Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: February (2006)
Abstract
The circumcellions were roving bands of violent men and women found in late Roman Africa. The problem is that far more of them have been produced by literary fictions, ancient and modern, than once existed. The fictions have their own intriguing history, but they are otherwise useless for those who are interested in the banality of what actually happened.
The roving bands of armed men, and women, who wandered through the north African countryside in the late fourth and early fifth century, known as circumcellions, engaged in violent assaults on their sectarian enemies. These circumcellion bands were a characteristic element of the sectarian violence that rent the two Christian churches, the Catholic and “the Donatist,” into which the Christian community in Africa had come to be divided in the post-Constantian age. The aim of this inquiry is not to describe these violent men and their activities yet again, but rather to begin a process of questioning the standard claims made about them by modern historians. The essence of the modern project of identifying the circumcellions and their activities has been to apply all available data in order to produce a general picture of a social movement.
Brent D. Shaw
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: February (2006)
Abstract
The circumcellions were roving bands of violent men and women found in late Roman Africa. The problem is that far more of them have been produced by literary fictions, ancient and modern, than once existed. The fictions have their own intriguing history, but they are otherwise useless for those who are interested in the banality of what actually happened.
The roving bands of armed men, and women, who wandered through the north African countryside in the late fourth and early fifth century, known as circumcellions, engaged in violent assaults on their sectarian enemies. These circumcellion bands were a characteristic element of the sectarian violence that rent the two Christian churches, the Catholic and “the Donatist,” into which the Christian community in Africa had come to be divided in the post-Constantian age. The aim of this inquiry is not to describe these violent men and their activities yet again, but rather to begin a process of questioning the standard claims made about them by modern historians. The essence of the modern project of identifying the circumcellions and their activities has been to apply all available data in order to produce a general picture of a social movement.
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