Eric Fournier
West Chester University of PA, History, Faculty Member
- Université de Caen Normandie, CRAHAM-UMR 6273 (CNRS), Department Memberadd
- Roman Empire, Early Christianity, Representation of historical reality, Exile, History, Late Antiquity, and 19 moreNorth Africa, Vandals, Bishops, Historiography, Later Roman Empire, Barbarians, Early Medieval History, Victor of Vita, Ancient Roman Numismatics, Mediterranean and North Africa, Emperor Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus, Archaeology, Research Methodology, Ancient History, Byzantine Studies, Donatism, Roman North Africa, and Roman North Africa (Archaeology)edit
The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300-700 CE). Through a series of detailed case studies covering the full chronological and geographical span of the period, this book... more
The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300-700 CE). Through a series of detailed case studies covering the full chronological and geographical span of the period, this book investigates how the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity changed the way that Christians and para-Christians perceived the hostile treatments they received, either by fellow Christians or by people of other religions. A closely related second goal of this volume is to encourage scholars to think more precisely about the terminological difficulties related to the study of persecution. Indeed, despite sustained interest in the subject, few scholars have sought to distinguish between such closely related concepts as punishment, coercion, physical violence, and persecution. Often, these terms are used interchangeably. Although there are no easy answers, an emphatic conclusion of the studies assembled in this volume is that "persecution" was a malleable rhetorical label in late antique discourse, whose meaning shifted depending on the viewpoint of the authors who used it. This leads to our third objective: to analyze the role and function played by rhetoric and polemic in late antique claims to be persecuted. Late antique Christian writers who cast their present as a repetition of past persecutions often aimed to attack the legitimacy of the dominant Christian faction through a process of othering. This discourse also expressed a polarizing worldview in order to strengthen the group identity of the writers' community in the midst of ideological conflicts and to encourage steadfastness against the temptation to collaborate with the other side.
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The paper analyzes the continuous use of martyrological discourse in texts of the Vandal-era through the lens of cultural trauma and cultural memory theories. It argues that intertextual allusions to earlier martyrological texts... more
The paper analyzes the continuous use of martyrological discourse in texts of the Vandal-era through the lens of cultural trauma and cultural memory theories. It argues that intertextual allusions to earlier martyrological texts constituted a weapon in the arsenal of disempowered Christians to attack empowered rival Christian factions (in this case Homoians). The theoretical framework helps better explain the continual use of martyrological literature at a time when persecutions of Christians (documented by this literature) had officially ended.
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Following Valens’s defeat at the hands of the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople in August 378 and immediately before Alaric’s sack of Rome in August 410, both Gratian and Honorius issued temporary forbearance measures that relaxed the... more
Following Valens’s defeat at the hands of the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople in August 378 and immediately before Alaric’s sack of Rome in August 410, both Gratian and Honorius issued temporary forbearance measures that relaxed the otherwise coercive religious policies against Donatists in North Africa. The present article analyzes these episodes as case studies in how the late Roman government reacted to disasters and crises in the religious sphere. These episodes are particularly puzzling because they go against the tendency of increasing coercion against schismatics and heretics expressed in late Roman laws and imperial propaganda. The article argues that late Roman religious policy that attempted to enforce theological orthodoxy was mainly the product of episcopal lobbying and petitions, and therefore it could be suspended when more pressing concerns, such as the loyalty of a crucial province for the food supply of the city of Rome, hung in the balance.
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This study presents an outline of the history of Christianity in the Maghreb during “long late antiquity,” roughly 180-700 CE. In examining this history through the lenses of movements and community, it centers attempts at building... more
This study presents an outline of the history of Christianity in the Maghreb during “long late antiquity,” roughly 180-700 CE. In examining this history through the lenses of movements and community, it centers attempts at building community, consensus, and identity alongside responses and reactions to those attempts. In surveying the various controversies that contested them—Donatism, Arianism, the Three Chapters—the study follows a central thread at the heart of these early African Christian communities: the martyrs and their legacy. By approaching this history through the work of post-colonial scholars, this study examines these communities within the colonized landscape of the Roman Empire in the Maghreb. The picture that emerges presents a set of robust, assertive, and self-confident communities, firmly rooted in African identities, seeking to delineate their collective belonging while navigating a colonial (and then post-colonial) landscape defined by the memories and narratives of persecution. As such, readers will find an introduction to the major events and figures situated within an up-to-date understanding of the history of the late antique Maghreb.
