Courtesy of Mike Ferrando, Italian to English
Lombino, Il Comma Johanneum in Africa vandalica. Polemica antiariana e identitaria
Polemica antiariana e identitaria
RivB LXXX (2022)
The Comma Johanneum (CJ: 1 John 5:7)1 unequivocally attests to a Trinitarian faith. Absent in the biblical texts of the Greek Fathers,2 in the West we find it received as an integral part of the epistle of John in Vandal Africa, when the controversy between Catholics and Arians was raging. Having already appeared in the 4th century in Spain, it is found without any apparent ecclesial connection and for the first time in full under the pen of the anonymous African anti-Arian polemicist of the Contra Varimadum and therefore in a period that oscillates between 445 and 450.3
Recent studies on the CJ focus mainly on its reception in the modern era4 and on textual criticism.5 However, if we look at patristic studies, the contributions on the CJ are not numerous. Up to now, patrologists have been interested mainly in the structural development, the exegesis of the text and the manuscript tradition.6 There do not seem to be any new studies that evaluate the CJ in relation to the heated anti-Arian polemic in Africa. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century, Augustinus Bludau raised the question of the approach of African Catholics to the CJ, that is, whether its appearance in the Liber Fidei Catholicae, presented in February 484 at the Conference of Carthage, derived from its recognized authenticity in the African Church.7 The question of meaning that still needs to be asked and to which, with the present contribution, I intend to provide an answer is the following: why did the CJ appear in Africa at the time of the polemic of the Catholics with the Arian Vandals and in more or less official documents of the Catholic Church?
It seems obvious that the CJ was used in the anti-Arian polemic, however such use is not exhaustive of the problems that revolved around the text. The Vandals, in Africa, cruelly persecuted the Catholics, as Vittore di Vita informs us with his Historia;8 however it was not only a question of suffered repression, but also of a clash of identities. In his monumental study on the Vandals, Christian Courtois9 hypothesized the Vandalic persecution as a consequence of a dull resistance of the Catholics, who identified themselves as "Romans". However, Yves Modéran clarified that it was not only an ethnic conflict, but also a "war of religion",10 for whose victory, as we will see, the Holy Scripture had a decisive weight. In the investigation of the use of the CJ in Vandal Africa, it is necessary to take into account not only the theological conceptions of the parties in conflict, but also the more general and all-encompassing themes regarding the clash of ethnic and religious identities.11
In dividing the work we have thought of three successive stages of development of the theme. In the first we will examine the way in which the Vandal identity is structured; in a certain sense this stage corresponds to a position taken by the Vandals in an alien geographical area. In the second, we will consider the reaction of the pars aliena, that is, the African Catholics, and specifically we will study the CJ in the context of the anti-Arian polemic. In the third stage we will grasp the socio-ecclesiological consequences of a theological conception, in which the CJ plays a key role, and in essence we will see how theology serves as a support for a new semantic “self-representation” of African Catholics in a social context, the Vandal kingdom, which proves to be alien to them. A brief conclusion will follow.
Religious Identity of the Vandals in Africa
Construction of Identity in Barbarian Peoples
Historians have long noted that, in the Roman Imperial Age, the definition of identities, both social and personal, involves a certain complexity of analysis, because they are no longer linked to ethnicity alone, but are also conditioned by religion.12 Although it may seem like a research topic for sociologists only, the study of the construction of identities does not appear today as an obsolete field of investigation, since, in history, identity issues arise cyclically in periods of crisis, or when identities are about to dissolve. 13 This is especially true for late imperial Roman society, for which the arrival of barbarian peoples and the Vandals entailed the shattering of a fragile social balance and of the previous interpretative paradigm of identities.14 In Africa, the social crisis was even more acute than elsewhere due to the forced dissolution of the ancient political bond with Rome and the creation of a regnum vandalorum. However, at the crest of this transition and in the new political situation, the Vandals were also forced to build their own identity.
