Cassandra M.M. Casias, Duke University
Punic-speaking Africans appear occasionally in the writings of Augustine of Hippo. As a father, he recounts a conversation between himself and his adolescent son, Adeodatus, over the definition of a Punic word. As a bishop, Augustine had to find ways of preaching to the rural communities around the metropolitan center of Hippo who did not speak Latin. Both Adeodatus and the rural Punic speakers of Africa survive in the record under the shadow of the prolific writer and famous theologian. By focusing on the references to the Punic language in Augustine’s writings, this paper attempts to recover some of the voices of Africans living under a Roman cultural hegemony.
Leslie Dossey’s monograph, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa, has laid the foundation of telling the story of rural residents of North Africa and what they wanted from ecclesiastical leaders. In the field of theology, Justo González has analyzed the life and works of Augustine through the lens of mestizaje, or the mixture of two cultures. This paper will use these works as a starting point to investigate the marginalized African figures in Augustine’s writings via their use of the Punic language.
Analysis of De magistro, Augustine’s philosophical dialogue between himself and Adeodatus about language, reveals the cultural tensions present for the two African men living in Italy after the departure of Adeodatus’s mother. Later in Augustine’s career, the story of Antoninus—the controversial figure appointed bishop of Fussala because of his knowledge of Punic—highlights the power disparity between the rural residents of the African countryside and the Latin-educated ecclesiastical leaders. These two case studies bring to light indigenous Africans’ attempts at self-assertion through the Punic language under the shadow of Latin hegemony and Augustine, the man who represented it.