La Notitia provinciarum et civitatum Africae et l’histoire du royaume vandale

The Notitia provinciarum et civitatum Africae gives a list of 459 names of African bishops, some of them with marginal annotations (such as the acronym prbt in 90 instances), being followed by a strange summary table which distributes the prelates among two general groups, qui perierunt (88) and qui permanserunt (378). Even if it is not a register of attendance, this list was actually drawn up in concomitance of the open conference between catholics and arians that was convened by the Vandal king Huneric in february 484; its purpose may have been to serve as documentary evidence for the catholic church in order to prove its overwhelming numerical superiority inside the kingdom. Later on, before 487, it was modified so as to record the effects of the persecution which had been launched by Huneric after the conference. Among those modifications, the most important was the addition of the acronym prbt, which should be connected with the ending formula : qui perierunt. This latter phrase, however, is not related to physical deaths: as attested by many contemporary texts, especially by the acts of the council held in Rome in 487 and devoted to Africa, perire here refers to spiritual death. Therefore the Notitia gives also the list of those bishops who renounced their faith under arianist duress in 484, i.e. nearly 20% of the catholic episcopal body. Such a conclusion compels us to revise acccepted ideas about the extension of the Vandalic kingdom and highlights the internal divisions of the African Church, more particularly at provincial level, during the period of Vandalic rule.