“Sobre esta ruína edificai os vossos reinos”: A identidade vândala para as narrativas romanas dos séculos V e VI (original) (raw)

2021, Dissertação de Mestrado

https://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/61233 Having settled in Imperial territory for the first time between 409 and 428 in the provinces of Hispania, and advanced on the African provinces in 429 until the conquest of Carthage in 439. Vandals had settled in the richest regions of the Western Roman Empire, and quickly occupied a prominent place in Roman historiography, attracting the attention of clergymen who dedicated to denouncing the political-religious conduct of the Vandal kings throughout the 5th century, such as Hydatius and Victor of Vita. However, we note that among clerics, these narrative and rhetorical disputes did not achieve cohesion, because Salvian represented Visigoths and Vandals as societies more compatible with the wishes of God, a perspective that we believe to be influenced by the teachings of Augustine who judges the actions of the Goths of Alaric as examples of Christianity, in contrast to the Romans who remained in sin and therefore suffered from the divine scourge. Thus, throughout the sixth century, it is possible to see a great increase in secular literary production, especially of poets who dedicated to representing the Vandal aristocrats in their panegyrists, a period that was named by recent historiography as 'Vandal renaissance'. Finally, our research ends when we evaluate the work Procopius's Wars, and how it transmits the understanding of the identities and the Vandal kings, emphasizing the rivalry between Hilderic and Gelimer, which provided the fragmentation of the Vandal Kingdom, which justified Justinian's intervention. This is because, Hilderic is characterized as a member of the Imperial family, and portrayed as very close to Roman interests, while Gelimer, is represented as a king who wished to maintain the autonomy of the Vandal Kingdom about the Roman Empire. Thus, the main objective of this research is to understand how the narrative models about the Vandal identity, had appeared in the 5th century, mainly due to the influence of religious debates, and that later, in the 6th century, they are reorganized based on works, so-called ‘secular’.