Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE

Notes

99 Introduction 1. Elizabeth A. Clark has been instrumental in this regard: see Clark 1998, 2004; see also Martin and Cox Miller 2005. 2. Such books in English include Kraemer 1992; White 1996; Gregg and Urman 1996; Edwards 1996; Edwards et al. 1999; Hopkins 1999; Janowitz 2001; and Aviam 2004. 3. I use the rare “Christianness”instead of “Christianity,”as it has a more limited range of uses and simply means “the Christian quality” (OED 1989, 2nd ed., s.v. “Christianness”). 4. This methodological shift should be viewed in the context of the sociological exploration of the relationship between social structure and individual agency. See Adams 2006 for a review of theories that try to hybridize the notion of self-reflexivity, associated with the work of Anthony Giddens (1991), and that of “habitus,” associated with the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990, 2000). Lahire (2004: 695 ff.) offers a thorough criticism of Durkheim’s suspicion about the individual actor and reviews its consequences for the development of sociology. 5. On identity theory, see Burke and Stets 2009. A less quantitative approach is proposed in McCall and Simmons 1966 and 1978. 6. A shared assumption among specialists of religion in the ancient world is that ancient personalities differ from modern personalities with their individualistic tendencies ,and,as a consequence,scholars usually emphasize collective identities. See,for instance, Harland (2009: 7), who makes reference to the “dyadic or group-oriented nature of ancient personalities.” However, as shown by Spiro (1993), one must not confuse a normative cultural conception of the self with the experience of the self by the actors. 7. However, see Edwards (2004), who dates the writing of the Adversus nationes to 326–327 rather than to 303–305,as usually assumed;on Arnobius,see Simmons 1995. 8. I do not offer anything close to a full treatment of material culture for the fourth and fifth centuries. On the one hand,most of the evidence relevant to the kind of questions I address would be related to death and burial, an area I did not wish to revisit (see Rebillard 2009b). On the other hand, the fact that the same artifacts were enjoyed by both pagan and Christian aristocrats has been emphasized many times (see, for instance, Brown 1995: 12 ff.). Chapter 1 1. See Barnes 1985: 3–29, 245–247, with Braun 1972; Dunn 2004: 3–11, which also provides a description of Tertullian’s works. •Notes 100 NOTES TO PAGES 10–34 2. I use the proportion of one-thirtieth of the total urban and metropolitan population rather than 0.35 percent of the total population as we have good reasons to think that more Christians were living in cities than not, and I would also add that their presence was proportionally even greater in the larger cities than in the small. Tabbernee (2001: 380–381) uses the 0.35 percent figure and a population for Carthage of about 90,000 inhabitants and thus arrives at a total of 300 to 400 Christians in Carthage at the time of Tertullian. Carthage with 70,000 inhabitants (instead of older higher estimates of 300,000) can still be considered a metropolis: see Gros 2000; Picard 1990: 155–160. 3. For the Apologeticum, I use the Latin text of Jean-Pierre Waltzing (Paris, 1914); my translations are based on that of T. R. Glover, Loeb Classical Library 250 (Cambridge, MA, 1931). 4. The reconstruction of the early Christian gatherings is the object of a number of polemics that we need not enter into here. Tertullian does not specify on what day the evening gathering took place (apol. 39), but it is usually assumed to have been on Sunday. See McGowan 2004 and Alikin 2010 for an up-to-date status quaestionis. 5. By the time of Cyprian, the morning gathering was the most significant, and it was also the meeting at which the whole group was theoretically present: see McGowan 2004 and Alikin 2010: 98–99. 6. See Petropoulou 2008: 99–102 for a challenge to Rives’s statement with (little ) evidence for the Greek East. As far as I know there is no parallel evidence on mandatory individual participation to sacrifice in Africa. 7. I use the Latin text of Marie Turcan,Sources Chrétiennes 332 (Paris,1986);my translations are based on that of T. R. Glover,Loeb Classical Library 250 (Cambridge, MA, 1931). I am also greatly indebted to Marie Turcan’s introduction and notes. 8. Van Der...