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Papers by Mark L Tizzoni

The Palgrave Handbook of African Christianity from Apostolic Times to the Present. Andrew Barnes and Toyin Falola, eds. London: Palgrave, 2024. ISBN: 9783031482694, 2024

This study presents an outline of the history of Christianity in the Maghreb during “long late an... more This study presents an outline of the history of Christianity in the Maghreb during “long late antiquity,” roughly 180-700 CE. In examining this history through the lenses of movements and community, it centers attempts at building community, consensus, and identity alongside responses and reactions to those attempts. In surveying the various controversies that contested them—Donatism, Arianism, the Three Chapters—the study follows a central thread at the heart of these early African Christian communities: the martyrs and their legacy. By approaching this history through the work of post-colonial scholars, this study examines these communities within the colonized landscape of the Roman Empire in the Maghreb. The picture that emerges presents a set of robust, assertive, and self-confident communities, firmly rooted in African identities, seeking to delineate their collective belonging while navigating a colonial (and then post-colonial) landscape defined by the memories and narratives of persecution. As such, readers will find an introduction to the major events and figures situated within an up-to-date understanding of the history of the late antique Maghreb.

Urban Interactions: Communication and Competition in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 2020

Vandal-era Carthage represents a complex late antique city; one looking both inward and outward. ... more Vandal-era Carthage represents a complex late antique city; one looking both inward and outward. It functioned both as the heart of the Vandal kingdom and as the central hub of a massive international maritime network spanning much of the late Roman and post-Roman world. Carthage had long been one of the great cities of the Mediterranean world, and continued to be so under Vandal rule. One of the significant ways in which Carthage changed, however, was the ways in which it interacted with other urban centres. This study examines these interactions, locating Carthage’s changing position within the Mediterranean world. Carthage, in effect, possessed two hinterlands, one its immediate hinterland under Vandal suzerainty and the other its wider hinterland, often geographically distant, which it acquired and held by virtue of its maritime prominence. This study will establish the position of Carthage during the Vandal era both within and without the Vandal polity. This will involve an investigation particularly of economic and ecclesiastical evidence. This study will also explore the cultural and intellectual interactions between Carthage and the wider Mediterranean world, particularly focusing on the ways in which the Vandal rulers sought to depict and promote the city. All of this positioning centers upon two aspects of Carthage’s history during the Vandal era: the severing of the Rome-Carthage trade axis, and Carthage’s newfound role as the capital of an independent state.

A call for papers for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo MI, 13-15 May 2021.

Networks and Neighbours, Vol 2.1

The traditional image of Vandal North Africa as a place of oppression, persecution, et al., has l... more The traditional image of Vandal North Africa as a place of oppression, persecution, et al., has largely been shattered under the weight of modern scholarly investigation. In recent years, scholars from various fields have come together to greatly enhance, and fundamentally alter, our understanding of Vandal North Africa. Scholarship geared at contextualizing Africa has centred especially upon Mediterranean interconnectedness as witnessed in political, economic, and theological issues. The investigation of cultural and intellectual interconnectedness between Vandal North Africa and the remainder of the Latin West, however, remains to be fully addressed. Crucial to this discussion stand the works of the poet Blossius Aemilius Dracontius, written near the close of the fifth century. The central goal of this paper is to ask and answer one specific question: what can the works of Dracontius tell us regarding the nature and depth of the cultural and intellectual connections between North Africa and Europe during the period of Vandal rule in Carthage? In seeking an answer, the present investigation focuses upon an analysis of Dracontius’ use of contemporary and near-contemporary source material. In effect, this analysis centres upon literary parallels (loci similes) between the works of Dracontius and those of Sidonius Apollinaris and Avitus of Vienne. Individual resonances found throughout Dracontius’ corpus are elucidated, discussed, and analysed. Taken together, Dracontius’ loci similes with his Gallic counterparts paint a picture of close cultural and intellectual interaction between Vandal North Africa and the rest of the Latin world, and the historical implications of this are discussed.

