As Augustine lay dying in the summer of 430, Vandal armies surrounded Hippo.1 Five or so years later, his biographer, Possidius of Calama, wrote that a vast army had poured into Africa from Spain. Led by the Vandal king Geiseric (428-477), this host combined Vandal Hasdingi-Silingi clans and Alans (an assortment reflected in the royal title Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum), with Goths and other ethnic groups, including some Hispano-Romans and Suevi. Possidius, who probably witnessed some of what he recounted, claimed that the invaders violently overran the countryside, from Mauretania to Africa Proconsularis, inflicting atrocities, looting and burning cities, destroying churches, and torturing or killing the priests who tried to protect them.2
According to Possidius, Augustine was less concerned about loss of property — or even life — than loss of souls. He grieved as he witnessed African churches being emptied of their clergy and destroyed, and ceasing to offer the Holy Sacrament. He also judged the trials to be a form of divine judgment. In a letter to his brother bishop Honoratus, he urged ministers to stay in their posts as long as possible and not to desert the communities that needed spiritual succor.3 Although exaggerating, Possidius maintained that at the end of Augustine’s life only three African churches remained — Carthage, Hippo, and Cirta4 — and that shortly after Augustine’s death, Hippo itself was taken, abandoned by its inhabitants and burned to the ground.5 The Vandal invasion certainly prevented Capreolus of Carthage (Aurelius’s successor as bishop) from attending the Council of Ephesus in 431. In a letter excusing his absence, he explained that the devastation of Africa prevented its bishops from even holding a synod themselves, much less sending representatives abroad.6
The invaders were a poly-ethnic multitude (numbering at least 80,000 persons, including children and slaves according to the roughly contemporary chronicler, Victor of Vita). Having been pushed first across the Rhine by the Huns, and then out of Spain (where the Romans and their later-arriving Visigoth allies accorded them residency but not property),7 they clearly desired both territory and the material resources of the African provinces.8 According to Victor, their army laid waste to the land as they invaded, burning orchards and ravaging cities and towns, treating churches and saints’ shrines with special ferocity.9
The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea blamed the invasion of Africa on Count Boniface, Augustine’s friend and collaborator. Having fallen out of favor with the regent Augusta, Galla Placidia (mother of Valentinian III), Boniface decided to establish a defensive alliance with the two sons of King Godigisclus (Geiseric and Gontharis), agreeing that, if successful, each of them should hold one third of Roman Africa and offer mutual defense to the others. Procopius surmised that Boniface’s Vandal second wife, Pelagia, had persuaded him to do this, for through her he had formed close ties to the Vandal king. Once back in favor (and cleared of the charge of treason), Boniface regretted this stratagem and tried to persuade the Vandals to withdraw, but it was too late. Thus, in 429, Boniface found himself opposing an incursion of the tribes assembled under the leadership of Geiseric (Gontharis’s successor) that he had invited into the region. After unsuccessfully trying to fend off the invaders, Boniface fell back on Hippo Regius with his army of allied Goths.10
During what became a fourteen-month siege, Augustine and refugee bishops who had fled from neighboring regions prayed for divine assistance.11 The enemy briefly retreated to re-supply themselves, but not before Augustine was stricken with a fever and died. Although Boniface received reinforcements from Rome and Constantinople, which were delivered by the Arian and Alan Aspar, the magister militum of the Eastern Empire, he was badly defeated after a fierce battle.12 Recalled to Italy, he died at the battle of Rimini in 432.13
In 435, Trigetius, the Praetorian Prefect of Italy, concluded a peace treaty at Ravenna with Geiseric that ceded a portion of Africa (including all of Numidia) to the Vandals, gave them the status of foederati, and established Hippo Regius as the Vandal capital of Africa.14 The treaty was sealed with the handing over of Geiseric’s son Huneric as hostage to the Ravenna court as an assurance of good faith.15 The friendship was not to last. In 439, Geiseric broke his oath, declared his dominion independent of the Roman state, and pushed on to take Carthage, which became his new capital.16 He then turned his attention to raiding along the northern coast of the Mediterranean.17 He attacked Sicily, pillaged and laid siege to Palermo, and (according to contemporary chronicles) initiated a persecution of its Nicene Christians which included attempts to convert them by force to the Vandal form of Arian Christianity.18
The threat of these Vandal raids prompted the Roman emperors to attempt pushing the Vandals back. In 441, Theodosius II sent a fleet of ships from the East, and Valentinian III provided reinforcements from Rome. The expedition proved futile, just reaching Sicily before the fleet was recalled to defend the East from the Huns and the Persians. Valentinian then negotiated another peace treaty in 442 that ceded Byzacena, Proconsularis, eastern Numidia, and Tripolitana to the Vandals. In return, western Numidia and the Mauretanias were retroceded to the empire. Valentinian also recognized the Vandal state as an independent kingdom in former Roman territory instead of foederati. Africa was thus divided into two distinct sovereign territories.19
The peace agreement of 442 had not only divided Africa into two distinct parts but also betrothed Valentinian’s infant daughter, Eudocia, to Geiseric’s eldest son and presumed heir, Huneric.20 Huneric had been allowed to return to Carthage from Ravenna in 445 or 446.21 Given the princess’s age, the marriage had to be put off. In 455, Petronius Maximus staged an assault on Valentinian III, accomplished his assassination, and proclaimed himself successor to the western throne. He forced Valentinian’s widow, Licinia Eudoxia, to marry him and betrothed the princess Eudocia to his own son Palladius.22
Licinia Eudoxia then turned to Geiseric to rescue her and her daughters, Eudocia and Placidia. The resulting Vandal expedition overran and sacked Rome (455); Maximus and Palladius were turned on and killed by their own people.23 The three imperial women were brought to Carthage along with an enormous amount of looted treasure. Eudocia was finally married to Huneric, a royal marriage that gave the prestige of the Theodosian dynasty to the Vandal royal house.24 At the request of the eastern emperor Leo (457-474), Licinia Eudoxia and Placidia were transported safely to Constantinople, and Placidia was eventually married to Olybrius, a Roman senator and future consul of Constantinople, who had fled from the Vandal sack of Rome.25 Unfortunately for her, the princess Eudocia, no longer the daughter of a living Roman emperor, was not the prize that Geiseric had originally sought for his son. Although their only son, Hilderic, was born in the early 460s, the religious differences between the couple were insurmountable, and Eudocia eventually left Africa for the East, probably retiring to a convent near Jerusalem, where she died around 472.26
After the Vandal sack of Rome in 455, the emperors tried on at least two occasions to retake Africa; both attempts were disastrous. The western emperor Majorian (457-61) lost most of a significant army to the Vandals and his own life to dysentery.27 Around 468, after the western general Marcellinus had driven the Vandals out of Sardinia, the eastern emperor Leo I (457-474) gathered a force of more than 400,000 soldiers and sailors under the leadership of Basiliscus.28 Basiliscus hesitated, accepted a bribe, or fell victim to treason; the Vandals easily destroyed the Roman fleet by setting it on fire. In the meantime, since the Vandals had begun to threaten the coast of Illyricum, the eastern emperor Zeno (474-491) negotiated another peace settlement in 475 that at least secured the safety of Byzantium and remained in effect until Justinian’s recapture of Africa in 534.29
When Geiseric died in 477, Huneric succeeded him but ruled for only seven years. Unlike his father, he focused primarily on internal policy and remained at peace with the empire. Huneric was succeeded by his nephew Gunthamund (484-96) rather than by his son, Hilderic, who would have been in his early twenties at the time of his father’s death.30 Gunthamund’s younger brother, Thrasamund, then came to power (496-523). In Ravenna, he entered an alliance with the Ostragothic king Theodoric and married his sister, Amalfrida, though he did not share Theodoric’s toleration for Nicene Christians. By the end of the fifth century, the borders of the Vandal Kingdom were threatened by the Mauri tribes from the south who had sacked Thamugadi (Timgad) and were raiding other cities in eastern Numidia. Thrasamund was succeeded by Huneric’s son Hilderic (523-530), who adhered to the Nicene orthodoxy of his mother, the western princess Eudocia, rather than the Arian creed of his father. Probably because of this, Hilderic broke with the Ostrogoths and allied himself with the Byzantines. Hilderic’s being half-Roman, his religious affiliation, his alliances with Emperor Justin and the future emperor Justinian, and his allowances to the African Nicenes made him extremely unpopular among his Vandal subjects. Although he was tolerant of the Vandals and their faith, he was elderly (more than sixty years old at the time of his accession) and perceived as a weakling who was too cozy with the Byzantine rulers and unable to wage war against other enemies of the kingdom.