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The traditional interpretation of Constantine’s dealings with Donatists considers that the emperor persecuted them between 317 and 321. This view rests upon the Passio Donati (BHL 2303b), which depicts soldiers violently seizing a... more
The traditional interpretation of Constantine’s dealings with Donatists considers that the emperor persecuted them between 317 and 321. This view rests upon the Passio Donati (BHL 2303b), which depicts soldiers violently seizing a basilica from Donatists and even causing the death of Donatus. The latter text, the only one attesting this putative persecution, was in fact written later to commemorate the martyr’s anniversary, and describes mainly the resistance of Donatists against state intervention. The article argues that this view sits uneasily with what we otherwise know of Constantine’s religious policy of tolerance, starting with the so-called Edict of Milan. Rather, Constantine’s aim was to restore control of ecclesiastical properties confiscated during the persecution of Diocletian to the “Catholic” faith, which Donatists challenged. Once the councils of Rome and Arles, and an audience with the emperor in person, validated the claims of the Caecilianist faction to represent the Catholic faith in Africa, Constantine imposed the transfer of properties by ordering his men to seize the basilica, exiling Donatists who resisted. But this does not justify the view that Constantine persecuted Donatists.
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A close reading of sources documenting the Vandal conquest (429–39 ce) reveals that contemporary authors did not present the event as a persecution. To be sure, they insisted on the devastation that the Vandals caused, the typical woes of... more
A close reading of sources documenting the Vandal conquest (429–39 ce) reveals that contemporary authors did not present the event as a persecution. To be sure, they insisted on the devastation that the Vandals caused, the typical woes of war, but not on its religious motivation. The article argues that it was Augustine who, in his ep. ccxxviii, first presented a theological interpretation of the event that allowed later sources writing within the Augustinian tradition to frame the conquest retroactively as a persecution.
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This chapter analyses the literary genre of Victor of Vita’s Historia Persecutionis Africanae provinciae. It argues that Victor’s text is a hybrid one, since it presents the characteristics of three distinct literary genres –... more
This chapter analyses the literary genre of Victor of Vita’s Historia Persecutionis Africanae provinciae. It argues that Victor’s text is a hybrid one, since it presents the characteristics of three distinct literary genres – historiography, hagiography and apologia. These characteristics were required by the author’s intentions in compiling the Historia, as also by his perception of contemporary events. Indeed, the mysterious author of Vita regards the Vandals as indisputable persecutors and constructs a plot around the events that he describes as a repetition of past persecutions, especially the Great Persecution under Diocletian. Victor deploys certain characteristics that belong to hagiography in order to represent the Vandals as persecutors, as also some elements of the historiographical genre in order to ensure the credibility of his narrative. His presentation of documents, such as the royal edicts, for example, recalls Eusebius’ Church history, which Victor undoubtedly knew through the translation of Rufinus. His borrowings from the apologetic genre can also be explained by his perception of contemporary events as the repetition of past persecutions. The author thus, quite logically, resorts to the literary genre that had helped the Christians of the first four centuries overcome Roman intolerance and to galvanise the Christian communities against attacks by the Roman state. For Victor the only possible option in response to Vandal intolerance was to rally the ‘troops’ to face the assault, just like the Christians of earlier centuries. This chapter provides an example of the adaptation of literary genres to the new realities of Late Antiquity – the replacement of the dichotomy pagan/Christian with that of ‘barbarian’-heretic/Roman-Christian. Moreover, Victor offers an instance of the survival and transformation of a genre – apologia – usually associated with the first centuries of the Christian era and little studied in the context of Late Antiquity.
