Robba

Robba (383/4 – 434) was a North African Donatist nun. A church was built in Ala Miliaria to commemorate her murder by traditors.

Robba was born in 383/4, the sister of Bishop Honoratus of Aquae Sirenses. She was a consecrated virgin of Donatism.

In 434, at the age of fifty, she was killed in an uprising of traditores (Catholic Christians who had given up their scriptures during Roman persecution).[1][2][3]

Donatists either built or repurposed part of a military building in Ala Miliaria (modern-day Beniane, Algeria) into a substantial church, where Robba and several others are buried.[4][5] Robba is commemorated there by an epitaph which calls her a martyr.[1] The church was rediscovered by archaeologist Stéphane Gsell in 1899.[6]

Robba's is the last known Donatist epitaph, and it demonstrates the public presence of Donatists in North Africa decades after the official suppression of Donatism at the Council of Carthage in 411.[7][8][9]

References

  1. ^ a b Lander, Shira L. (2016-10-24). Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa. Cambridge University Press. pp. 168–9. ISBN 978-1-107-14694-5.
  2. ^ Workshop, Impact of Empire (Organization) (2011-05-10). Frontiers in the Roman World: Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Durham, 16-19 April 2009). BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-20119-4.
  3. ^ Cristini, Marco (2025-06-27). The Years of the Infidels: African Latin Christianity from the Vandals to the Almohads. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-38178-6.
  4. ^ Frend, W. H. C. (2020-03-31). The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 305. ISBN 978-1-5326-9755-5.
  5. ^ Collins, Rob; Symonds, Matt; Weber, Meike (2015-11-30). Roman Military Architecture on the Frontiers: Armies and Their Architecture in Late Antiquity. Oxbow Books. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-78297-993-7.
  6. ^ Frend, W. H. C. (2003). From Dogma to History: How Our Understanding of the Early Church Developed. SCM Press. pp. 60, 70. ISBN 978-0-334-02908-3.
  7. ^ Screen, Elina; West, Charles (2018-05-03). Writing the Early Medieval West. Cambridge University Press. pp. 190–1. ISBN 978-1-107-19839-5.
  8. ^ Decret, Francois (2009-06-01). Early Christianity in North Africa. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 137. ISBN 978-1-4982-7029-8.
  9. ^ Hitchner, R. Bruce (2022-03-29). A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity. John Wiley & Sons. p. 328. ISBN 978-1-4443-5001-2.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.