In 530, Gelimer, Hilderic’s cousin and next in line for the throne, deposed and imprisoned Hilderic. Gelimer may have used Hilderic’s religion and close alliances with the eastern emperor as pretexts for accusing him of plotting to turn the kingdom over to the Byzantines. In response, Justinian sent envoys to Africa, demanding that Gelimer return the throne to Hilderic, but promising to support him as Hilderic’s rightful successor. Gelimer, citing the peace treaty negotiated by Zeno and Geiseric in 475, condemned Justinian for meddling in the affairs of an independent kingdom. Justinian’s outrage led to the Byzantine invasion of Africa three years later.31
Thus the Vandal era was one of continuity as well as change, and, despite the religious conflicts between the native Nicenes and the Arian newcomers, a time of relative stability: the Carthaginian harbor sustained a lively commercial trade;32 the baths, circus, and amphitheater were continuing centers of public entertainment;33 luxurious villas for the wealthy were built and decorated.34 The Vandals appear to have been determined to establish a kingdom in which their Arian faith would have been the sanctioned state religion, but that would be as civilized, prosperous, and powerful as that of their Roman competitors.
From an archeological standpoint, the Vandal era was not a period of significant or innovative building, but adaptation of late Roman structures and styles. Geiseric reportedly tore down the walls of all the cities except Carthage in order to prevent their becoming strongholds of resistance. He also allowed the walls of Carthage to fall into disrepair, according to Procopius, adding to the ease of the Byzantine reconquest.35
The majority of the Vandal people adhered to a type of Arian Christianity, probably having been converted by followers of the fourth-century Goth and missionary bishop Ulfilas and given support during the reign of the Arian emperor Valens (364-78). Although little is known about their actual theological position, Victor of Vita asserted that they claimed the legitimacy and orthodoxy of the decrees of the Councils of Ariminum and Selucia, presided over by an earlier Arian emperor, Constantius.36 If Victor’s report is accurate, Vandal Trinitarian theology was probably in line with the Homoean doctrine of the later fourth century that affirmed that the Son was “like” but lesser than the Father. This was different from the earlier and continuing “Arian” teaching that the Son was radically different from the Father.37 Vandal Arianism was probably not unlike that brought to Africa by Gothic mercenaries and allies of the western emperor early in the fifth century.
Augustine had come into contact with Arians while living in Milan before his baptism. However, his first direct contact with Arianism as a competing theology was likely in Africa, around 410, when certain Arian refugees arrived, having fled the Visigothic sack of Rome. Around 418 or 419 he wrote a response to an anonymous Arian sermon, possibly sent to him by a certain Dionysius, who lived about twenty-five miles from Hippo.38 About a decade later, he agreed to debate the Arian Gothic bishop Maximinus, who came to Africa with Count Sigisvult.39 Generally, the Arianism that Augustine refuted was the Homoean form, taught by Ulfilas. However, along with his theological objections, Augustine had another grievance. He alleged that Donatists had tried to win the Gothic Arians over to their cause by purporting to hold similar beliefs. Augustine hastened to point out that Donatists confessed that the Trinity is of one substance, while the Arians held differently. Nevertheless, he noted, the two shared a similar conviction that rebaptism of converts to either communion was required.40
The future Bishop of Carthage, Quodvultdeus, may have been even more attuned to the specific tenets of Vandal Arianism. Even as a deacon, he had exacted a book on Christian heresies from the aging Augustine.41 His creedal homilies, written in the mid-430s (during the reign of his predecessor, Capreolus) refuted certain Arian teachings on the relationship of the Son to the Father, without specifying those opponents’ identity or ethnicity. Quodvultdeus asserted that these heretics denied that the Son and Holy Spirit were omnipotent, and that they insisted the Father was greater than the Son.42 Since neither liturgical nor doctrinal works from actual Vandal sources exist, knowledge of their particular beliefs (as distinct from Gothic Arianism) comes only from the side of the Nicene defenders.
The Gallican historian and monk Salvian of Marseilles (ca. 400-480) was one of the first to describe the religious practice of the Vandals. His writings are somewhat untrustworthy, however, as he may not actually have visited Carthage. Expressing a strikingly different perspective from Possidius of Calama or Victor of Vita, his treatise The Governance of God (written ca. 439-451) characterizes the Vandals as morally superior to the Roman Africans, and he interprets the incursions of barbarian tribes as God’s punishment for Christian moral laxity and misbehavior.43 Although Salvian was probably as biased as any source and less informed than either Possidius or Victor, his assessment provides useful contrast. He asserted that although early Christian Carthage had been home to apostles and martyrs, in later years it had become a city filled with all kinds of iniquities, from effeminate men to unchaste women. While Vandal besiegers encircled the walls, he alleged, Christians in Carthage were reveling in the theaters and going crazy in the circuses.44 Furthermore, he added, some Christians continued to worship the Roman goddess Caelestis.45
Salvian describes Vandals rehabilitating prostitutes by compelling them to marry and enforcing chastity within marriage. All in all, he concluded, the Vandals merely took possession of a corrupt population’s property — a punishment they richly deserved.46 He also contended that some of the populace welcomed the newcomers, finding among them an element of ancient Roman dignity despite their oppression, differences in worship, and culture. They preferred to live as free while in captivity, rather than as slaves with only the appearance of liberty.47
Salvian’s characterization of the Vandals as enforcers of traditional moral standards accords with their alleged intent to convert the local population to their own faith or theological position. Unlike other Arian groups (e.g., the Visigoths and Ostrogoths), the Vandals seem to have been intolerant of Christians who confessed the Nicene faith. While other Arian nations often welcomed integration into the political and social life of the Roman Empire, even attaining high military or political rank (e.g., Stilicho or Sigisvult), the Vandals tended to resist assimilation and to seek autonomy.48 Although certain forms of violent oppression and seizure of property may have been nothing more than territorial conquest, the Vandals seem to have pursued a program of displacing Roman Christianity in Africa. According to contemporary sources, they not only took over church buildings for their own use but confiscated liturgical books and vessels, prohibited house liturgies, and tortured or killed clergy and consecrated virgins.49 These acts might demonstrate a Vandal determination to replace the Nicene faith and its leaders.50
The recorded violence against African Nicene Christians prompts comparison with the programs of earlier Roman emperors, pagan and Christian alike, who deemed religious conformity a civic value, to be achieved by force if necessary. Like the pre-Constantinian persecutions of Christians, Vandal violence against Nicenes produced martyrs who refused to recant their professed faith. When Geiseric took Carthage in 439, he is reported to have driven the Catholic clergy out of the city and handed their churches over to the Arians.51 He loaded Bishop Quodvultdeus, along with a number of other clerics, onto ships and set them out to sea.52 Conversions to Arianism were sought — often coerced — and included rebaptism, a practice particularly abhorrent to both Catholic and Donatist Africans.53 Contemporary sources also indicate that the Arians sometimes also offered bribes to achieve conversions — and that this approach often worked.54
Victor of Vita describes attempts at forcible conversion of Nicene Christians. Sebastian, Boniface’s son-in-law and a counsel to King Geiseric, refused to convert to the religion of the Vandals, especially because this would have required that he undergo rebaptism. He argued that, like a pure loaf, made from flour ground in the mill of the Catholic mother, he would not be improved by being moistened and baked a second time. Geiseric, temporarily thwarted, found another reason to execute Sebastian.55 Victor also reported the martyrdoms of Martinianus and Maxima, both Nicene Christian servants of a Vandal governor (millenarius), who resisted his demand that they marry, even though Maxima was a dedicated virgin. They refused to consummate the marriage and fled to monasteries near Thabraca. When their Vandal master discovered their flight, he had them arrested, forcibly rebaptized, and tortured. All of this was to no avail, since the martyrs never surrendered to his demands to consummate their marriage or to commit apostasy by becoming Arians.56
Modern scholars have attended to Victor’s ideological bias in reporting Vandal persecution of African Nicene Christians.57 Critical evaluation of Victor’s rhetorical strategies reveals colorful exaggerations echoing those of earlier martyrdom accounts. One example of his tendency towards overstatement is Victor’s assertion that Quodvultdeus and his fellow bishops were loaded “naked and despoiled onto dangerous ships.” He later clarified that they were probably not actually nude but only stripped of most of their personal property.58 Similarly, his account of Vandals torturing Nicene bishops and priests for their gold and silver was likely modeled on Augustine’s account of the barbarians sacking Nola in order to steal Paulinus’s personal wealth.59
The later Donatist editors of the Liber Genealogus, a fifth-century chronicle of the history of the world, were no less hostile in witnessing to the events surrounding the Vandal invasion, which they saw as signs of the end time. In an early version, the Liber characterized Geiseric as the Antichrist, a characterization that probably dated to just before the fall of Carthage and was prudently removed from a subsequent edition, perhaps even at the king’s insistence.60 Not surprisingly, this chronicle presents the African Donatist Christians as the persecuted — but true — faithful. Thus the Donatist opposition to Catholic Christianity and their parallel practice of rebaptizing converts do not seem to have won them any allies among the Vandals, who were apparently more intent upon bringing both communities over to Arian faith and practice.