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""In 411 AD, following a century of religious conflicts within the North African provinces of the Roman Empire, Nicene bishops succeeded in declaring their opponents – ‘Donatists’ – heretics and thus liable to legal punishments. The... more
""In 411 AD, following a century of religious conflicts within the North African provinces
of the Roman Empire, Nicene bishops succeeded in declaring their opponents
– ‘Donatists’ – heretics and thus liable to legal punishments. The ‘Catholic’ bishops
managed to reduce their religious opponents to silence through a council of bishops,
the conference of 411, which was in fact more a trial to convict ‘Donatists’ than an
open debate. The crucial factor in the triumph of the ‘Catholics’ was their success in
obtaining the support of civil authorities, first and foremost the Emperor Honorius, as
his edict of convocation to the conference indicates. Honorius wrote with the exasperated
tone of one eager to put this annoying conflict behind him, and looking forward to the
conclusion of this trial, the issue of which was already clear in his mind. ‘Donatists’,
realizing they had been trapped, resorted to all kinds of ‘diversion maneuvers’. But they
could not divert the outcome and were condemned. Victor of Vita’s depiction of a
conference between Nicene and Homoean – Vandal – bishops in 484 presents uncanny
similarities to the 411 conference. But in this case, the roles were reversed and the
Nicenes were in the position that ‘Donatists’ had found themselves in 75 years earlier.
This study argues that comparison between these two accounts, taken as representative of
the two great religious conflicts of late antique North Africa – ‘Catholics’ vs. ‘Donatists’
and Vandals vs. Nicenes – reveals a great deal of continuity in the methods of coercion
used to impose religious conformity, on the one hand, and, on the other, in the strategies
employed by the victims of these policies of religious unification. Indeed, Victor
included the edict of the Vandal king Huneric following the conference of 484, in which
the king admitted to recycling previous Roman anti-heretical laws. Conversely, Victor
depicted the Nicene bishops as having recourse to ‘diversion maneuvers’ similar to the
ones that ‘Donatists’ had used in 411. This strategy was a way for Victor to cast the
Vandals in a persecuting role and functioned as a tool of boundary maintenance, in order
to assert and reinforce distinctions between Nicenes and Vandals which were constantly
being eroded by the Vandal religious policy.""
of the Roman Empire, Nicene bishops succeeded in declaring their opponents
– ‘Donatists’ – heretics and thus liable to legal punishments. The ‘Catholic’ bishops
managed to reduce their religious opponents to silence through a council of bishops,
the conference of 411, which was in fact more a trial to convict ‘Donatists’ than an
open debate. The crucial factor in the triumph of the ‘Catholics’ was their success in
obtaining the support of civil authorities, first and foremost the Emperor Honorius, as
his edict of convocation to the conference indicates. Honorius wrote with the exasperated
tone of one eager to put this annoying conflict behind him, and looking forward to the
conclusion of this trial, the issue of which was already clear in his mind. ‘Donatists’,
realizing they had been trapped, resorted to all kinds of ‘diversion maneuvers’. But they
could not divert the outcome and were condemned. Victor of Vita’s depiction of a
conference between Nicene and Homoean – Vandal – bishops in 484 presents uncanny
similarities to the 411 conference. But in this case, the roles were reversed and the
Nicenes were in the position that ‘Donatists’ had found themselves in 75 years earlier.
This study argues that comparison between these two accounts, taken as representative of
the two great religious conflicts of late antique North Africa – ‘Catholics’ vs. ‘Donatists’
and Vandals vs. Nicenes – reveals a great deal of continuity in the methods of coercion
used to impose religious conformity, on the one hand, and, on the other, in the strategies
employed by the victims of these policies of religious unification. Indeed, Victor
included the edict of the Vandal king Huneric following the conference of 484, in which
the king admitted to recycling previous Roman anti-heretical laws. Conversely, Victor
depicted the Nicene bishops as having recourse to ‘diversion maneuvers’ similar to the
ones that ‘Donatists’ had used in 411. This strategy was a way for Victor to cast the
Vandals in a persecuting role and functioned as a tool of boundary maintenance, in order
to assert and reinforce distinctions between Nicenes and Vandals which were constantly
being eroded by the Vandal religious policy.""