Regarding the identity-building strategies that the gentes developed, Walter Pohl indicates two methods: one of a political type and the other of a textual type.15 Following the first, the political effort aimed at imposing a pre-established identity on everyone. The second alternative, elaborated with a more subtle and intelligent strategy, consisted in the cultural attempt to construct a myth of the origo gentium through written documents.16 Obviously, whether one opted for the first or the second method, the strategy undertaken clashed with the social otherness of the sedentary people who were forced to take a position and therefore to identify themselves in turn.17
This dual method is perfectly adequate for understanding African identities during the Vandal reign. The Vandals adopted the political strategy for the construction of their own identity, creating a correspondence between ethnic identity and religious identity. It should be considered, however, that the identity of the Vandals, at the time of their conquest, was not consolidated at all, nor, moreover, from an ethnic point of view, was it ever, since it always remained open to welcoming other ethnic groups (Dacians, Carpians, Sarmatians, Alans, Suevians, exiled Goths and provincials). 18 Nonetheless, after the violent settlement, King Geiseric, considering himself the sole master of the conquered African territories, wanted to better mark the identity of his people with the creation in Africa of a «pays vandale»,19 practiced with the confiscation of all the goods of the ancient African owners and the Vandal occupation of the most fertile parts of Proconsular Africa (sortes vandalorum).20
The occupation of the land could not be sufficient for the king's project. It should be considered that the ratio between Vandals and Africans was absolutely disproportionate in favor of the latter. At the time of the settlement, the Vandal families could amount to the figure of 15,000 (compared to approximately 3 million Africans) and the confiscation of the lands mainly concerned proconsular Africa.21 Geiseric then played the religious card and adopted Arianism as the state cult and with violence tried to eradicate Catholicism from the Vandal territories, preventing any cultic and pastoral activity, as Victor of Vita narrates in the first book of his Historia. A generous hand in implementing the ethnic-religious cleansing of the Proconsular was given by the Arian clergy, who in addition to using violence against Catholics also promoted an intense and underhanded proselytism activity, with the aim of excluding from the sortibus vandalorum any religious otherness, whether Christian, Catholics and Donatists, or non-Christian, such as that of the Manicheans.22 In the face of this project by Geiserico, historical analogies arise easily and Yves Modéran states that in Africa: «[…] unlike the other barbarians, among whom one finds only attenuated or scattered forms of this policy [in favor of the Arians, ed.], the Vandals had a true missionary project, which was clearly related to the famous adage cujus regio ejus religio».23
The Arianism of the Vandals
It is not clear when the Vandals converted to Christianity and by whose work. Lately Umberto Roberto has hypothesized with good reason that the conversion occurred between 406 and 426, that is, when they had already entered the borders of the empire.24 But the conversion does not seem to have been a mass phenomenon. There were certainly followers of other cults and the news given by the historian Idatius that Geiseric, before receiving royal power succeeding his brother Gunderic, had been a Catholic is thought-provoking. Geiseric, in order to assume royal command, however, had to apostatize from Nicene orthodoxy to pass to the Arian faith, thus ingratiating himself with the aristocratic ranks of the Vandal army, all entrenched in the Arian faith. The story incisively told by Idatius25 would indicate a certain original openness to the religious pluralism of the Vandal people, a plurality that became unsustainable at the highest levels of the political hierarchy, where Arianism would have been considered an identifying faith of the people. Such plurality, in any case, was no longer tolerated at the foundation of the Vandal kingdom and Geiseric became a fundamentalist Arian.26
But it is still fair to ask what theological position the Vandals occupied within the variegated late antique Arianism. The faith of Geiseric's people has been described as an "Ulfian Arianism", attributing its origin to Ulfila, or even as a "Teutonic Arianism",27 to distinguish it from Greek Arianism, modulated philosophically. In reality, the Teutonic one achieved the results of the first Arianism, which considered the Son as a creature of the Father, in that it asserted that "he is called Son or Power by grace", and in any case worshipped only the Father as the true God; consequently the three hypostases were considered as absolutely distinct from each other.28 Teutonic Arianism degraded Christ to even lower levels, to place him perhaps on the same level as a hero or a great Teutonic king or leader.29 This conception, however, does not appear immediately evident at a first reading of the sources, which_ should be better questioned.