Contemporary sources, in particular the undoubtedly biased chronicle of Victor of Vita, characterize the Vandal religious policy not as evangelization but as violent repression of Nicene Christianity.61 After he took Carthage, Geiseric exiled Catholic bishops and subsequently refused to allow replacement for those who died in exile. Confiscation of churches and their endowments seems to have been more extensive in Africa Proconsularis than in Byzacena or Numidia, since the treaty made with Valentinian III in 442 made this the center of Vandal holdings.62 Victor of Vita reported that the Vandals occupied Carthage’s Basilica Maiorum, Basilica Celerina and the Scillitanorum (perhaps two different basilicas), Mensa Cypriani, Memoria Cypriani, and Basilica Restituta (the Catholic cathedral).63 Despite the loss of these churches and the exile of their bishops, however, Victor’s chronicle implies that Nicenes were allowed to hold services in basilicas outside the city walls (the basilicas Fausti and Novarum).64
An imperial intervention by Valentinian III in 454 led to the consecration of Deogratias (454-457) as Quodvultdeus’s successor after a fourteen-year hiatus.65 After Valentinian’s assassination and the Vandal sack of Rome in 455, Deogratias fell afoul of Vandal authorities, perhaps because he provided a refuge for Roman exiles in the suburban basilicas of Faustus and Novarum.66 When Deogratias died in 457, the office remained empty for almost twenty-five years. Geiseric further forbade the ordination of any additional bishops for the region around Carthage. He also required anyone serving the Vandal royal household to adopt Arian Christianity and be rebaptized; he prohibited Nicene religious assemblies, forcing them to worship in secret.67 According to Victor of Vita, the number of Nicene bishops in Africa Proconsularis consequently dwindled to three from an original number of 164.68 These repressions may have provoked and responded to the attempts of the emperors Majorian, Marcellinus, and Leo I to destroy the Vandal Kingdom in Africa. They set the religious context for Eudocia’s decision to abandon her husband, Huneric, and her son, Hilderic, for exile in the East.
Geiseric was succeeded by his eldest son, Huneric (477-484), who initially continued his father’s policies. Beginning in 480 or 481, however, he adopted a more moderate stance in negotiations with Emperor Zeno (474-491) and under the influence of Placidia (sister to his departed wife Eudocia). He allowed the Nicenes to elect Eugenius as Bishop of Carthage (481-484). In return for this concession, the Arians were to be allowed to practice their own religion elsewhere in the empire and to preach in the local language.69 Huneric began to seek out and persecute Manichaeans, perhaps to demonstrate his attachment to orthodoxy as he saw it. Unfortunately, according to Victor, he discovered that many of the Manichaeans he rounded up were actually also adherents of Arianism.70
Jealousy soon shattered the peace. Vandals seen going into Nicene churches raised questions about loyalty, and Huneric once again required all court officials to follow the Arian faith, forbade any conversions of Arians, and reinstituted persecutions.71 When a Nicene bishop died, the property of his church might be seized or a payment required before a successor could be installed.72 Victor reports that the king tortured consecrated virgins, and sent nearly five thousand Nicene deacons, priests, and bishops into exile in the desert.73
Intending to show himself as theologically motivated, Huneric ultimately ordered the beleaguered Nicene bishops to a conference (484) to argue their case.74 The Nicenes asked who would serve as judge. They were told that the Arian patriarch Cyrila had personally selected the jury. The Nicenes then protested Cyrila’s claiming the title of patriarch, which only stirred up the Arian side to anger at the perceived insult. Then, led by their bishop, Eugenius, the Nicenes presented a book containing their confession of faith. The Vandals refused to accept it, maintaining that they were unable to read Latin. The Nicenes delivered the document anyway, insisting that the excuse was merely invented for the occasion. Ultimately the Nicenes were denied an actual hearing, in part because the Arians objected to the Nicenes calling themselves “catholics,” a term they reserved for themselves. The Nicenes countered by charging that the Vandals were unwilling to accept their “book of faith” because their blind eyes were unable to tolerate the light of truth.75
The uproar at this exchange of insults moved the king once again to grant all African churches and property to Arian bishops and to threaten to exile any Nicene cleric who persisted in holding services.76 Finally, by means of a subterfuge, Huneric rounded up the destitute clergy and demanded that they swear to uphold a document naming his son, Hilderic, as his successor. Whether they succumbed to this demand or not, all were sent into exile — either for disloyalty or for swearing an oath contrary to the commands of the gospel (Matt. 5:33).77
Huneric’s successor, Gunthamund (484-96), returned to a policy of appeasement and granted the shrine of St. Agileus to Eugenius, the Nicene Bishop of Carthage, when he returned from exile.78 The expanded shrine served as the Catholic cathedral for most of the rest of the Vandal era in Africa.79 Gunthamund also allowed some clergy to return. This peaceful interlude served as an opportunity for those Nicenes who had fallen into apostasy, having been rebaptized as Arians, to return to the fold. This concession was resisted by a group of rigorists and required an appeal to the Bishop of Rome, Felix I, who convened a synod in 487 in Rome, and sent a letter to the African bishops with instructions for the readmission of the lapsed.80
When Gunthamund’s younger brother, Thrasamund, came to power (496-523), the tide turned again. Thrasamund exiled the Catholic clerics. Initially, he tried to convert Nicenes by offering them financial inducements, prestigious offices, and even pardon for crimes.81 Around 504, he prohibited episcopal elections that would have filled vacancies in Nicene sees in a simple attempt to have the church die out from lack of leadership. The bishops, however, resisted his order and proceeded with the ordination of new bishops. Their disobedience provoked the king to order exile again.82 Vacillating between incentives and threats, Thrasamund finally tried theological argument and persuasion to convert the Nicenes. Seeking a worthy opponent who could expound the Nicene position, he recalled Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe. Too late realizing the eloquence and learning of his adversary, the threatened Thrasamund sent Fulgentius back into exile,83 where he wrote the major polemical tracts detailing the objections of the African Nicenes to Arian Vandal theology.84 As hard as he had tried to compel conversions, at the end of his life Thrasamund allowed the establishment of parallel churches.85
Thrasamund was succeeded by Huneric’s son, Hilderic (523-530), who adhered to the Nicene orthodoxy of his mother, the western princess Eudocia, rather than the Arian creed of his father. Hilderic broke with the Ostrogoths, allied himself with the Byzantines, recalled any living Nicene clergy from exile, and reopened the churches. The return of the exiled clerics was a triumphant moment for the African church. They were greeted as their generation’s heroes and martyrs. Bonifatius was installed as Bishop of Carthage and presided over a council in 525 at the Basilica of St. Agileus. In nearly a century of Vandal rule in Carthage, only three other bishops had held the post, and all had died in exile (Quodvultdeus, Deogratias, and Eugenius). Among the sixty or so bishops present for the council was the twice-exiled Fulgentius.86 These men had to deal with the reorganization of the African church, which included the calculations of the seniority of bishops and the regulation of relations between diocesan bishops and monasteries.87
Hilderic, however, ultimately was overthrown in 530 by the last Vandal king, Gelimer, who ruled for a scant four years (530-33) before Emperor Justinian I demanded that Hilderic be returned to the throne. When Gelimer refused and had Hilderic imprisoned instead, Justinian mobilized to retake Africa, in part to avenge the overthrow of that Nicene Christian, son of the house of Theodosius.