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Scholarship on Victor of Vita seems to suffer from a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, most scholars seem to be attuned to his biases and literary strategies. On the other hand, the scarcity of historical narratives for this... more
Scholarship on Victor of Vita seems to suffer from a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, most scholars seem to be attuned to his biases and literary strategies. On the other hand, the scarcity of historical narratives for this period of North African history seems to prevent the same scholars from applying the methodological consequences of their own critical observations to the factual data Victor supplies. This lack of criticism toward Victor of Vita has important consequences for our knowledge of the Vandal period, typically viewed as a time of persecution for Catholics. Indeed, most cases of late antique persecution are known to us only from the viewpoint of their victim, and traditionally, scholars have reproduced this perspective in their accounts of these events. Scholarship on the Vandals is a perfect example of this practice.
This dissertation aims to present a more critical account of the North African experience with Christian persecution by focusing instead on the continuity in disciplining bishops used by late antique rulers from Constantine to Huneric, the Vandal king (484 CE). In order to do so, I examine Constantine’s dealings with bishops, late antique rulers’ dealings with bishops in North Africa before the Vandals, and especially the literary construction of the Vandals as persecutors by Victor of Vita. As a result, my work shows that post-Constantinian “persecutions,” at least in a North African context, resulted from power struggles between Christian factions competing for monopoly over correct doctrine (orthodoxy). As a result, “persecution” became a claim for disempowered Christians — members of the defeated factions in these power struggles — a rhetorical tool of empowerment to attack the legitimacy of the faction in power. This analysis yields a less partisan view of the religious policy of Vandal rulers, which, I argue, was in continuity with Roman imperial policy. In the final analysis, the Vandals thus appear to be well integrated within the late antique Mediterranean commonwealth and to have been fully aware of their position as the heirs of Roman rule in North Africa.
This dissertation aims to present a more critical account of the North African experience with Christian persecution by focusing instead on the continuity in disciplining bishops used by late antique rulers from Constantine to Huneric, the Vandal king (484 CE). In order to do so, I examine Constantine’s dealings with bishops, late antique rulers’ dealings with bishops in North Africa before the Vandals, and especially the literary construction of the Vandals as persecutors by Victor of Vita. As a result, my work shows that post-Constantinian “persecutions,” at least in a North African context, resulted from power struggles between Christian factions competing for monopoly over correct doctrine (orthodoxy). As a result, “persecution” became a claim for disempowered Christians — members of the defeated factions in these power struggles — a rhetorical tool of empowerment to attack the legitimacy of the faction in power. This analysis yields a less partisan view of the religious policy of Vandal rulers, which, I argue, was in continuity with Roman imperial policy. In the final analysis, the Vandals thus appear to be well integrated within the late antique Mediterranean commonwealth and to have been fully aware of their position as the heirs of Roman rule in North Africa.
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According to the traditional interpretation, following the narrative of Victor of Vita’s History of the Vandal Persecution, Vandals were cruel persecutors of Nicene Christians in North Africa, particularly during the reigns of Geiseric... more
According to the traditional interpretation, following the narrative of Victor of Vita’s History of the Vandal Persecution, Vandals were cruel persecutors of Nicene Christians in North Africa, particularly during the reigns of Geiseric and Huneric. In recent decades, however, critical studies have nuanced this one-sided approach in numerous ways and insisted that such Vandal religious policies were in continuity with previous Roman policies. In the words of Chris Wickham, “their religious persecution was entirely Roman” (The Inheritance of Rome, 77). Indeed, several studies have shown that the Vandal strategies of coercion to impose the Homoian confession throughout their kingdom were strongly inspired from anti-donatist legal measures enacted by the court of Honorius (395-423).