Apparently, squeezing the few sources available today, Vandalic Arianism underwent – in this case too – an evolution over time, passing from a Homean Arian profession to a radical Anomoean one. 30 King Hunneric, in the edict issued on the occasion of the Carthage conference of 484,31 professed the faith of the Council of Rimini and Seleucia, where the formula of the so-called Dated Creed had been imposed by the will of Emperor Constantius II, which simply considered the Son similar to the Father. But it is very likely that what Ambrose complained about the Western Arians, who on the one hand resolutely rejected the name of the radical Arian Eunomius, but then followed his doctrine,32 also occurred to the Arians of Africa. The formula of Rimini was the expression of a moderate Arianism and did not at all represent the "Teutonic" conception of Arianism, as the sources show. Instead, both the homily of the African Arian Fastidiosus,33 who rejects homoousios, and the Catholic texts of the polemic indicate that the theological conception of the Arian Vandals of Africa was in fact structured on a hierarchical triadic scheme degrading downwards, with a clear caesura between the Father and the Son and with an even more marked distance of the Holy Spirit from the Father.34
Because of this conception, the Vandals absolutely did not accept homoousios, which, as is known, in the debate of the Council of Nicaea had placed the doctrine of Arius irreparably in heterodoxy.35 In the edict of Hunneric of February 25, 384, in which the king attributes the failure of the Carthage conference to the Catholics, it is said that the first question that the Arian bishops posed to the Catholics was the explanation of homoousios starting from the Holy Scriptures: «[…] primo die a uenerabilibus episcopis nostris eis uidetur esse propositum ut homoousion, sicut ammoniti fuerant, ex diuinis scripturis proprie adprobarent».36
This text is also useful for helping us understand the anti-Arian polemic in Africa and the methods of the debate. The Arians who rejected homoousios, but who in Africa faced their adversaries from a position of political strength, in fact claimed that the Trinitarian faith of Catholics was proven only by biblical evidence (ex diuinis scripturis)37 and not by philosophical debate. In this polemical climate, based on biblical evidence, the CJ comes into play.
The Comma Johanneum in the polemical texts
The anti-Arian polemic of African Catholics
The aforementioned socio-religious premise now orients us better in understanding the Catholic use of the CJ. In the abundant anti-Arian polemical production of African Catholics, however, the CJ does not appear ubiquitous and we do not find it in homiletic texts. Nevertheless, it is cited with a certain frequency in the literature of dogmatic relevance and in some biblical-polemical anthologies: in an
Expositio fidei catholicae,38 in the
Contra Varimadum,39 in the
De Trinitate ad Felicem notarium attributed to Fulgentius of Ruspe,40 in the
Liber fidei catholicae,41 presented by the Catholic bishops at the interconfessional conference of Carthage in 484, in the
Contra Fabianum,42 attributed to Fulgentius of Ruspe, in the
anonymous De Trinitate of the 5th-6th century, also falsely attributed to Fulgentius with the title of Liber pro fide catholica adversus Pintam episcopum Arrianorum.43
In some of the texts listed above, the CJ is only cited within a biblical anthology, however for this reason it is not insignificant for the purposes of the polemic. This dossier of writings was developed in response to Arian theological production, of which, however, we no longer possess almost anything.44 The only Arian document from that time that remains today is the sermon of the aforementioned Fastidiosus,45 who was a Catholic monk and priest and who, accused of leading a disorderly life, left the Catholic Church and converted to Arianism. According to Fulgentius, who reports the sermon, Fastidiosus was not an original theologian; indeed, it seems he even plundered the writings of others and perhaps of Fulgentius himself.46 Despite the scarcity of Arian texts, we have sufficient elements to identify the methodology developed in the polemic. In short, the Catholics had adopted the polemical method preferred by the Arians, a method that aimed at presenting an overwhelming number of biblical testimonial evidence, in order to get the better of the opponent thanks to the quantity of congruent passages adduced.47
Reference has already been made to this method of accumulating biblical texts, which had its magisterial launch at the Council of Rimini in 359 and had already been extensively tested by the Arian Maximinus in the debate with Augustine.48 Thus all Western Arians appealed in the debates to that synod, where not only was it promulgated that sola Scriptura should be held as the foundation of faith, but the prohibition of any philosophical terminology was also reaffirmed: «[Usiae vero nomen], quia in scripturis non invenitur et multos simpliciores novitate sua scandalizat, placui auferre».49 These motivations appear more than valid to explain the aforementioned polemical methodology, however for the Vandals perhaps another more practical one should be added, linked to a certain familiarity with the biblical text. It seems that their warriors even resorted to Scripture to encourage themselves when it was time to engage in battle against the Roman army.50
