Europe and the African Cult of Saints, circa 350–900
An Essay in Mediterranean Communications
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10775424 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jonathan P Conant (University of San Diego, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-46 |
| Publication date | 2010-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Speculum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-7134 • E-ISSN: 2040-8072 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0038713409990935 |
| PMID | 20527360 |
| OpenAlex | W2133072410 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 30 |
Shortly after the Vandals took Carthage in 439, the city's Catholic bishop, Quodvultdeus, and a large number of his clergy were said to have been placed “naked and despoiled on broken ships” and put to sea, banished from Africa. By God's mercy, the exiles made their way safely to Naples, where Quodvultdeus quickly came to be regarded as a saint: a fifth-century mosaic from the catacombs of St. Januarius (San Gennaro) in Capodimonte seems to depict the African bishop, and by the middle of the ninth century his feast day was celebrated in the local liturgical calendar. A similar story could be told of Gaudiosus of Abitina, another fifth-century African bishop who was said to have fled the Vandals and who also achieved sainthood in Campania. The flight of refugees like Quodvultdeus and Gaudiosus from the political turmoil that wracked North Africa between the fifth and the eighth centuries, however, has long been seen as having a far greater significance than the reinvention of exiled African bishops as southern Italian holy men. In late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the cults of numerous saints who had been martyred in Africa and whose cults had originally developed there spread beyond the shores of the southern Mediterranean to the rest of the Christian world. In seeking to explain the diffusion of these cults, historians have long focused on the movements of refugees—and, above all, those who fled the Vandals' conquest of Africa and their subsequent persecution of the region's Catholic population—as displaced Africans such as Quodvultdeus are thought to have brought the relics of their local saints with them into foreign exile
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art history · Bishops · CONQUEST · Cult · Ethnology · Persecution · Politics · Population · Refugee · SAINT · Sociology · Byzantine Studies and History · Demography · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History
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Routes of North African Impact on Book Production in the British Isles before ca. 800
Conquest to Conversion
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Contemporary Historiography on Christianity in Vandal and Byzantine Africa (1785-2020)
Intercultural Identity and the Local Vernacular
Sacred commodities
Sur les derniers temps du christianisme en Afrique
Spain and the African Provinces in Late Antiquity
Politics, diplomacy and the cult of relics in Venice and the northern Adriatic in the first half of the ninth century
Translating relics
The temptations of cult
Enjoying the saints in late antiquity
Christianity and dissent in Roman North Africa
Donatism
Marseille
The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity
Martyre et Ritualité Dans L'Antiquité Tardive Horizons de l'écriture médiévale des rituels
| Citations per year | 0.53 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2023 (13) |
| Highly cited | No |