Les Vandals et l’Empire romain by Yves Modéran (review)

It is difficult not to feel wistful about this book, which was left unfinished at the time of Modéran’s death. The emotion owes its genesis to this reviewer’s scholarly interests, which she shares with JECS readers, rather than shortcomings within the text as we have it. Modéran’s style always gave punch to his arguments, and here too his conclusions cap reviews of previous scholarship, with the latter all laid out clearly as proceeding from one thesis to the next. Clarity still defines Modéran’s work, but only six chapters and a fraction of the seventh are extant. There were to be twelve chapters in all, with the tenth dedicated to ecclesiastical matters, including a section on the “war” between the “two” churches, Catholic and Arian. What remained of the Donatist church was, I assume, not slated to receive equal attention. I would have liked to read that tenth chapter, for the extant ones leading up to it put historical and economic questions into play which implicate African churches in very interesting ways.

As to the Vandal presence in Africa (I skirt the first three chapters tracing Vandal origins, their desultory movements in the first centuries c.e., and then the hurried press into Roman territories at the beginning of the fifth century), the stage for their arrival is set by the revolt of Heraclian in 413, whose disastrous loss of both men and ships in his attempt on Italy weakened African defenses. Close allies of the Catholic church were swept away in the purges after Heraclian’s murder, including Marcellinus and Apringius, whose undoing Jerome blamed on the Donatists. Marcellinus’s 411 ruling had to be confirmed by the emperor Honorius when the Donatists asked for its repeal. Religious interests had a part to play in this drama, and yet no Catholic bishop was harmed. Nor, apparently, were Donatist clergy affected by subsequent backlash: confiscations of Donatist property called for by the 411 ruling actually slowed in the aftermath of Heraclian’s rebellion. Were African bishops too important as religious figures, or not important enough as political and economic players, to merit hard scrutiny?

Subsequent chapters invite similar questions about the clergy, and readers of Modéran’s work published in Antiquité Tardive will already be familiar with some of his arguments. Chapter Five investigates Vandal control and distribution of land, concentrating on Vandal expansion of authority westward from the early 440s until the 480s, all the way to the borders of Mauretania Tingitana. Modéran argues that the Notitia provinciarum et civitatum Africae proves Catholic bishops west of Proconsularis and Byzacena converted to Arian belief in substantial numbers. He attributes these defections to an internal fragility within African ecclesiastical structures present even before the invasion and exacerbated by subsequent political upheaval and geographical distance from Carthage. Increasing control over western territories, however, would have allowed the Vandals to squeeze bishops more with threats of property confiscation, as Roman emperors had likewise bullied African landowners with Donatist sympathies in the early fifth century. Internal tensions and theological loyalties aside, conversion by Catholic bishops may also have been prompted by economic interests.

Chapter Six argues for massive property confiscations in Proconsularis, and this evidence prompts another, and perhaps different, look at ecclesiastical wealth at the time of the Vandal invasion. Landowners of high status in Proconsularis (senatores, honorati, and nobiles) were relieved of their possessions in successive steps, possessions that were turned over to Vandal supporters of the king (the sortes Wandalorum). Property belonging to Catholic clergy, however, was confiscated and given to their Arian counterparts, so that, in the words of Modéran, “Proconsularis was a veritable forbidden zone” (176). Modéran distinguishes municipal and Roman senators from clerics, and he does so because the Vandal kings, Victor of Vita, and the emperors Valentinian III and Justinian seem to have done the same. Vandal kings may have considered clerical wealth as a different animal, and later attempts by emperors...