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 Byzantine Rule.—Under Genseric’s successors (see ), Carthage was still the scene of many displays of savage brutality, though Thrasamund built new baths and a basilica. Ultimately Gelimer, the last Vandal king, was defeated at Ad Decimum by the Byzantine army under Belisarius, who entered Carthage unopposed (September 14, 533). The restored city now received the name of Colonia Justiniana Carthago; Belisarius rebuilt the walls and entrusted the government to Solomon. New basilicas and other monuments were erected, and Byzantine Carthage recovered for a century the prosperity of the Roman city.

At length the Arabs, having conquered Cyrenaica and Tripolitana (647), and founded Kairawan (670), arrived before Carthage. In 697 Hasan ibn en-Noman, the Gassanid governor of Egypt, captured the city almost without resistance. But the garrison left by the Arabs was quite unable to defend itself against the patrician Joannes, who retook the city and hastily put it in a state of defence. Hasan returned furious with anger, defeated the Byzantines again, and decreed the entire destruction of the city. His orders were fulfilled; and in 698 Carthage finally disappears from history. Once again only does the name appear in the middle ages, when the French king, Louis IX., at the head of the eighth crusade, disembarked there on the 17th of July 1270. He died, however, of the plague on the 25th of August without having recovered northern Africa for civilization.

 CARTHAGE, a city and the county-seat of Jasper county, Missouri, U.S.A., on the Spring river, about 950 ft. above sea-level, and about 150 m. S. by E. of Kansas City. Pop. (1890) 7981; (1900) 9416, of whom 539 were negroes; (1910 census) 9483. It is served by the St. Louis & San Francisco, the Missouri Pacific, and the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railways, and is connected with Webb City and Joplin, Mo., and Galena, Kan., by the electric line of the Southwest Missouri railway. The town is built on high ground underlain by solid limestone, and has much natural and architectural beauty. It is the seat of the Carthage Collegiate Institute (Presbyterian). A Chautauqua assembly and a county fair are held annually. In the vicinity there are valuable lead, zinc and coal mines, and quarries of Carthage “marble,” with which the county court house is built. Carthage is a jobbing centre for a fruit and grain producing region; live-stock (especially harness horses) is raised in the vicinity; and among the city’s manufactures are lime, flour, canned fruits, furniture, bed springs and mattresses, mining and quarrying machinery, ploughs and woollen goods. In 1905 the factory products were valued at $1,179,661. Natural gas for domestic use and for factories is piped from the Kansas gas fields. The municipality owns and operates the electric-lighting plant. Carthage, founded in 1833, was laid out as a town and became the county-seat in 1842, was incorporated as a town in 1868, was chartered as a city in 1873, and in 1890 became a city of the third class under the general (state) law. On the 5th of July 1861 about 3500 Confederates under General James E. Rains and M. M. Parsons, accompanied by Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson (1807–1862), and 1500 Union troops under Colonel Franz Sigel, were engaged about 7 m. north of the city in an indecisive skirmish which has been named the battle of Carthage.

 CARTHAGE, SYNODS OF. During the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries the town of (q.v.) in Africa served as the meeting-place of a large number of church synods, of which, however, only the most important can be treated here.

1. In May 251 a synod, assembled under the presidency of Cyprian to consider the treatment of the lapsi (those who had fallen away from the faith during persecution), excommunicated Felicissimus and five other Novatian bishops (Rigorists), and declared that the lapsi should be dealt with, not with indiscriminate severity, but according to the degree of individual guilt. These decisions were confirmed by a synod of Rome in the autumn of the same year. Other Carthaginian synods concerning the lapsi were held in 252 and 254.

2. Two synods, in 255 and 256, held under Cyprian, pronounced against the validity of heretical baptism, thus taking direct issue with Stephen, bishop of Rome, who promptly repudiated them, and separated himself from the African Church. A third synod, September 256, unanimously reaffirmed the position of the other two. Stephen’s pretensions to authority as “bishop of bishops” were sharply resented, and for some time the relations of the Roman and African Churches were severely strained.

3. The Donatist schism (see ) occasioned a number of important synods. About 348 a synod of Catholic bishops, who had met to record their gratitude for the effective official repression of the “Circumcelliones” (Donatist terrorists), declared against the rebaptism of any one who had been baptized in the name of the Trinity, and adopted twelve canons of clerical discipline.

4. The “Conference of Carthage” (see ), held by imperial command in 411 with a view to terminating the Donatist schism, while not strictly a synod, was nevertheless one of the most important assemblies in the history of the African church, and, indeed of the whole Christian church.

5. On the 1st of May 418 a great synod (“A Council of Africa,” St Augustine calls it), which assembled under the presidency of Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, to take action concerning the errors of Caelestius, a disciple of (q.v.), denounced the Pelagian doctrines of human nature, original sin, grace and perfectibility, and fully approved the contrary views of Augustine. Prompted by the reinstatement by the bishop of Rome of a deposed African priest, the synod enacted that “whoever appeals to a court on the other side of the sea (meaning Rome) may not again be received into communion by any one in Africa” (canon 17).

6. The question of appeals to Rome occasioned two synods, one in 419, the other in 424. The latter addressed a letter to