Only a few Vandal-built churches (or significant renovations) have been identified. This suggests not only that the invaders appropriated available buildings for their religious services (as reported by Victor of Vita), but also that the Vandal liturgy required little architectural adaption.88 Vandal occupation of a formerly Catholic or Donatist church is evidenced by inscriptions, especially Germanic names on funerary plaques. One such inscription, found in what has been tentatively identified as Augustine’s basilica in Hippo, names a certain Guilia Runa as a presbyterissa, a title that has led some scholars to think that she attained a kind of clerical standing (fig. 125).89
The assimilation of the Vandals into late Roman culture may have contributed to the loss of a distinctly Vandal identity. Along with this, they may also have lost the conviction that they were following and spreading the true Christian faith by both word and sword. The time was thus ripe for another attempt at Byzantine reconquest and the reclaiming of Africa for the orthodox faith.
After Gelimer refused to submit to Justinian’s demand that he reinstate Hilderic as king, Justinian decided that it was time (and God’s will) that he attempt to retake Africa. Despite being reminded of the disasters suffered in the previous expeditions,90 General Belisarius led a Byzantine force of 15,000 infantry and cavalry in the spring of 533 from Constantinople to the outskirts of Carthage (Decimum), arriving the day before the Feast of St. Cyprian (September 14). Being out of the city when Belisarius landed his troops, Gelimer was taken by surprise, executed Hilderic, and attempted to surround the Byzantine forces. But he miscalculated, and the Vandal forces were destroyed.91 When Belisarius and his infantry reached Carthage itself on the next day, the residents threw open the gates and surrendered the city.92
The conquest of Carthage was providential in the eyes of many of its citizens. Procopius’s chronicle reports that some recalled an enigmatic and ancient childhood riddle: that gamma should pursue beta and then beta pursue gamma. This was interpreted as an oracle that Geiseric would replace Boniface, and then Belisarius would replace Gelimer. Other Africans testified that St. Cyprian had appeared to them in dreams, assuring them that he would be his own avenger. It was no coincidence, therefore, that the Byzantine entrance into the city took place on that saint’s feast day, in time for the African Catholic priests to preside over the celebrations instead of the fleeing Arians.93
In another of his chronicles, Procopius described Justinian’s rebuilding program for Carthage, which included restoring the wall and constructing new churches (one dedicated to the Theotokos), a monastery, a new forum, and a public bath.94 Other African cities benefited from this era of reconstruction and elaboration. Byzantine forts were planted, using large blocks of dressed stone in place of the older style of building known as opus Africanum, which used stone uprights and horizontal courses filled with mortared loose rubble. New churches were built in nearly every important center. In a later chronicle, Procopius described the harsher realities of the reconquest and imposition of Byzantine rule: the deaths of countless Vandals and the violent repression of Arianism.95
A series of Mauri uprisings in the late 530s and early 540s, followed by a mutiny within the imperial army itself, caused the Byzantine general Solomon (Belisarius’s replacement) to flee to Syracuse. Some of the Byzantine troops had married Vandal women or, as Goths, were Arians themselves. Apparently, Vandal clergy prompted the rebellion when they were not allowed to baptize their children or celebrate Easter in their own churches.96 Meanwhile, Romanized, Latin-speaking Africans found themselves caught between a government of Greek-speaking foreigners and a suddenly energized coalition of native tribes, mutinous troops, revenge-seeking Vandals, and rebel slaves. Eventually Belisarius returned with Solomon and restored relative, but temporary, order.97 Trouble broke out again, however, in 543, and the whole of Roman Africa was thrown into chaos. Carthage fell again to a Vandal leader, Gontharis.98 Finally, in 546 a new magister militum, John Troglita, defeated the rebellion and reasserted imperial authority.
Corippus authored an eight-volume panegyric on John, the Iohannis. Although an African himself, he had no sympathy with the rebels — especially with the natives, whom he described as uncouth and violent worshipers of a bull-god called Gurzil. His writings supply invaluable but undoubtedly biased evidence on contemporary Mauri tribes and customs but also offer perspective on how some Africans viewed the Byzantine army. He describes them as bringing stability and order in the midst of untenable social and civil strife.99
The Byzantines — no more tolerant of Arian Christians than the Vandals had been of Nicenes — re-established their own faith, restored the native Catholic hierarchy to their former churches, and prohibited Arian sacraments. Nearly a century of Vandal rule and culture was swiftly repudiated. In 535, an edict restored all the rights of the orthodox Nicene church and initiated persecution of Donatists, Jews, Arians, other heretics, and pagans.100 Despite their reinstatement, the African Catholic bishops soon learned that their Byzantine liberators were actually a new set of elite colonial rulers who kept largely to themselves and controlled both military and civil affairs. Thus, their joy at the defeat of the Vandals soon turned toward dismay, especially since the last of the Vandal kings, Gelimer, may have been more tolerant than their new ruler in Constantinople proved to be.
