Mens immobilis. Recherches sur le corpus latin des actes et passions d'Afrique romaine (IIe-VIe siècles)
This thesis focuses on a corpus of thirty hagiographical texts from Roman North Africa, dated from the second to the sixth century. None synthesis on this corpus had been made since P. Monceaux’s work in the early twentieth century. In the first part, all the latin texts were collected, together with a translation and an exhaustive research of the sources : for many of them I gave a new critical edition, and a new text, the long recension of the Passion of Marciana, has been discovered. This corpus is then studied from an historical point of view. The first two sections examine these texts as evidence of the christianization of Africa, through the study of the complex phenomenon of persecutions and martyrdom. The third part illustrates the multiple potentialities of hagiographic discourse, which tends to make a new Christian hero, combination of pagan hero and of the theme of Judeo-Hellenistic Just suffering. The latter addresses the corpus as evidence of the literary culture of African elites and contributes to the cultural history of North Africa and of the circulation of ideas and works. It also discusses the question of the africitas, according to the methods of the LASLA of the University of Liège, methods applied to three passions of Caesarean Mauretania.
Afrique du Nord romaine, Hagiographie, martyre, persécution, héros chrétien, Arts & humanities, History, Arts & sciences humaines, Histoire
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations