Local and Overseas Saints and Religious Identity in Vandal Africa

Abstract

The article’s aim is to demonstrate that in the fifth and sixth centuries, the conflicting religious groups in Africa - Arian Vandals and Nicene Romans - did not use the cult of specific saints to strengthen and express their respective identities as it has been often assumed in the scholarship. In this period, changes in the set of saints venerated in Africa took place and the cult of foreign saints developed especially quickly. Yet nothing suggests a causal link between Vandal religious policy and these changes and even their chronological association is dubious. Nothing proves that the Vandals worshiped their proper saints either. It seems that both sides of the conflict venerated the same apostles and martyrs and the evolution of the sanctoral in Africa followed the same patterns that can be observed in other parts of the Mediterranean. It does not mean that the cult of saints did not play any role in the conflict, but that the struggle was over possessing sanctuaries of renowned martyrs rather than over promoting one’s own saints.