“Two Africas”: The Conflict of Identities in the Texts of Aurelius Augustine

Abstract

The article examines religious and cultural processes in North Africa of the late Antiquity. Mainly using the example of Aurelius Augustine, it questions the traditional opposition of “Roman" (Catholic) and “African" (Donatist) Christianities and presents a more complex picture in which historical subjects simultaneously act within the framework of several social and cultural identities. The article claims that the Christianization of Africa should not be separated from its Romanization, and that it was Romanization that revealed deep, centuries-long, social contradictions in African society, which most clearly manifested themselves in the religious conflict between the Donatist and orthodox parties. This conflict reflected the confrontation between the two, although not monolithic, socio-cultural groups in North Africa - those who sought to defend regional linguistic and cultural identity and those who saw the only way to salvation in the universal Church, or wanted to ensure their own well-being through the service to the Roman state. In this respect, Augustine’s family and he himself provide an example of both strategies: on the one hand, the principled choice in favor of Romanization and the universal Church, and on the other, the preservation of African identity.