Arianism and the Byzantine Army in Africa 533-546

Abstract

One of the principal motivations for the Emperor Justinian's reconquest of Africa from the Vandal king Gelimer (Gelimer reigned from 15 June 530 to 15 September 533), was religious: the desire to liberate the African Catholic majority of the population from their Arian Vandal persecutors. No critical study exists, however, which assesses the extent to which the Byzantine expeditionary force of 533 actually treated its invasion of Africa as a Catholic war against Arianism. Such a study would also provide some information on the obscure problem of the relative significance of Arianism in North Africa after the Byzantine reconquest. Clarification of this question has become desirable, for in a recent article C. J. Speel argued that the disappearance of Christianity in the wake of the Islamic conquest is explained by the affinity of Islam and Arianism, which he claims was the religion of the majority of North Africans after the Byzantine reconquest. His thesis deserves to be tested by the Byzantine sources: according to the sources, how successfully did Arianism in Africa survive the collapse of the Vandal authority which had established it?