N&N Journal Volumes by Mark L Tizzoni

Networks and Neighbours, 2014

Visigothic Symposia by Mark L Tizzoni

Visigothic Symposia, 2018

I should first begin by thanking the organizers Dolores Castro and Michael J. Kelly for orchestra... more I should first begin by thanking the organizers Dolores Castro and Michael J. Kelly for orchestrating these Visigothic Symposia. In doing so, they have provided an important and inclusive space within which the history of Visigothic Iberia can be approached both collectively, and with great variety. My goal here is to provide a response to the four other essays that make up panel two of the second Visigothic Symposium, within which my essay also features. Our panel examines the topic of identity in Visigothic Iberia. Not only have we approached this from different angles, we have conceived of this word in different ways. The result has been a broad study that embraces, in a sense, the diverse heterogeneity of our topic.

Visigothic Symposia, 2017

We tend to view Eugenius II of Toledo as the great Catholic Visigothic poet: born to an aristocra... more We tend to view Eugenius II of Toledo as the great Catholic Visigothic poet: born to an aristocratic family in Toledo, trained as a cleric there and in Zaragoza, recalled to the bishopric of his home city by the Visigothic king himself, and commissioned then as court poet. None of these aspects of Eugenius's identity are wrong, but they are used to construct an identity for the poet which is exactly that: constructed. The goal of this essay is to deconstruct and examine this identity in an effort to better understand the poet and the world in which he operated.

In reality, Eugenius’s identity was not so straightforward. Despite the poet’s Toledan origins, the only region to appear directly in Eugenius’s verse is Zaragoza. How, then, does the regionalism of Visigothic Iberia play out in Eugenius’s poetry? As a poet, he employs Iberian sources but relies more heavily on works from North Africa and Gaul. How do these different regional identities fit together? Was Eugenius more a part of the pan-Roman – or rather the pan-post Roman – literary world of Latin letters, where his poems constructed a mental space much larger than his physical locale? Was his use of Iberian dialect a sign of cultural and linguistic constriction or did that matter? Eugenius uses literature from across the Latin West but places it within a context that is regional within Visigothic Iberia itself. What does that tell us about his identity? What was Eugenius’s own perceived position within it? Where, and how, did Eugenius see himself and his artistic/cultural output? Eugenius’s religious identity is likewise complicated: he was both bishop and monastic, both pastoral leader and ascetic. How does this play out in his verse? These questions lie at the heart of Eugenius of Toledo’s verse, even if his penchant for the prosaic and the seemingly frivolous disguises the depth of this conflict. This article will address these layers of identity.

Books and Presentations by Mark L Tizzoni

Gracchi Books, 2020

Michael J. Kelly – Preface: Iberian Rivalries Ian Wood – Introduction Lisa Kaaren Bailey – “The... more Michael J. Kelly – Preface: Iberian Rivalries

Ian Wood – Introduction

Lisa Kaaren Bailey – “The Innocence of the Dead Crowned You, the Glory of the Triumphant Crowned Me”: The Strange Rivalry between Bethlehem and Lyon in Eusebius Gallicanus Sermon 11

Michael Burrows – Tours vs. Bourges: The Secular and Ecclesiastical Discourse of Inter-City Relationships in the Accounts of Gregory of Tours

Ann Christys – Did All Roads Lead to Córdoba under the Umayyads?

Dimitris J. Kyrtatas – Religious Conflict in Roman Nicomedia

Javier Martínez Jiménez – Reccopolitani and Other Town Dwellers in the Southern Meseta during the Visigothic Period of State Formation

Pedro Mateos Cruz – Augusta Emerita in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Its Urban Layout During the Fourth and Fifth Centuries CE

Michael Mulryan – The So-Called “Oriental Quarter” of Ostia: Regions III.XVI–VII, a Neighborhood in Late Antiquity

Isabel Sánchez Ramos – Looking through Landscapes: Ideology and Power in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo

Mark Lewis Tizzoni – Locating Carthage in the Vandal Era

Douglas Underwood – Good Neighbors and Good Walls: Urban Development and Trade Networks in Late Antique South Gaul

Books and Volumes by Mark L Tizzoni