Local Religions in Roman North Africa on the Eve of the Middle Ages

Abstract

This paper considers how late antique Latin authors (mainly Augustine and Corippus) dealt with ancestral rites and practices of probable autochthonous (i. e. Berber) origin and provided an ideological resemantisation. Although motivated by anti-pagan pleas and also allowing for some exaggeration, they nevertheless provide reliable information, which can be compared against epigraphic evidence, and offer further contributions that enrich the knowledge of the North African local pantheon, otherwise largely documented by epigraphical evidence. It might therefore be surmised that, notwithstanding the deep Christianisation of the region, at the end of the Roman Empire, North Africa still witnessed the survival of residual and isolated pagan fringes.