Victor of Vita and the Vandal "persecution" [Ressource électronique] : interpreting exile in late Antiquity / by Éric Fournier

Ph. D. : Histoire : Santa Barbara, University of California : 2008

Bibliogr. p. 273-306

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 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.