In matters of religion, moreover, the Greek administrators expected the Africans to conform to orthodoxy as it was defined in the distant, eastern capital.101 Although the churches retained Latin, their liturgies were inevitably influenced by Byzantine customs, and new buildings were often dedicated to Greek saints. At the same time, certain African architectural traditions were maintained, including the construction of counter-apses for the burial of clergy, saints, or relics, and the use of mosaic tomb covers.102 If the rarity of Greek names on bishops’ lists for councils in the 540s and 550s is a reliable indicator, African clerics also managed local ecclesiastical politics. Meanwhile, the Byzantine ruler expected them to adopt the hierarchal model practiced in the East — a model in which the provincial primates of sees no longer acted through regular meetings with their fellow bishops but reported directly to the emperor and were obedient to his rulings on ecclesiastical matters.103
The Africans continued to act according to many of their own practices and regarded Rome (rather than Constantinople) as their closest ecclesiastical ally, just as they had more than a century earlier during the Donatist and Pelagian controversies. During Vandal rule, moreover, many of the bishops had spent years as exiles in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy, thus strengthening their ties to that church. In 535, under the leadership of Bishop Reparatus (Bonifatius’s successor in Carthage), the bishops convoked a council to decide what to do with Arian converts to Nicene orthodoxy. They called upon the Bishop of Rome, John II (and ultimately his successor, Agapetus I), for advice on and support of their decrees. This council refused to recognize Arian orders and reduced clergy who converted to the Nicene faith to lay status. This reversed their earlier practice of allowing readmitted Donatists to retain their offices. In so doing they followed the Roman church’s policy for reconciled schismatics at the beginning of the fifth century.104
Having survived more than a century in resistance to Vandal repression of their Nicene Christianity, the African clergy resented efforts from the imperial court in Constantinople to impose doctrinal conformity, especially when they judged that compliance would draw them into heresy. A religious crisis erupted in 543-44 when Justinian ordered the African bishops to accept the condemnation of the Three Chapters. This anathematized the writings of theologians associated with Nestorius during the Christological debates a century earlier, culminating in the decree of the Council of Chalcedon in 451.105 Justinian’s edict was yet another attempt to reconcile eastern Monophysites by undermining the compromises made at Chalcedon, which the African Catholics (along with the rest of the western church) had staunchly defended. The African bishops were not especially sympathetic to Justinian’s desire to overcome religious conflict within the eastern part of the empire. They joined the other western primates, including the Bishop of Rome, in withholding their consent.106
A series of dogmatic treatises produced from the late 540s to the early 560s summarized the Africans’ reasons for dissent. These works — produced by Ferrandus, the secretary to Fulgentius of Respue, Facundus, the Bishop of Hermiane, and Liberatus, the Archdeacon of Carthage — show that African clerics presumed the right to judge independently on matters of dogma and discipline. Liberatus composed a Breuiarium, summarizing the teachings of Nestorius and the position of the Monophysites in order to educate his fellow Africans on the essentials of the two heresies.107 Facundus’s treatise, The Defense of the Three Chapters, came to the attention of Justinian himself and merited specific denunciation in his second edict of 551.108 The production of such documents showed that the Africans were unconvinced that Theodore’s views (in particular) were in any way heretical, although their knowledge of his theology was largely third-hand, from a textbook written by a certain Junillus that was based on the teachings of Theodore’s student, Paul of Nisibis.109
In Rome, Bishop Vigilius (537-555) succumbed to Justinian’s pressure to conform. A council at Carthage (550) excommunicated him110 and provoked Justinian to summon its leaders — including Reparatus of Carthage, Primasius of Hadrumetum, Firmus of Tipasa, and Verecundus of Iunci — to justify themselves in Constantinople.111 Reparatus steadfastly opposed the emperor and was sent into exile, where he eventually died.112 The deacon Primosus, after providing his assent to the condemnation, was installed as Bishop of Carthage, reportedly against the opposition of clergy and people. Firmus also conceded and was allowed to return home but died on the return voyage. Although at first resistant, Primasius ultimately relented, reportedly when the office of primate in Byzacena became available and was offered to him. He was subsequently condemned by his fellow bishops and died in disgrace. Verecundus held fast and died in exile.113 After the Second Council of Constantinople (553) approved the condemnation of the Three Chapters,114 Reparatus’s opponents garnered support for Primosus as Bishop of Carthage.115
Victor of Tunnuna, a loyal supporter of Reparatus, chronicled these turns of fortune. His resistance led Primosus to seek his imprisonment as well, along with another African colleague, Theodore of Cebarsussi. First exiled to the monastery that Justinian had earlier established in Carthage (the Mandracium), both were finally shipped off to Egypt. Joining other exiled African bishops, they stood fast against the wishes of the emperor and patriarch in Constantinople.116 Although African resistance to imperial government interference wavered under pressure, these exiles maintained their opposition until Justinian’s death in 565. In the next decades, the theological controversy was overwhelmed by more pressing security matters: the Lombard incursion in Italy and the Persian threat in the east.117
Throughout this time, the African church continued to deal with a Donatist presence. The only full list of African bishops, from the Conference of Carthage in 411, indicates that the Donatist church was relatively stronger in Numidia and Mauretania.118 These were the areas, it will be recalled, that suffered least from Vandal repression, reverting as they did to Roman control in the treaty of 442.119 Moreover, the Donatist ideology and that church’s experience of repression in the early fifth century would have prepared it for the Vandal persecution. The Donatist church seems to have survived in Africa, even under Byzantine rule.
In the 590s, Gregory I wrote to Gennadius, the Exarch of Africa, requesting that he suppress the Donatists and that he support Gregory’s efforts to prevent former Donatists who had been allowed to serve as Catholic bishops from advancing, through seniority, to the office of provincial primate.120 This effort seems to have failed, however, since several subsequent letters refer to bishops handing churches over to Donatist clerics and permitting the establishment of Donatist bishops.121 Gregory insisted that Donatism was spreading and that many Catholics had received rebaptism.122 Some Catholics, he had heard, were allowing their children and dependents to be baptized by the Donatists.123 In a separate letter to Pantaleo, Prefect of Africa, Gregory contended that Donatists were even driving Catholic bishops out of their churches.124 Gregory’s letters protest the actions of Catholic clergy and laity in dealing with Donatists primarily, if not exclusively, in Numidia. They indicate, moreover, that Gregory was responding to deacons complaining to an overseas authority about their bishops125 and that he worked through a few Numidian bishops especially loyal to the Roman church, whom he asked the imperial representative, Gennadius, to support.126 In one instance, he not only explained his episcopal responsibilities to the primate of Numidia — the most senior bishop in the province — but admonished him to seek and follow the advice of Gregory’s favorite, Bishop Columbus.127 Gregory’s interventions may have been viewed in Numidia as those of yet another meddling external authority.128 The bishops of Proconsular Africa, in contrast, were only too ready to purge the church of all those tainted by “heresy” as well as all who tolerated them.129
Gregory’s correspondence indicates that Donatism, at least in name, had not disappeared despite centuries of effort at its suppression by both church and state. The tenacity of this ethnically African movement perhaps demonstrates a continued disaffection of the native population from a Catholic, Romanized hierarchy as well as from foreign secular authorities.130 Editions of the Donatist chronicle, the Liber Genealogus, were published between 427 and 453. The Bishop of Rome, Leo I, wrote a letter to the bishops of Gaul about possible Donatist refugees in the 450s, and Victor of Vita may have mentioned Donatists as late as the 480s.131 Archeological evidence of Donatism in the Vandal and Byzantine eras includes certain church inscriptions that mention characteristically Donatist themes (e.g., purity and sanctity), record so-called Donatist watchwords (e.g., Deo laus), or employ the term unitas (perhaps indicating anti-Donatist sympathies).132 Apart from these slim indications, however, no literary or archeological records of Donatists in Africa exist for the century before Gregory’s writings.
A controversy over the nature of the divine will (Monothelitism) that erupted during the first half of the seventh century led to the last significant theological action of the North African church and, once again, demonstrated its doctrinal independence. The surviving documentary evidence indicates that some of the debate was carried on in Greek among Byzantine exiles. Because Greek had not been a language of North African Christianity since the end of the second century, its reappearance shows either the influence of a century of governance from Constantinople or, more likely, an influx of refugees from the Persian and Arab incursions in the East. The debate itself continued a conflict over the interpretation of Chalcedon long considered settled in the west, and the African bishops were only too willing to add their voices to those of the resident Greeks.133
Following Justinian’s model in the earlier Monophysite controversy, the emperors Heraclius (610-14) and Constans II (641-68) attempted to impose the dogma that the human and divine natures of Christ shared a single, combined activity or will (Monothelitism). As before, the African church resisted. Opposition was supported by Gregory, the Exarch of Africa, and Maximus the Confessor (580-662), a Byzantine monk who had fled to a Carthaginian monastery from the Persian advance into Anatolia around 630. This same monastery was also home to another refugee and major orthodox figure from the seventh century, Sophronius, later the patriarch of Jerusalem (634-39), who had fled from the invading Muslims. Both Maximus and Sophronius declared Monothelitism a heresy, because it denied the human will of Christ. The African church maintained that this, like the condemnation of the Three Chapters, bordered on repudiating the Chalcedonian definition of the faith.
