Late Roman Africa Research Articles

Invisible men: mobility and political change on the frontier of late Roman Africa

The political hierarchies that developed in North Africa in the post‐Roman period have traditionally been ascribed either to invading groups from the Sahara, or to indigenous elites who transformed their political authority to respond to changing circumstances. The present article suggests that such interpretations have neglected the role played by seasonal pastoralists within the emergence of these new polities. Human mobility was a crucial feature of the late antique Maghreb, as analysis of the later Roman frontier system reveals. Equally, contemporary anthropological scholarship emphasizes the influence that mobile groups can have in periods of social and political upheaval and their capacity for hierarchical stratification. The article offers two brief case studies, and argues that Antalas, leader of the ‘Frexes’ in southern Byzacena, and the occupants of the ‘Djedar’ tumulus mausolea near Tiaret, are best viewed as products of a mobile society.

Les cités de l'Afrique romaine au Bas-Empire : les curies et l'évasion des notables municipaux

Research works on Late Roman Africa are undeniably dominated by the thesis of Claude Lepelley, who clearly revealed the prosperity of the African cities during Late Antiquity. This prosperity is noticeable among public works, sign of wealth of the cities, and among the functioning of the municipal institutions, which, in spite of important changes, shows great continuity with the Principate. This proper functioning rested on the municipal council, and the question thus arises of the evasion of municipal curials to the superior orders of the Roman society, in particular to the Senate. Claude Lepelley put into perspective this evasion, sign for him of the ambition of the wealthiest and prominent citizens, and not of an elite's crisis. Five laws of the Theodosian Code, which were promulgated during the years 338-340, and nominally addressed to African cities, seem to be consistent with the image of a flight of the municipal elites to the Senate, with the aim of evading their duties towards their cities, but the comparison with the epigraphical documentation corrects this negative impression and suggests that the curial model remained attractive in the social sphere of the wealthy Africans.

Modelos de rebelião rural e as revoltas rurais do Império Romano Tardio

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é verificar a aplicabilidade dos modelos de rebeliões rurais das ciências sociais para a compreensão das rebeliões rurais tardo-romanas. Para isso são descritos e apresentados alguns dos modelos-chave de rebeliões rurais e seus contextos históricos ou antropológicos de pesquisa originais. Nesse sentido, proponho que alguns dos modelos discutidos contribuem efetivamente para a compreensão dos relatos sobre as ações dos bagaudas e dos circunceliões, respectivamente, na Gália e na África tardo-romanas, uma vez que eles articulam as atividades dos bagaudas e dos circunceliões com as condições de vida e de trabalho das comunidades rurais de onde surgiram.

LESLIE DOSSEYPeasants and Empire in Christian North Africa. (The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, number 47.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2010. Pp. xvii, 352. $60.00

The spread of ideas and of goods has remarkable potential to transform structures of social power. Leslie Dossey's important new study is a compelling exploration of that process in late Roman Africa (roughly the territory of modern Tunisia, Algeria, and western Libya). Her book specifically seeks to understand why the African provincial elite suddenly become anxious about peasant rebellion in the fourth century a.d., at a time when actual rural violence was both rare and easily suppressed. Dossey proposes that, in comparison to the classical period, late antiquity witnessed “a greater resemblance between rural and urban populations, both in terms of material culture and religious ideology” (p. 7), and that this “resemblance could heighten, not mollify, social tensions” (p. 8). Dossey draws both on archaeological field surveys and on a wide array of written sources. Indeed, to specialists one of the most exciting aspects of her work is sure to be her examination of over four hundred anonymous Christian sermons and other texts that have never been extensively exploited by historians but whose scriptural tradition or transmission history strongly suggests that they were composed in Africa between the fourth and sixth centuries.

Bad Boys: Circumcellions and Fictive Violence

The circumcellions were roving bands of violent men and women found in late Roman Africa. The problem is that far more of them have been produced by literary fictions, ancient and modern, than once existed. The fictions have their own intriguing history, but they are otherwise useless for those who are interested in the banality of what actually happened.

Episcopus et plebs: L'eveque et la communaute ecclesiale dans les conciles africains (345-525) (review)