What these studies have missed, however, is the apparent selection process that Vandals effected from the abundant legal measures of Honorius’ court against Donatists. It is the argument of the present paper that in selecting the Roman legal precedents he was redeploying (HP 3.3 and 7: retorquere) following his own council of bishops in 484, which provided ecclesiastical justification for the religious unification he desired, Huneric and his court seem to have intentionally chosen the least coercive of the measures enacted by Honorius’ court. Indeed, while some of Honorius’ laws had prescribed the death penalty for Donatists who persisted in their beliefs and refused to join the Nicene faith (e.g. CTh. 16.5.44-5, 51; Sirm. 14; Aug. Ep. 100), Huneric’s regime recycled laws that used mainly fines and banishment. By contrast, the bishops whose petitions were at the root of the harshest laws seem, in definitive, responsible for the exclusion and increasingly harsh forms of coercion that heretics suffered in North Africa, before Vandals even crossed the strait of Gibraltar.
What these studies have missed, however, is the apparent selection process that Vandals effected from the abundant legal measures of Honorius’ court against Donatists. It is the argument of the present paper that in selecting the Roman legal precedents he was redeploying (HP 3.3 and 7: retorquere) following his own council of bishops in 484, which provided ecclesiastical justification for the religious unification he desired, Huneric and his court seem to have intentionally chosen the least coercive of the measures enacted by Honorius’ court. Indeed, while some of Honorius’ laws had prescribed the death penalty for Donatists who persisted in their beliefs and refused to join the Nicene faith (e.g. CTh. 16.5.44-5, 51; Sirm. 14; Aug. Ep. 100), Huneric’s regime recycled laws that used mainly fines and banishment. By contrast, the bishops whose petitions were at the root of the harshest laws seem, in definitive, responsible for the exclusion and increasingly harsh forms of coercion that heretics suffered in North Africa, before Vandals even crossed the strait of Gibraltar.
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This introduction will consist in a presentation of examples to highlight the polemical and rhetorical aspects of the discourse of persecution that Christian authors developed against rival Christian factions after Constantine. While such... more
This introduction will consist in a presentation of examples to highlight the polemical and rhetorical aspects of the discourse of persecution that Christian authors developed against rival Christian factions after Constantine. While such examples are most obvious in Nicene writers living under non-Nicene rulers, such as Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of Cagliari, and Athanasius of Alexandria about Constantius II, Jerome, Epiphanius and Gregory Nazianzus on Valens, Victor of Vita about Vandal kings, they are also found in Augustine’s writings to defend against Donatist accusations of persecution. Passages of this sort are also ubiquitous in ecclesiastical historians of the fifth century.
Collectively, these examples illustrate that none of these claims to be victim of persecution were a neutral description of what happened. They constitute, rather, a discourse aiming to attack the claims to orthodoxy and legitimacy of the faction in power. As such, these claims are rhetorically constructed and belong to a context of strong polemic, a context of hotly contested debates on what constituted orthodoxy and what was the proper role of the emperor in its establishment and enforcement. This introduction will provide a few specific examples to illustrate how these authors constructed their argument to be victims of persecution. It will argue that these examples demonstrate the highly elusive nature of the term ‘persecution’ in this Christian context.
Collectively, these examples illustrate that none of these claims to be victim of persecution were a neutral description of what happened. They constitute, rather, a discourse aiming to attack the claims to orthodoxy and legitimacy of the faction in power. As such, these claims are rhetorically constructed and belong to a context of strong polemic, a context of hotly contested debates on what constituted orthodoxy and what was the proper role of the emperor in its establishment and enforcement. This introduction will provide a few specific examples to illustrate how these authors constructed their argument to be victims of persecution. It will argue that these examples demonstrate the highly elusive nature of the term ‘persecution’ in this Christian context.