslim invasions, which permanently destroyed the unity of the Mediterranean world.

Bibliography

Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Edited by J. B. Bury. 7 vols. New York: Modern Library, 1995. Although inaccurate in parts, Gibbon’s classic work on Rome’s fall contains much valuable information and commentary on the Vandals, the Alans, Germanic society in general, and Imperial intrigues.

Goffart, Walter. Barbarians and Romans. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. A reprint of a 1928 work, Goffart’s book emphasizes the ruthlessness of Genseric and the Vandals, who he argues played a key role in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Gwatkin, H., and J. Whitney, eds. The Cambridge Medieval History. 8 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1964-1968. The first volume of this standard source includes an excellent section by Ludwig Schmidt, who offers a balanced look at the social, political, and military aspects of the Vandals from Genseric to Hilderic.

O’Donnell, James J. Augustine. Boston: Twayne, 1985. A biography of Augustine that contains much information about religious controversy within Roman Africa, Rome’s decline, and Genseric’s siege of Hippo Regius.

Tacitus. Germania. Translated by J. B. Rives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Tacitus provides a representative Roman view of the society, politics, and customs of the Vandals and other Germans in the era prior to Rome’s decline.

Todd, Malcolm. The Early Germans. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995. The society, organization, migrations, customs, and conquests of the Vandals and other Germanic groups are surveyed in this useful book, which sheds much light on a confused era.