In any case, the Catholics do not seem to have been intimidated by the Arian requests, as demonstrated by the exchange between Cereale, Catholic bishop of Castellum Ripense, and his Arian opponent Maximinus. The latter had requested at the beginning of the debate that for each point of the Catholic faith- Cereale bring at least two or three proofs from Scripture. In response, Cereale said: non duo vel tria, sed plura, subsequently honoring the promise.51
From this Arian claim it follows that the Catholics, including the CJ among the biblical proofs, found it highly appropriate and favorable to the victory of their cause, as it was extremely explicit about the Trinity and the consubstantiality of the Three. In short, this text could not be missing from the biblical anthologies,52 used in the anti-Arian polemic. The simple citation of the Comma would have been theologically probative of the Catholic faith.
It is necessary now to focus on the Liber fidei, because the CJ cited there presents not only a greater theological interest, but also interesting ecclesiological and identity developments.
The CJ in the Liber fidei catholicae
In Africa, with the heat of the anti-Arian controversy, the CJ found itself increasingly frequently among the testimonies proving the Trinitarian faith. 53 Most likely this depended on the use of the CJ in the Liber fidei catholicae,54 which the Catholic bishops presented at the Carthage conference in 484. More than a confession of faith, this document is a theological treatise written by the bishop of Carthage Eugene, a Greek from Constantinople elected in 480, after a long period of vacant see,55 who was assisted in the final drafting by four African bishops.56 The citation of the CJ in the Liber appears to be a very particular case, not to say anomalous, for at least two reasons: first of all, it is used to support an argument about the divinity of the Holy Spirit; furthermore, as we will see, it appears in the document as a decisive and authoritative text.
Despite its length, the Liber was also inserted by Victor of Vita in his Historia, where it occupies a central space in the work, between the second and third books (II, 56-101). Serge Lancel57 clarifies that the Liber follows and explains by means of testimonies the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, with a first part dedicated to the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son (II, 58-74) and a second part devoted to proving the divinity of the Holy Spirit. However, the apparent polemical-theological balance in reality proves to be disharmonious due to the large space that is reserved for the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son (II, 75-99). The reason is to be attributed to the anti-Arian polemic in Africa, where the Arian Vandals decisively denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, consequently presenting a not indifferent fragility in the ecclesiological field.58
In any case, the pneumatological argument is developed on the basis of biblical evidence, taken first from the Old and then from the New Testament (II,77).59 After having listed, therefore, the biblical passages considered pertinent to the cause of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, finally in the Liber comes the truly decisive and incontrovertible proof, because it is clearer than the light itself (adhuc luce clarius), that is, the CJ:
And to teach even more clearly than the light that the Holy Spirit has with the Father and the Son a single divine nature, we prove it with the testimony of the evangelist John. Ait namque: tres sunt qui testimonium perhibent in caelo, pater, uerbum et spiritus sanctus, et hi tres unum sunt.60 We note that the writers of the text certainly wanted to reiterate the unique divine nature of the Three, but from the perspective of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which constitutes the "unity" of nature of the Three persons. In fact, immediately after quoting it, it is added, citing in a doubtful form divisive expressions of the Arians, who as it will be remembered professed the doctrine of the three separate hypostases: «Numquid ait “tres in differen aequalitate seiuncti aut quibuslibet diuersitatum gradibus longo separationis interval diuisi?” Sed tres, inquit, unum sunt».61
Furthermore, upon closer observation, one realizes that the document does not retrace the speculations of pneumatology to which Africans must have been accustomed, following the Trinitarian theology of Augustine,62 but prefers the inductive method, with which one arrives at the proclamation of the divinity of the Spirit by way of biblical proofs, according to a theological approach already widely tested in the East by Basil the Great.63
The reference to the CJ in relation to the divinity of the Holy Spirit must however be contextualized to the time of the conference of 484, which has already been partly mentioned. It was convened by King Hunneric so that Catholics could explain their faith,64 but rather than explaining it they should have justified it in relation to the dated Creed of Rimini and Seleucia, on a scriptural basis.65 At least in this respect, the citation of the CJ was therefore pertinent.
