Le chrétien à l'épreuve du voyage. Le statut de "peregrinus" dans les communautés pastorales d'Afrique romaine

Abstract

The development of Christianity modifies in depth, in a slow but determining process, the perception of the Roman society and the place of each of its actors. The adoption of the Christian faith contributes to define new community links, and a new attachment to the pastoral community which becomes an identity factor, beyond the civic membership to the community. As a result, new criteria of exclusion arise for those who, being of foreign origin, are not part of the community, and therefore to give a new definition of peregrinus. Within the civic community, which often merges with the pastoral community, the foreigner receives a new consideration according to the Christian confession, though this is not enough to integrate him de facto. The study of written sources —literary, especially by St. Augustine and epigraphic— provides an illuminating testimony of this new consideration.