The exarch Gregory sponsored a debate in 645 between Maximus and Pyrrhus. The latter was abbot of Maximus’s former monastery and deposed patriarch of Constantinople, who also found his way to Carthage.134 Pyrrhus was a defender of the Monothelite doctrine; he had been deposed and exiled for political rather than theological reasons. Pyrrhus was no match for Maximus, and the confrontation ended in his recantation.135 Since the African bishops looked to Rome as an ally in doctrinal questions, both Maximus and Pyrrhus sailed there to seek the assistance of Pope Theodore. Seeing, however, an opportunity to reclaim his status by cooperation with the emperor, Pyrrhus reverted to his former theological position and returned to Constantinople, where he was eventually reinstated as patriarch after the death of his replacement, Paul II (641-653). This betrayal led Pope Theodore to excommunicate him. Emperor Constans II then tried to cut off further argument by issuing an imperial decree that forbade any further discussion of Christ’s one or two wills or energies.136
In 646, episcopal synods were held in each of the African provinces to condemn the Monothelite doctrine. These synods directed a letter to the Bishop of Rome, seeking his support in resistance to the doctrine and the correction of Paul, the Bishop of Constantinople.137 The bishops of Byzacena also addressed a letter to the emperor, asking him to suppress the heresy.138 Finally, the bishops of Proconsular Africa addressed a letter to Paul of Constantinople, disputing the Monothelite teaching as contrary to the decree of the Council of Chalcedon on the integrity of the divine and human natures in Christ. In support of their remonstrance, they cited passages from the exposition On the Faith, which Ambrose of Milan had addressed to Emperor Gratian, and two selections from their own Augustine of Hippo.139
Meanwhile, in Carthage, the exarch Gregory attempted to set himself up as independent ruler of Africa. His revolt may have been instigated by Maximus’s success in the debate against Pyrrhus, and he went so far as to threaten excommunication of the patriarch of Constantinople. Within a year, however, he was dead — killed in one of the first battles with invading Arabs, possibly at Sufetula, where he had established his capital (648). Gregory’s death was the beginning of the end of Christian Africa and — more immediately — the collapse of political support for the theologians opposing the Monothelite teaching.140
At Rome during these events, the African bishops, not aware of Constans’s order of silence, joined forces with Maximus and Pope Martin I (Theodore’s successor) to continue the battle at a Lateran synod (649) where they anathematized Monothelitism. A gathering of more than a hundred bishops, most of them from Italy and Africa, reaffirmed Chalcedonian orthodoxy and asserted that its doctrine of Christ’s two natures necessitated his also having two wills.141 The letters of the African synods were read out and affirmed during this synod. After having forbidden any such action, Emperor Constans deemed the synod an act of clear rebellion and ordered the arrest and extradition of Pope Martin to Constantinople, where he was accused of treason (collaboration with Gregory was among other charges), deposed, and sent into exile (he died en route in 655). Maximus was similarly arrested, charged, and sent to be tried in Constantinople (655), where he was also sent into exile. From exile he continued his opposition to Monothelitism, engaging in debates and writing letters to supporters. His obstinacy led to his torture and mutilation. He died an old man in 662.142
Little is known about the African bishops who returned from the Lateran synod or how they coped with the next fifty years of off-and-on Arab invasions. From the middle of the seventh century, the written record of Christianity in Africa dies out entirely; the only sources are Arabic histories that concentrate on the conversion of the region to Islam and its transformation from a set of Roman provinces into the Maghreb. Carthage held out longer than many other places, finally falling to the Arabs in 698 after a siege of some months and help from Constantinople sent too late.
Although Christianity may have survived for another century or two, and possibly even longer in rural areas among native tribes who never fully converted to the new religion, the story of one of the most influential and robust of early Christian churches seems to end here.143 The reasons for its ultimate extinction may not be so puzzling, however, in light of those previous centuries of struggle to maintain identity in the context of successive internal divisions, colonial occupations, and doctrinal controversies. Each new ruler required some level of religious conformity, and perhaps in the great scheme of things, this last arrival was no more “foreign” than any of the others. In fact, it may have seemed more like traditional African Christianity than any of the others in certain respects — including its emphasis on rigorous individual and communal purity; the importance of heroic martyrs and saints; and the perception that only one true community guarded and guaranteed authentic religious faith. Perhaps at least the character (if not the theology) of African Christianity survived in some respect, after all, by being absorbed into the Islam of the Maghreb.
1. Augustine’s date of death, August 28, 430, is recorded in Prosp. Chron. 1304 (MGH AA 9:473) and Marcellinus Chron. 429 (MGH AA 11:77).
2. Possid. Vita Aug. 28. The Vita probably was composed between 432 and 435 — on the dating, see Holmes V. M. Dennis, “Another Note on the Vandal Occupation of Hippo Regius,” The Journal of Roman Studies 15 (1925): 263-68. On the history of the Vandals’ migration into Spain and then Africa, see Andreas Schwarcz, “The Settlement of the Vandals in North Africa,” in Vandals, Romans, and Berbers, ed. A. H. Merrills (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004), 49-57, and Walter Pohl, “The Vandals: Fragments of a Narrative,” in Vandals, Romans, and Berbers, ed. Merrills, 31-47. On the Vandal period in general, see Frank M. Clover, “Carthage and the Vandals,” in The Late Roman West and the Vandals (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum, 1993).
3. Possid. Vita Aug. 30; Ep. 228.
4. Cirta (Constantina), the capital of Numidia, was taken by the Vandals in 432; Proconsular Africa and Carthage were not taken until 439. Possidius’s reference to Cirta by its former name (instead of Constantina) probably indicates only that the old name was still in general use.
5. Possid. Vita Aug. 28. The line ab hostibus fuerit concremata is difficult to reconcile with the archeological evidence as well as with Hippo’s continued survival as an important city and even, for a short time, the Vandal capital. E. C. Howard suggested that Possidius meant Hippo Diarrhythus rather than Regius in “A Note on the Vandal Occupation of Hippo Regius,” The Journal of Roman Studies 14 (1924): 257-58. This argument was critiqued by Dennis, “Another Note on the Vandal Occupation of Hippo Regius,” in which Dennis argued that Possidius is essentially reliable, and that concremata does not necessarily indicate that the city was totally destroyed. More likely it was only partially burned and temporarily abandoned, to be reoccupied by the local population, along with the Vandal court, some time after 435.
6. See Karl Joseph von Hefele, Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, trans. Henri Leclercq, Nouvelle traduction française faite sur la 2 éd. allemande, cor. et augm. de notes critiques et bibliographiques, par un religieux bénédictin de l’abbaye Saint-Michel de Farnborough (Paris: Letouzey, 1907), 2:287-312; Philippe Labbe and Gabriel Cossart, Sacrosancta concilia, 18 vols. (Lutetiae Parisiorum: impensis Societatis Typographicae, 1671), 3:534. Capreolus’s letter to the council is found in PL 53:843-49. Emperor Theodosius II had wanted to have Augustine present, and sent him a special invitation, not realizing (because of the troubles in Africa) that Augustine had already died the preceding summer.
7. Iord. Get. 30.153. See also Pohl, “The Vandals: Fragments of a Narrative.”
8. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.2; Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.5.18-20; Anec. 18.6. Both Victor and Procopius give the same number, but while Victor specifies that it included women, children, and slaves, Procopius bases it on the division of Vandals and Alands into eighty companies of a thousand men, and then goes on to question the number, saying that Geiseric only called the companies “chiliarchs” to make it seem that they were so large, adding that it was probably no more than 50,000 men. Nevertheless, if women and children were added to this, the number could be closer to Victor’s suggested count. See Walter A. Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 84-86, who differs on this point from Christian Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique (Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1955), 215-17.
9. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.3-4; compare Possid. Vita Aug. 28, and the sermon (often attributed to Quodvultdeus, but possibly by Capreolus) Temp. 2.
10. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.3.22-25, 30-35. The story of Boniface’s treachery is also cited by Iord. Get. 33.167-69. Since the more contemporary Prosper Tiro, however, does not note it (Chron. 1294-5, s.a. 427), some scholars question the tale. According to some sources, Boniface’s wife was a Gothic princess (cf. Sid. Carm. 5.203ff.), which may have assisted his rallying Gothic forces to his assistance. This is the argument of Schwarcz, “The Settlement of the Vandals in North Africa.” On Procopius’s reliability, see Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584, 61-70.
11. Possid. Vita Aug. 28.
12. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.3.34-36. On Aspar as an Arian, see Hist. bel. 3.6.3.
13. Chron. Gall. 111 (MGH AA 9:658).
14. On this treaty, see Proc. Hist. bel. 3.4.13-15; Prosp. Chron. 1347 (MGH AA 9:497).
15. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.4.15.
16. Idat. Chron. 107.
17. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.5.
18. Idat. Chron. 112.
19. Prosp. Chron. 1347 (a. 442). See also Isid. Hist. 76.
20. His first wife, the daughter of Theodorid, King of the Visigoths, was cruelly mutilated upon suspicion that she was trying to poison Geiseric or his son, and sent back to her father. This prompted Geiseric to ally himself with Attila in fear that Theodorid would seek revenge. See Iord. Get. 36.184-87.
21. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.4.15.
22. Idat. Chron. 155; see also Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.4.36-39.
23. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.4.36-39, 5.1-3; Idat. Chron. 160; Iord. Get. 44.235.
24. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.5.1-7. See also Pohl, “The Vandals: Fragments of a Narrative,” 40.
25. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.5.6. The connections established between Geiseric and Olybrius led to Geiseric’s two attempts to get Olybrius made Emperor of the West in 461 and 465. Olybrius did claim the title briefly for four or five months in 472.
26. Evag. Sch. Hist. eccl. 2.7; Marcellinus, Chron. 455; Theophanes, Chron. a.m. 5947 and 5964. She may have been buried in the same tomb as her grandmother, Eudoxia. See also Vict.-Ton. Chron. 28 (464); Isid. Hist. 78.
27. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.7.3-15. See also Isid. Hist. 76. An interesting episode describes Majorian’s secret visit to Geiseric, disguised as an imperial envoy.
28. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.6 tells the story of the defeat of this combined force by the Vandals.
29. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.7.26.
30. Huneric’s death is described by Vict.-Ton. Chron. 51 (a. 479), and repeated by Isid. Hist. 79 — who says that he ended his life like his “father Arius,” with all his intestines pouring out.
31. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.9.6-26.
32. Clover, “Carthage and the Vandals,” 8-13.
33. Some of this is depicted by the sixth-century Carthaginian poet Luxorius, who both lauds and derides certain celebrity-status athletes and charioteers. See Luxorius: A Latin Poet among the Vandals, with translations and commentary by Morris Rosenblum (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), Nos. 26, 34, 38, 41-42, pp. 128-37.
34. For example, the fifth- or sixth-century mosaic of the Circus (chariot races) from Capsa, and now in the Bardo Museum, Tunis.
35. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.5.8-9; 3.21.11-12; 3.23.19-20.
36. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 3.5. Isidore of Seville claimed that Geiseric had converted from the orthodox faith — and was the first of his people to become Arian, although this is a late source (Hist. 74).
37. See Andy Merrills and Richard Miles, The Vandals (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2010), 177-203.
38. See Roland J. Teske, ed., “Introduction: The Arian Sermon and Answer to the Arian Sermon,” in Arianism and Other Heresies (Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 1990), 119-32, which points also to Ep. 22A and Ep. Divj. 23A* for more evidence about the context of both the sermon and Augustine’s response.
39. Aug. Serm. Arian.; Maxim. See William A. Sumruld, Augustine and the Arians: The Bishop of Hippo’s Encounters with Ulfilan Arianism (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1994). Maximinus may have authored the Scolia, edited by Roger Gryson, CCSL 87; see Michel Barnes, “Maximino Arianorum episcopum, Conlatio con,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 549.
40. Aug. Ep. 185.1.1. Apparently, both Gothic and Vandal Arians insisted on rebaptism of Nicene Christians. See discussion below.
41. Aug. Haer. praef.
42. Quodu. Symb. 1.3.9–4.38 in particular. For discussion of authorship as well as general introduction to the Creedal Homilies (which are not universally attributed to Quodvultdeus), see Quodvultdeus, Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The Creedal Homilies: Conversion in Fifth-Century North Africa, trans. Thomas M. Finn, Ancient Christian Writers 60 (New York: Newman Press, 2004).
43. Salu. Gub. 7.13; D. J. Cleland, “Salvian and the Vandals,” in Studia Patristica, ed. Frank Leslie Cross, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Bd. 107-8 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970), 10:270-74.
44. Salu. Gub. 6.12.
45. Salu. Gub. 8.2.
46. Salu. Gub. 7.22.
47. Salu. Gub. 5.5.
48. See E. A. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 230-48; and Heather, “Christianity and the Vandals in the Reign of Geiseric,” in Wolf Liebeschuetz Reflected: Essays Presented by Colleagues, Friends, and Pupils, ed. John Drinkwater and Benet Salaway (London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2007), 137-46.
49. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.4-16, 39, 41-42, 51; Possid. Vita Aug. 28 (torture of virgins); and Idat. Chron. 110 (the banishment of bishops and clergy, and handing over churches to Arians).
50. See Yves Modéran, “Une guerre de religion: Les deux églises d’Afrique à l’époque vandale,” Antiquité Tardive 11, no. 1 (2004): 21-44.
51. Idat. Chron. 110.
52. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.15; Quodu. Temp. 11, 12. Quodvultdeus arrived in Naples safely and died in exile. See Daniel Van Slyke, Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The Apocalyptic Theology of a Roman African in Exile (Strathfield, Australia: St. Pauls, 2003).
53. See also Prosp. Chron. 1329; Quodu. Symb. 1.13.6 attacks Arian rebaptism (possibly by Goths in this instance) — but it appears that these Arians (like Donatists) generally required rebaptism of their converts.
54. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.48; 2.28; 3.29 (bribes combined with threats); Quodu. Prom. 5.7; Temp. 1.8.7; Fulg.-R. Psal. Ab., PLS 3, 1359-1361. These texts are quoted — and somewhat misinterpreted — in Danuta Shanzer, “Intentions and Audiences: History, Hagiography, Martyrdom, and Confession in Victor of Vita’s Historia Persecutionis,” in Vandals, Romans, and Berbers, ed. Merrills, 271-90. Shanzer suggests that the bribes might be alms or “social guest gifts.” Fulgentius’s language clearly suggests threats, terror, and deprivation (along with bribes).
55. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.19-21.
56. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.30-34.
57. Christian Courtois, in Victor de Vita et son oeuvre, Étude critique (Alger: Impr. officielle du Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, 1954), raised these issues, arguing that Victor’s writing should be classified more as hagiography than history. The recent work of Éric Fournier, Victor of Vita and the Vandal “Persecution”: Interpreting Exile in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 2008), is an excellent study of this problem. See also S. Costanza, “Vittore di Vita e la Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae,” Vetera Christianorum 17 (1980): 229-68, and Shanzer, “Intentions and Audiences.”
58. See Fournier, Victor of Vita and the Vandal “Persecution,” where he notes the parallels between Hist. pers. 1.15 and 3.15.
59. Cf. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.5 and Augustine, Ciu. 1.10, noted by Fournier, Victor of Vita and the Vandal “Persecution,” 192-93.
60. Lib. Gen. 616F (the Florentini version) MGH AA 9:194-95.
61. On Victor of Vita as both a historian and a hagiographer, see Shanzer, “Intentions and Audiences.”
62. Victor of Vita, Salvian, and Possidius mostly refer to Proconsularis. Archeological evidence for conversion of buildings also seems concentrated around Carthage.
63. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.9, 15, 16; Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 1.21.18-19. For further information on these buildings, see pp. 134-47.
64. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.25.
65. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.24. The significance of this is unclear — it may not indicate suspension of the ban on Nicene services or restoration of churches.
66. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.26-29. The exiles were fleeing Vandal incursions into the Italian peninsula and the sack of Rome in 455.
67. See, for instance, the case of Saturus, the superintendent of the household of Huneric: Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.48-50. See also Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.1; 1.41; 2.39; 3.4.
68. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.24-29; Heather, “Christianity and the Vandals in the Reign of Geiseric.” The number of bishops (54) at the 484 conference suggests that not all were exiled and that some remained in their sees.
69. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.1-6. Victor also mentioned Eugenius as bishop from about 480-84 (Hist. pers. 2.18, 47-51) and as exiled in 484 (Hist. pers. 3.34).
70. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.1.
71. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.8-9, 23.
72. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.23.
73. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.26-32.
74. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.23-37.
75. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 2.53-55; 3.1. The book of the faith begins at 2.56 with a definition of the word homoousion.
76. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 3.7-14, the Decree of Huneric.
77. Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 3.17-21.
79. Identified with Bir el Knissia. See Liliane Ennabli, Carthage, une métropole chrétienne du IVe à la fin du VIIe siècle, Études d’antiquités africaines (Paris: CNRS éd., 1997), 38-39, 113-20.
