The Vandal era (439–533 CE) has often been passed over as a disappointing epilogue to the story of North African Christianity, a preview of the “dark ages” to come. The traditional narrative, based largely on the history of the Nicene cleric Victor of Vita, presents the period as a century of strife between the ruling barbarian heretics and the suppressed Nicene-confessing Romano-African Church. Building on a spate of recent historical studies of the Vandal kingdom by Eric Fournier, Richard Miles, Andy Merrills, and Jonathan Conant, Robin Whelan's new work challenges Victor's simplistic narrative by disassociating the Homoian Church from both the Vandal state and from Vandal ethnicity, granting the Homoian Church its own integrity as a legitimate expression of Christianity. In his revised telling, Vandal Africa becomes a place of real religious, social, and cultural negotiation, just as interesting as the conflicts of previous centuries or the debates raging throughout the rest of the Mediterranean in the fifth century.

Whelan begins with a reassessment of the evidence regarding Homoian and Nicene bishops. In the standard narrative, Vandal bishops wielded the coercive power of the “state” church against the disenfranchised, but majority, pro-Roman Nicene Church. Combing the surviving sources, he discovers a relative balance between the colleges: about twenty identifiable Homoian bishops and about fifteen Nicene bishops in the admittedly deficient record (the information is organized in two helpful charts). Moreover, the differences between Homoians and Nicenes has almost certainly been exaggerated in the polemical texts. Archeological evidence reveals Homoian and Nicene churches to be virtually indistinguishable. The differentiating debates and court intrigues which dominate Victor's narrative were likely confined to Carthage while throughout the African countryside the majority of bishops in both factions would have been busy doing what Christians bishops have always done: administering the sacraments, preaching sermons, and serving their flocks. Whelan demonstrates that even in the capital, Homoian and Nicene bishops alike competed for favor with the Vandal kings. Following Brent Shaw's magisterial treatment of Donatists and Catholics in the fourth century in Sacred Violence (Cambridge, 2011), Whelan shows that Vandal-era Christian factions may also have been more alike than different.

Nevertheless, the literary record (which is overwhelmingly Nicene), testifies to one dominant feature of the period: Christological debates. Whelan surveys the polemical texts in his second chapter, concluding that the heresiological literature of the period is of limited value for reconstructing actual debates. The Nicene writers repeated formulaic statements, asserting their orthodoxy rather than arguing for it. Their polemical texts often took the form of historical fictions, with long-dead authorities such as Augustine or Athanasius making the “winning” Nicene case. The historicizing strategy, which presents these debates as mere recapitulations of the past, has contributed to disinterest in Vandal Africa. Whelan is correct to remind us that fifth- and sixth-century Homoians were not identical with fourth-century “Arians”; the African controversy should be interpreted as part of the broader Christological negotiations taking place across the Mediterranean in this period.

In the third chapter, Whelan turns to the Homoian polemical texts. Once plentiful, the scant remaining works are preserved mainly in Nicene texts. Though identified as “Arian” by their opponents, the Homoians self-identified as catholic and orthodox. Their allegiance was to the Bible, the Creed of Rimini, and to the councils of Rimini and Seleucia. They called the Nicenes “homoousian” heretics and sought to apply anti-heresy legislation against them. In the fourth chapter, Whelan shows how both Nicenes and Homoians attempted to legitimate their orthodoxy by reenacting ecclesial battles of the past. In the face of Vandal sanctions, the Nicenes coopted an old Donatist strategy by claiming to be the persecuted “church of the martyrs” (even while using Augustine's anti-Donatist arguments against their opponents). In turn, the Homoians called the Nicenes Donatists and pagans; the Conference of 424, which condemned the Nicene position and exiled their bishops, was a conscious reenactment of the anti-Donatist Conference of 411.

In the book's second half, Whelan considers political allegiance, ethnicity, and social status. Chapter 5 shows how Nicene bishops remained an influential part of elite social and political networks in the Vandal kingdom. Nicene bishops played court politics, currying favor with local officials when possible. Likewise, Vandal rulers were willing to make compromises for the sake of their own social and political capital when dealing with powerful Nicene leaders at home and across the sea. Pragmatic interests sometimes trumped orthodox commitments. The sixth chapter reassesses the degree to which confessional identity was tied to ethnicity. Whelan argues that the Homoian Church was not an exclusively ethnic or national church. Ethnic identity was just one factor in the larger calculus of social prestige. Even though Homoian Vandals controlled the kingdom, alignment with the Roman Nicene minority could be status enhancing, as a form of moral high ground. And even the most zealous Nicenes, such as Felix (addressee of Fulgentius's On the Trinity), socialized with Homoians, a reminder that ecclesial groups were not socially isolated. Finally, in the seventh chapter, Whelan directs attention to the lay social elites whose priorities may have differed from the bishops. For the majority of Africans, there was an extensive middle ground between the persecuted Nicenes and the Homoian loyalists described by the polemicists. He offers several vignettes, ranging from the well-known story of the poet Dracontius to a letter exchange between Sigisteus and a presbyter Parthemius; both men were elite and pious, but their confessional identities are unknown. Whelan suggests that particular practices, such as attending a martyr's church, may have relativized confessional affiliation.

Whelan's work is a new departure point for the study of Christians in Vandal Africa. His decision to treat the Homoians as a legitimate church independent of the Vandal court profoundly reorders the ecclesial landscape of North Africa. By decentering the doctrinal debates which consume the surviving polemical literature, Whelan pushes us to consider other factors which divided and possibly united African bishops. Yet despite his careful and convincing analyses of the sources, many of his insights must remain tentative until further evidence surfaces; the Homoian Church may have been just as closely identified with the Vandal conquerors as the old narrative implies. Dozens, if not hundreds, of anonymous African sermons from the fifth and sixth centuries await study; much more work is left to be done on Vandal-era archaeological sites, such as the Vandal cemetery near Carthage. Whatever the extent of his vindication, Whelan's thesis certainly equips scholars with a more sophisticated model for interpreting new texts and artifacts. At the very least, it will now be much more difficult to dismiss Vandal-era African Christianity as boring.