Another question is instead to understand where that erratic boulder came from. In the past, numerous hypotheses have been raised and it was thought that the CJ was the result of a falsification subsequent to the drafting of the document, since its citation in that place would not have been necessary. Augustinus Bludau, after having critically reviewed the various hypotheses, believes that the CJ was not a posthumous contamination of the Liber, nor does he believe that it was already found in the biblical texts in use in Africa, but rather supposes that it was added at the time of the Conference by the Catholic bishops. Today we know better the sources of the Liber, which appears to be derived from at least three sources:
the De Trinitate of Eusebius of Vercelli,
the Consultationes Zacchaei et Apollonii,
the Instructionis libelli of Nicea by Remesiana.
These sources were however freely elaborated and were added to literal quotations of the Constantinopolitan Creed.66 But the CJ is not present at all in these documents. Serge Lancel, in the commentary on the Liber, refers to some biblical text, which the editor had in his possession.67 Bludau had actually excluded such a possibility, which in fact does not appear to be documented. I therefore believe that something new can be said about the presence of the CJ.
There is no doubt that the general layout of the Liber comes from the primate Eugene, who as mentioned was a Greek and had the opportunity to transpose elements of the Constantinopolitan Creed into the document, together with a methodology already used by Basil the Great to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit.68 However, the contribution of the Latin bishops was not lacking in the drafting of the Liber: for example, Vittore di Vita reports that before the conference of 484 a commission of ten Catholic bishops was chosen to represent the others. Furthermore, from the text of the Liber itself it is clear that the eschatocol of the definitive epistle presented to the king is marked by four names of African bishops.69
It is therefore very likely that the insertion of the CJ into the document was done by the Latin bishops, since, as stated in our introduction, it was completely unknown in the East and could not therefore have come from Eugene. But where could the CJ have been taken from? Since our text was unknown in Africa until Augustine,70 there are two possible sources to which it can be traced: either the Contra Varimadum (Var), composed in 445-450, or it came directly from Hispania, where it appeared for the first time in the Liber apologeticus of Priscillian († 385).71 It is difficult that it could derive from the Var, because the anonymous author composed this substantial anti-Arian biblical anthology in Italy, most probably in Naples, where he had been exiled.72 Therefore, the only option left is the second hypothesis, which would also agree with what A. Bludau had supposed in his time, even if his conjecture needs to be updated, as we will see immediately.
During the Vandal period, the relations known to us between the two churches, African and Spanish, are limited to two contacts: the correspondence between two young Spaniards, Vitalis and Tonantius, who called themselves Servi Dei, with the bishop of Carthage Capreolus; and the arrival at the Carthage conference in 484 of three bishops from the Balearics.73 With regard to the aforementioned correspondence, which probably took place in 438, the two young men asked Capreolus some Nestorian-style questions about the birth of Christ, to which the Carthaginian bishop responded appropriately. In this exchange of letters, the Holy Scripture is called into question, but there is no allusion to the CJ.74 The second contact took place on the occasion of the aforementioned Conference, when Hunneric also summoned the Catholic bishops of the islands under his dominion. Three professors arrived in Carthage from the Balearics: Macarius of Minorca, Elias of Majorca, and Opilius of Ibiza.75 Since it had already been circulating in Spain for some time, it is very likely that the CJ had been suggested to the editor of the Liber by the bishops of the Balearic Islands, some of whom were perhaps part of the restricted commission of ten mentioned above.76
Finally, it should not be overlooked that the CJ was presented with the specification that it would be even clearer than light (adhuc luce clarius), or as an absolutely evident passage regarding the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Such peremptoriness in a profession of faith drawn up for polemical and defensive purposes by the Arians would lead one to think that the latter had the CJ in their manuscripts of the epistle. Bludau denies this,77 but it should perhaps not be excluded that the Vandals, coming from Spain, had become aware of it, even without including it in their sacred texts. Otherwise, the certainty of the evidence that Catholics placed in presenting the Johannine passage to their adversaries would not be explained.