80. 13 March 487, von Hefele, Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, 2:934-35; Gian Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, ed. Jean-Baptiste Martin et al. (Paris: expensis H. Welter, 1901), 7:1171-1174; Jean-Louis Maier, L’épiscopat de l’Afrique romaine, vandale, et byzantine (Rome: Institut suisse de Rome, 1973), 73. Four African bishops were in attendance.
81. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.8.8-12.
82. Ferrand. Vita Fulg. 13-14.
83. Ferrand. Vita Fulg. 20-21, which describes the debate itself.
84. These tracts are Responsiones ad objectiones Regis Thrasamundi, Ad Thrasamundum libri III (see mention below), and Adversus Pintam (now lost), CCSL 91 and 91A. For an introduction to his life and English translation of other works, see Fulgentius: Selected Works, trans. Robert B. Eno, Fathers of the Church, vol. 95 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997). See Susan T. Stevens, “The Circle of Bishop Fulgentius,” Traditio 38 (1982): 327-40, with a good introductory bibliography up to that publication date.
85. Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique, 304.
86. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 106 (523); Later. Wand. 16; Ferrand. Vita Fulg. 26-27.
87. Con. Carth. 5-6 Feb. 525; Maier, L’épiscopat de l’Afrique romaine, vandale, et byzantine, 74-76.
89. Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documentary History, ed. Carolyn Osiek and Kevin Madigan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 197-98.
90. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.10.1-24.
91. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.19. See also Isid. Hist. 83-84.
92. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.20.
93. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.21.11-25. On the Vandal taking of the shrine, see Vict.-Vit. Hist. pers. 1.16 (discussed above). Procopius dates this seizure to the reign of Huneric, Victor to the time of Geiseric.
94. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 3.23.19-20 (walls), 4.26.17 (monastery); Aed. 6.5.8-11 (walls, shrines, forum, bath, and monastery).
95. Proc. Caes. Anec. 18.5-13.
96. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 4.14.25.
97. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 4.8-28 covers this period of disruption.
98. Proc. Caes. Hist. bel. 4.35-37.
99. On this treatise and Corippus’s coverage of this period in general, see Averil Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” in Excavations at Carthage, ed. John H. Humphrey (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum, University of Michigan, 1982), 7:29-62, with excellent bibliographical footnotes. Corippus’s writings give some precious but problematic evidence on Berber tribes and customs at this time.
100. Nou. Afr. Ecc. 37.5-8.
101. Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” 45, notes that the seals are mostly Greek, while only a minority of the Christian epitaphs are Greek.
103. On this point, see Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” 45.
104. The first council was in the Basilica of Faustus in 535. See von Hefele, Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, 2:1136-39; Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 8:808-9; Col. Avel. 85-87; Maier, L’épiscopat de l’Afrique romaine, vandale, et byzantine, 77.
105. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa.
106. See Yves Modéran, “L’Afrique reconquise et les Trois Chapitres,” in The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean, ed. Celia Martin Chazelle and Catherine Cubitt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 39-82.
107. PL 68:969-1052.
108. CCSL 90A:1-398. See Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” 47.
109. Junillus’s treatise is titled Instituta regularia divinae legis, PL 68:15-42. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 142 (a. 550). See Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” 46, and Tony Honoré, Tribonian (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), 237-42.
110. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 141 (550); Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” 47-49.
111. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 143 (551).
112. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 145 (552), 165 (563).
113. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 145 (552); Reparatus died in exile in 563 on the island of Euchaita. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 165.
114. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 147 (553). The transcript of this council may be read in English in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 2/14:299-323. The Africans were not alone in their dissent, although Pope Vigilius conformed to the anathema of the Three Chapters. The council’s decisions were opposed by bishops in the north of Italy (esp. Milan), Gaul, Spain, and Britain as well as in areas of Asia Minor.
115. von Hefele, Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, 3:145. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 145 (552), 152 (555).
116. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 153, 156, 169.
117. Vict.-Ton. Chron. 170 (565). The controversy, of course, continued, mainly in Italy, through the seventh century, ending when the Lombards embraced Orthodoxy in 698 at the Synod of Aquileia.
118. See especially the analysis provided by Serge Lancel, “La représentation des différentes provinces à la conférence,” in Actes de la conférence de Carthage en 411, SC (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1972), 194:143-67. The Donatists had half their bishops in those areas, while the Catholics had only a third. The two churches had roughly the same number of bishops.
120. Greg. Mag. Ep. 1.72, 75. In the early fifth century, the African Catholic bishops — contrary to the advice of the bishops of Rome and Milan — had allowed Donatists to gain or retain clerical office when they entered Catholic unity. Reg. Carth. 57, 68.
121. Greg. Mag. Ep. 1.82; 2.39. In both cases, the Catholic bishops were accused of accepting bribes.
122. Greg. Mag. Ep. 2.39; 4.35.
123. Greg. Mag. Ep. 6.36.
124. Greg. Mag. Ep. 4.32, 35; 6.36.
125. Greg. Mag. Ep. 1.82; 2.39. Such action had been forbidden (Cau. Apiar. 28).
126. Columbus, Victor, and Paulus, Greg. Mag. Ep. 2.39; 3.47; 6.36 (to Columbus), 4.7; 6.62 (to Gennadius), 4.35 (to Victor and Columbus). Columbus himself finally complained that Gregory’s frequent communication with him had resulted in his alienation from his episcopal colleagues (Greg. Mag. Ep. 7.2).
127. Greg. Mag. Ep. 3.48 (to Adeodatus).
128. R. A. Markus, “The Imperial Administration and the Church in Byzantine Africa,” Church History 36, no. 1 (1967): 18-23; “Donatism: The Last Phase,” Studies in Church History 1 (1964): 118-26; “Country Bishops in Byzantine Africa,” Studies in Church History 16 (1979): 1-14; “Reflections on Religious Dissent in North Africa in the Byzantine Period,” Studies in Church History 3 (1966): 140-49. See also the discussion in Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” 49-51, who does not see evidence for a Donatist revival in Africa.
129. Greg. Mag. Ep. 5.3 (to Dominicus of Carthage).
130. W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), chap. 19.
131. Leo I, Ep. 168.18; Victor of Vita’s passing mention and possible interpolation, Hist. pers. 3.71.
132. Frend, The Donatist Church, 306-8; Noël Duval and Jean Cintas, “L’église du prêtre Felix (region de Kélibia),” Karthago. Revue d’archéologie africaine 9 (1958): 157-265.
133. Cameron, “Byzantine Africa — The Literary Evidence,” 52-53, points out that other aspects of eastern religious practice, including the cult of the Virgin, are not strongly evident in Africa — and that the bishops in the mid-seventh century are still Latin-speaking. The Latin bishops cited their own sources — Ambrose and Augustine — in support of their refusal to agree to the innovation.
134. Pyrrhus was Bishop of Constantinople from 638-641, and again in 654.
135. Maximus, Disputatio cum Pyrrho, PG 91:288-353.
136. See the introduction in Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 1996), 3-18, and G. Berthold, Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1985).
137. The common letter of Columbus of Numidia, Stephen of Byzacena, and Reparatus of Mauretania was considered by Bishop Martin at the Roman synod of 649; Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 10:919-23.
138. Read out at the same synod of Rome in 649, Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 10:926-28, with the signatures of the bishops.
139. Ambr. Fid. 2.8.70-71, 5.43-45, 6.50–7.57. Aug. Serm. Arian. 16.9; Ep. 140.4.11.
140. Theophanes, Chron. 352, 370 (638, 639).
141. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, 10:863-1183; von Hefele, Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, 3:434-51.
142. See the documents of this period in Scripta Saeculi VII Vitam Maximi Confessoris Illustrantia (CCG 39); and the Acta of Maximus’s trial in PG 90.109-205, 205-21 (recorded by his disciple Anastasius). Maximus died in Georgia on August 13 after having had his tongue and right hand cut off. The Sixth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 680 affirmed the two wills of Christ, vindicating Maximus’s work against Monothelitism.
143. On the survival of Christianity in Africa well past the eighth century, see Virginie Prevost, “Les dernières communautés chrétiennes autochtones d’Afrique du Nord,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 224 (2007): 461-83.