Ancient and Medieval Episcopus et plebs: L'eveque et la communaute ecclesiale dans les conciles africains (345-525). By Jean-Anatole Sabw Kanyang. [Publications Universitaires Europeennes, Series XXIII: Theology Vol. 701.] (Bern: Peter Lang. 2000. Pp. xiv, 396; 2 folding maps. $57.95 paperback.) Episcopus et plebs is a masterful examination of church life and the episcopate in late Roman Africa, glimpsed through the prism of canonical legislation from that region. Scholars of North African Christianity owe a debt of gratitude to Sabw Kanyang (and to his thesis director, Otto Wermelinger, at the University of Fribourg) for this much-needed volume. Until its appearance, no systematic survey of the African canons had ever been produced; scholars had simply mined Mansi's eighteenth-century compendium for relevant statutes. Sabw Kanyang rightly lauds Charles Munier for his excellent critical edition of the African canons (Concilia Afrtcae, CSEL vol. 149, 1974), without which Sabw Kanyang's own work would never have been possible. The author investigates the era when the schismatic Donatist Church dominated the African landscape and the Cadiolic Church there was in disarray. Chapter 1 concentrates on a problem handicapping the Catholic side-a severe lack of clergy. Desperate for candidates, the African bishops decided to recruit ex-Donatist clergy, a solution frowned upon by the sees of Rome and Milan, whom the Africans often consulted on disciplinary issues. Sabw Kanyang wisely sees that the Africans adhered to their own policy while remaining highly respectful of the transmarine churches. A brief overview of the North African Church and some historiography on its canons would be useful here. The author should also highlight the crucial efforts of Augustine and Aurelius (primate of Carthage) to revitalize the African Church through a series of councils spanning thirty years whose canons form the bedrock of this volume. Central to the reformers' ambitious program was better clerical education, but such a goal was not easily achieved. Readers should be cautioned that ignorance, indifference, and geographical isolation characterized a significant portion of the African episcopate. Chapter 2 analyzes episcopal elections, consecrations, and the organization of dioceses. The provincial primate and neighboring bishops played a preponderant role in elections, but theplebs (the congregation) also were expected to approve or veto candidates, whom they usually knew well. Conditions in some dioceses were chaotic due to poaching of sees, partitioning of sees to accommodate exDonatist congregations, and burgeoning populations straining ill-defined country dioceses. …

Augustine, Episcopal Interests, and the Papacy in Late Roman Africa

The bishops of Roman Africa vacillated in their relations with the papacy in the three decades preceding the Vandal invasion and, more specifically, during the papacies of Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, and Coelestine. Theyseemed grossly inconsistent, first praising papal authority, then curbing its ability to influence African jurisdiction. In synodal letters of 416 associated with the Pelagian controversy, the bishops exalted Roman authority, even ascribing to the pope a ‘greate dignity’ and a ‘special gift of grace’. An additional private letter of five African bishops contrasted the African ‘brook’ with the Roman ‘spring’. Augustine also acknowledged the special authority of Rome. These were no mere effusions of polite speech. The Africans intended to sway a papal hand in their campaign against Pelagius and his supporters by seeking papal approbation of their condemnations of Pelagianism. The Council of Sardica and Roman law had earlier granted the papacy the authority to function as a ‘court of appeals’ in the Western Church. Accordingly, Innocent responded to the African bishops with a condemnation of the heresy, however equivocal in points of doctrine, dramatically clothed in the style of imperial rescript. Boniface and Coelestine soon provided official approbation of African canons issued in 418 at the Council of Carthage, and Augustine and subsequent popes regarded this as the proof of a consistent papal position in support of African doctrine, leaving Zosimus' temporary exoneration of Pelagius and Caelestius the unsuccessful exception to the rule.

Some Notes on the Donatist Schism

AbstractRecent work on the highly significant Donatist religious schism in late Roman Africa is reviewed, supported by an Appendix tabulating a draft chronology of Donatism. Particular attention is paid to the controversy surrounding the date and origins of the schism. The ‘revolutionary fringe’ of the Donatist movement, the Circumcellions, is also discussed, with specific reference to arguments concerning the social status of this group. A third section outlines the participation of Tripolitanian bishops of both Catholic and Donatist persuasion at the great Conference of Carthage in AD 411. The social historical importance of the extensive documentation is illustrated at several points by reference to illuminating insights into life in late Roman Africa.

Christianity and Local Culture in Late Roman Africa

The task of this paper is, in part, an invidious one: for I shall have to begin by looking a gift-horse in the mouth. I shall have to question a group of opinions that link the rise of Christianity in Africa with a resurgence of the local culture of the area. This resurgence, it is said, explains not only the rapid collapse of Roman rule at the time of the Vandal invasion of 429, but the disappearance of Roman civilisation and of Christianity itself in Africa in the early Middle Ages.Discussion of this suggestion, however, tends to be jeopardised from the start because claims for the honour of being the resurgent local culture of Late Roman Africa have been enthusiastically advanced on behalf of two distinct and mutually-exclusive local cultures, associated with the two native languages—with Punic, on the one hand, and with ‘Libyan’ (which is often described by a convenient if perilous anachronism as ‘Berber’), on the other. What is more, these claims have been advanced by two equally distinct groups of scholars, handling different evidence. The evidence for the survival of Punic—or, so as not to prejudge the issue, of a lingua Punica—is literary: Augustine of Hippo and Procopius are the sole authorities for the period. The evidence for ‘Berber,’ by contrast, is largely confined to the interpretation of Libyan inscriptions and of traces of unchanging habits of worship and craftsmanship allegedly betrayed in the remains of the Christian Churches of Central Numidia.