Being Christian in Vandal Africa: The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West by Robin Whelan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Being Christian in Vandal Africa: The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West by Robin Whelan Roland Steinacher Robin Whelan Being Christian in Vandal Africa: The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West Transformation of the Classical Heritage Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018 Pp. 301. $95.00. This book stems from a 2014 dissertational thesis at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Whelan provides an exhaustive and convincing analysis of doctrinal conflicts under Vandal rule in Roman Africa, contributing greatly to our understanding of the post-Roman West. The book is divided into two larger sections, “Contesting Orthodoxy” and “Orthodoxy and Society” (which are themselves apportioned into seven chapters), an introduction, an epilogue, and six appendices. Finally, a timeline, a map, figures and tables, a comprehensive bibliography, and an index are part of this study. Whelan pictures the two competing churches in his first chapter. Leading Nicene bishops like Quodvultdeus and Fulgentius of Ruspe had to struggle for followers, properties, and dispensations while their Homoian counterparts were privileged by the Vandal kings. Even though Victor of Vita painted blatant dissimilarities between the two institutions, they originated from a very similar background. Whelan convincingly argues that linguistic (Gothic as a liturgical language) and ethnic differences have been overemphasized in modern research. Some studies completely misunderstood Homoian Christology as a “Germanic” deployment and traces of this approach persist inside and outside scholarly studies. Homoian clerics were, however, part of a common Christian and Roman tradition. The Vandal military had attracted Arian clergymen from all over the Roman Empire. These Homoian theologians tried to build up a new African church, a heretical one in the eyes of their Nicene competitors. The second chapter focuses on how churchmen debated with one another and shows a vibrant culture of polemical Christian disputation. One of the strongest points of this book is Whelan’s discussion of a number of rarely treated or nearly ignored texts. Sermons, letters, doctrinal tractates, biblical testimonia collections, conciliar acts, psalms, poems, histories, saints’ lives, and theological treatises used in the Nicene-Homoian controversy, florilegia, and dialogues are regarded side-by-side with well-known sources like Victor of Vita’s Historia. These texts [End Page 445] have received comparably little attention in modern scholarship, partly because of their sometimes-surreal narrative structures. For example, dialogues of long-dead church fathers with famous heretics were central in debates over religious authority, doctrine, and practice in late antique Africa. Interestingly enough, Nicene as well as Homoian writers used similar literary forms. Whelan scrutinizes the available material, sometimes managing to revivify Homoian voices hidden behind the curtain of Nicene polemics. The third chapter reconstructs the self-presentation of a Homoian Christian community. Homoian writers defined themselves as members of the one true Christian church and consequently managed to put known church fathers like Athanasius and Augustine in the position of heretics. King Huneric tried to invoke the theological adjudications of the councils of Ariminum (Rimini) and Seleucia from the year 359 in the provinces under his rule. Doing this, the Homoian church appeared as the only holy, apostolic, and catholic (in the original sense of being universal) church with full legitimation. Like Emperor Constantius II’s attempt to change the results of Nicaea, the Vandal king Huneric tried this for the African provinces and in some respects also for the rest of the empire. He acted like a Roman emperor and the edicts cited by Victor of Vita use a juridical terminology known from late antique imperial chancelleries. The fourth and final chapter of the first section examines the role of historical theological controversies for the dispute in Vandal Africa. Both sides referred to the past and especially to the Donatist schism in fourth-century Africa. The goal of Homoian as well as Nicene writers was to bolster claims to orthodoxy. Nicene clerics sought to link their Homoian opponents with the Arians and other heretics of the past. Homoian writers and jurisprudents in royal service prepared a severe strike against the Nicene church. Laws that had been created by several Roman emperors to protect the Nicene church were imposed by King Huneric against the African Catholics. The second section...