Identity of Catholic Christians as Spiritales
In the CJ, as we have just seen, the Catholic bishops of Africa have found decisive proof in favor of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. What we must now consider are the consequences of that pneumatological faith, treated in the last part of the Liber (II, 75-99), slavishly borrowing the Instructio ad competentis of Nicetas of Remesiana.78 It may seem strange to have recourse to Nicetas instead of other auctores, first of all the African Augustine, however I believe that the bishops had at least two good reasons for choosing him. First of all, Nicetas operated in a geographical context, Illyricum and nearby Dacia, where the church that recognized itself in the Homean confession of faith of the synods of Rimini and Seleucia was active and prevalent, as was the Arian Vandal church. The second motivation could lie in his theological conception: Nicetas wrote in Latin, but was strongly influenced by Greek theology, especially by Cyril of Jerusalem, from whom he drew his conception of the Catholic church,79 a topic debated between Catholics and Arian Vandals. It is to be assumed, therefore, that the work of the bishop of Remesiana was particularly suitable for exposing the doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit to the Arian Vandals, according to a method that would have been congenial also to Eugenius, bishop of Carthage, but still of Greek education.
In particular, the Liber follows to the letter the De Spiritu Sancti potentia, one of the pamphlets that make up the aforementioned Instructio.80 Despite this literal borrowing, S. Lancel believes that, due to some omissions or shifts in the text, the African Catholic bishops who drafted the Liber still operated with a certain creative detachment from their source, because in his opinion the arguments put forward were drawn from a very frequent recourse to Sacred Scripture, as required by the anti-Arian polemic of the time.81 Personally, I believe that, compared to Nicetas, the novelty of the Liber lies in the new orientation given to the material taken up, that is, while in Nicetas the text was oriented towards the formation of catechumens,82 transposed into the Liber, this document receives a new orientation, certainly polemical and theological, but above all identity-based regarding the true Christian.
In Africa, the theme of the identity of the Christian, of the quid christianum esse, was particularly alive, because it was debated first in the ecclesial crisis that arose in the controversy between Catholics and Donatists and later in the Pelagian controversy, but in any case the crisis of the Christian identity seems to have affected the whole of the fourth century, both in the East and in the West. 83 At the time of the Vandal kingdom, beyond the issues of the Trinitarian faith, exactly the same problem was being debated that was placed on the negotiating table in the Collatio of 411 between Catholics and Donatists regarding the true Church, when the Donatists previously refused to have their adversaries identified as Catholics. 84 Similarly at the time of the Liber, the Arian Vandals, who claimed to constitute the true Church, refused the Homousians (sic!) the right to identify themselves as Catholics. 85 This is something the latter were accustomed to do. Faced with the flattery of two Vandal counts, linked to a possible apostasy, the group of exiles from Hunneric, destined to die in the desert, shouted out loud: «Christiani sumus, catholici sumus, trinitatem unum deum inuiolabilem confitemur!».86 The long loan of the Liber from Nicetas therefore became more than ever appropriate for the controversy of the moment, aimed at confirming the true Christian identity in the new ecclesial situation. But at the conference of 484, what was precisely the «self-representation» of the Homoousians before the Arian Vandals?
