To what extent is the concept of a distinct Africanitas for Roman North Africa a modern myth? Christoph Markschies rejects an essentialist assumption of a general Africanitas in which particular African events participate. A review of Sallust, Polybius (and his source Timaeus), Diodor, Vergil etc. reveals a number of questionable stereotypes, and at all events no distinction is made between Romans, Roman Africans and Africans (Punic) but only between Romans and Africans. Von Campenhausen had asserted a distinct African, Christian Romanitas that had eschewed Greek metaphysics and provided a distinctively African exegesis of the New and particularly to the Old Testament. But where are the examples of a particular Africanitas that Christianity inherited? Apuleius, for example, does not eschew Greek metaphysics, so where is the evidence for a pagan antecedent to Christian Africanitas? Augustine mentions Punic customs practised by African Christians, but there is no Punic equivalent to the Vetus Latina. Differences between Cyprian and Stephen were about papal and episcopal positions and these were the antecedents to Donatism and not a separate African, Christian identity. Roland Steinacher challenges any thesis about the development of national identities from identities of Roman provinces. Africa Proconsularis and Africa Byzacena came under a Vandal king, but was never described as a ‘kingdom’: those with the title ‘kings of the Vandals and Alanarum’ regarded themselves rather as kings to whom this Roman province had been a deo nobis concessus. African identity in such a context becomes a very difficult construct. The Vandals saw themselves as exercising the prerogatives of the Roman elite in North Africa like the Israelites possessing Canaan's promised land: Romanitas is what they took over and not Africanitas. Clearly this was Geiserich's intention when he secured the marriage of his son Huneric to Eudoxia. Archaeological evidence for a ‘barbarian disposition (habitus barbarus)’ has failed: the alleged tribal costume found in three dozen graves in North Africa on closer examination resembles the style of the early Byzantine upper class. Thus we have no archaeological nor iconographic evidence for the existence of a specific Vandal ethnicity. Stefan Schima now examines what concept of African identity may exist in African correspondents preserved in Augustine's corpus (epp. clxxv–clxxvii), in contrast with a Romanitas in Innocent iii’s correspondence found there also (epp. clxxxi–clxxxiii). Schima points out that earlier Victor in the Quartodeciman controversy represented a cultural and not a theological difference. Cyprian's dispute with Stephen, for example, may mark the distinct identity for the Church in Africa Proconsularis. But it is as well to remember that Rome did not appear as Christian but rather as pagan in contrast to North Africa and Asia Minor. There was therefore no normative ‘whole’ against which to measure its distinctiveness. Donatism is difficult to use as a factor in African identity, since a schism by its nature does not equate with a unity. The Collatio of Carthage, moreover, had no seat for the bishop of Rome and therefore Augustine's Catholic Church was as African as the Donatist. Augustine's Africanitas arguably finally becomes apparent when Innocent i reaches a more measured response to Pelagianism and thus a distinct Romanitas in contrast with the Greek East. But Augustine's position is derived from Asia Minor, as indicated by ep. xliii.7, as his stance on the Creed and on the issue of the (re)baptism of heretics makes clear. Augustine wants nevertheless an epistola communicatoria from Innocent but not a rescript. Schima offers no final conclusion: does not this variety of issues conducted at the highest intellectual level argue for an Africanitas? We require ‘the grace of a clear explanation that at least in our earthly life remains permanently withheld’. Wolfgang Wischmeyer opposes the ‘ease of conversion’ thesis (Pagan-[Donatist] Christian, Christianity-Islam) as a peculiarity of an alleged Africanitas. Contemporary doubts have been raised about the rapid conversion from Christianity to Islam in Africa. Augustine and imperial legislation cannot be held responsible for the destruction of Donatist, Christian North Africa as an expression of Africanitas. Structural similarities between Arianism and Islam cannot explain a rapid conversion from the former to the latter when Arabic sources evidence a continued Christianity from the seventh to the eleventh century. This collection has done well to demonstrate the complexity of its theme and the need for caution about hasty conclusions on a topic in which conceptual clarity has been lacking regarding ‘identities’ or ‘identity’ from which developments can be held to derive in our account of the history of the first five centuries.