The Liber sets it out with the «clear» words of Nicetas: the Christians who confess belonging to the Trinity, it says, are «reborn» from it and are its servants, just as the men of the ancient alliance were servants of God. The latter «from the name of God» were called «men of God», because they were servants of the Father, and such were Elijah or Moses; similarly it is necessary to say for Christians, but in relation to the Spirit. However, since they are effectively "reborn" (renatos) by the Holy Spirit, they can no longer be called "men of God", but spirituales. And therefore: ut Moyses homo dei appelatus est, sic a Christo christiani nuncupamur, sic etiam ab spiritu spiritualales appellamur. If you igitur uocetur quis homo dei et non sit christianus, nihil est; aeque si christianus uocetur et non fuerit spiritalis, ne sibi satis de salute confidat.87
The reference to the divinity of the Holy Spirit therefore provided African Catholics with the possibility of defensively representing themselves according to a new identity of true christians, because spiritales,88 thereby overcoming the objections of the Arian Vandals.89 Thus precisely because they were ruled by the Trinity, Catholics, regardless of being Roman, considered themselves the only true christiani cattolica and spiritales. The reading of the Liber with this declaration of identity, at the conference of 484, caused the immediate breakdown of the debate.90
To what has been said, we can still add that the breadth of the treatment in the Liber on the divinity of the Holy Spirit is indicative of a live problem in the controversy with the African Arians, already present in the controversies of the third and fourth centuries, namely the entirely African question of identifying, among the groups competing with the Catholics, where the true Church and therefore the true christianus was. We have a sense of this, for example, in a small anonymous treatise on the Trinity, in which the CJ appears.91 Some confusion could have been generated in the observer not well versed in the theological controversy, since the competition between the Arian church and the Catholic church in Africa was very strong. The Vandal Arians had churches like the Catholics – their usurped ones – they had the same hierarchical grades of the priesthood, they celebrated similar rites, they had the same religious feasts, they assisted the poor and the indigent, perhaps more generously than the Catholics.92 Where then could the true Church reside? The Catholics insisted on regeneration from the Spirit and denied that the Vandal Arians, without a belief in the Holy Spirit, could call themselves the true Church. Fulgentius of Ruspe in his letter to Donatus wonders that the Arians' Church could have the sacraments and be equated with the Catholic one: "How do the Arians deny that the Holy Spirit is God, since we are the Church of the Holy Spirit, in the same way that we are the Church of the Father and the Son?".93
Conclusion
Our study has shown that the Catholics of Vandal Africa did not entertain the slightest doubt that the CJ was an integral part of Sacred Scripture. The Liber fidei, presented at the conference of 484, also sealed its official acceptance by the Church of Africa and it is likely that knowledge of it has spread since then, as attested by the greater frequency with which it appears in anti-Arian theological treatises starting from the second half of the fifth century. For African Catholic polemicists, it had a probative value both of a Trinitarian faith and above all of faith in the divinity of the Holy Spirit, a faith absolutely necessary for determining the mystery of the true Church, according to the ancient African ecclesiological tradition, which dates back to Cyprian and even before that to Tertullian himself.94
On the other hand, we have also seen how the CJ arrived in the Liber fidei, or rather by what means it was included among the biblical texts proving the divinity of the Holy Spirit. If Catholics had not had knowledge of the Vandal Arian faith and if they had not been called to justify their faith at the conference of 484, they would not have learned about the CJ. In short, the CJ contributed to the verbal and defensive "self-representation" of African Catholics in the face of the Arian Vandals. As was said initially, the gentes would have adopted two ways to structure their identity, politically and textually, in this case mythologically weaving their own origo.
The Vandals in Africa exploited the political mode to the full, but it does not seem that they made use of the second. Rather, the symbiotic embrace with the Arian church entailed for them the structuring of an ethno-religious identity, labile and contingent, destined to dissolve simultaneously with the disappearance of the Vandal kingdom. Paradoxically, however, the aforementioned second modality was exploited, certainly in a theological key, by Catholics, who, with the attestation of the divinity of the Third Person of the Trinity, had the opportunity to "self-represent" themselves for their theological origin. By virtue of their "birth certificate". Catholics proclaimed themselves renati by the Holy Spirit and could call themselves christiani, spiritales and catholici.
