Caesarea of Mauretania

Remains of the forum of Caesarea in Mauretania

Caesarea of Mauretania (Latin: CÆSAREA MAVRETANIÆ) was a Roman colonia in Roman-Berber Africa.[1] It was the capital of Mauretania Caesariensis and is now called Cherchell.[2]

History to 3rd century AD

Originally named Iol, Caesarea of Mauretania lay on the northern coast of Africa, 100 km west of the present-day city of Algiers. It was originally founded by the Phoenicians in the 5th century BC to serve as a trading station. During the 1st century BC, due to the city’s strategic location, new defences were built, and in 33 BC Rome annexed the area, placing it in the hands of a Berber prince named Juba II. Although his father was once an ally of Pompey, Juba had lived in Rome under the tutelage of Julius Caesar, learning to read and write Greek and Latin. As he was considered too Roman to rule, Juba and his wife, Cleopatra Selene (the daughter of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra), were at the mercy of civil unrest when Emperor Augustus intervened. Juba made the city into a typical Graeco-Roman city, complete with street grids, a theatre, an art collection, and a lighthouse similar to the one at Alexandria. It was Juba who named the city Caesarea after Augustus, as a way of honoring him.[3]

Considered to be one of the more loyal of Roman provincial capitals, Caesarea grew under Roman rule in the 1st and 2nd century AD, soon reaching a population of over 30,000 inhabitants.[4] In 44, during the reign of Emperor Claudius, it became the capital of the imperial province of Mauretania Caesarensis. Later, the emperor made it a colonia, “Colonia Claudia Caesarea”. As with many other cities throughout the empire, he and his successors further Romanised the area, building monuments, enlarging the bath houses, adding an amphitheatre, and improving the aqueducts.[5] Later, under the Severan dynasty, a new forum was added. The city was sacked by Berber tribes during a revolt in 371/372, but recovered.

The Museum of Cherchell has many mosaics (like this one about viticulture) showing the riches of Caesarea

In later centuries, the Roman population expanded, as did the Berber population, resulting in a mixed Berber and Roman population. The city featured a hippodrome, amphitheatre,[6] basilica, numerous Romano-Greek temples, and civic buildings. During this heyday, the city had its own school of philosophy, academy, and library. As a significant city of the Roman Empire it had trading contacts across the Roman world. Under Septimius Severus it grew to be a very rich city with nearly 100,000 inhabitants, according to historian Gsell [7] In about 165, it was the birthplace to the future Roman Emperor Macrinus

Christianisation

From an early stage, the city had a small but growing population of Christians, Roman and Berber and was noted for the religious debates and tumults which featured the hostility of Roman public religion toward Christians. Caesarea thus has its own martyred Catholic saint, Marciana (her feastday is on 9 January). This virgin martyr was accused of vandalizing a statue of the goddess Diana. After being tortured, Marciana was gored by a bull and mauled by a leopard in the amphitheatre at Caesarea.

By the 4th century, the conversion of the population from pagan to Christian beliefs resulted in nearly all of the population being Christianised. From 314 to 484 AD, four titulars and one Donatist served the local Christian community.[8]

Apart from some bishops who may have been of the church in Caesarea and whose names are engraved in inscriptions that have been unearthed, the first bishop whose name is preserved in extant written documents is Fortunatus, who took part in the Council of Arles of 314, which condemned Donatism. A letter of Symmachus mentions a bishop named Clemens in about 371/372 or 380. The town became a Donatist centre and at the joint Conference of Carthage in 411, was represented both by the Donatist Emeritus and by the Catholic Deuterius. Augustine of Hippo has left an account of his public confrontation with Emeritus at Caesarea in the autmn of 418, after which Emeritus was exiled. The last bishop of Caesarea whose name is known from written documents was Apocorius, one of Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 and then sent into exile. An early 8th-century Notitia Episcopatuum still included this see.[9][10] No longer a residential bishopric, Caesarea in Mauretania is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[11]

Decline of the Roman Empire

By the 5th century the capital of Mauretania Caesariensis was totally Romanised, according to Theodore Mommsen, one of the 80 cities in the Maghreb populated (and sometimes even created) by Roman colonists from Italy. It remained an extremely loyalist force for the Roman Empire.[12] Additionally, the Romanized city's elite held considerable control of international trade. Although it stagnated for over a hundred years and even lost population, as did most cities in the Roman Empire, it still remained much as it had been since it was founded. Consequently, the Roman Empire largely relied on its North African dominion for essential food stuffs, luxury goods, and a not insignificant number of elite rulers.

It became a target of the Vandals and was finally taken over by them in 429. The Vandal army and fleet burnt the town and turned many of its old magnificent Roman era buildings into Vandal citadels. Although this devastation was significant, the Vandal era saw restoration of much of the damage, an expansion in population, and the creation of a vibrant Romanised Germanic community.

The area and remained in Vandal hands until 533, when the city was captured by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. The new rulers used the Greek language (along with Latin), but the Neo-Latin local dialect remained in use by the inhabitants. The city declined. The Roman and the semi-Romanised Vandal population held a stratified position over the growing numbers of Berbers it allowed to settle in return for cheap labor. This reduced the economic status of small freeholders and urban dwellers, especially what remained of the Vandal population, who provided most of the local military forces. Furthermore, the increasing use of Berber workers ground down the Roman population of free peasants. By the 8th century, the city and surrounding area had neither a strong urban middle class of free citizens, nor a rural population of freehold farmers, nor a crack military aristocracy of Vandal warriors and their retinue. It thus succumbed to an Arab Moslem jihad.[13]

Muslim conquest

El Rahman Mosque in Cherchell, built as a Christian church during the French colonial years, adapting a Roman pagan temple in the forum of Caesarea, later used for Christian worship

Successive waves of Islamic jihads into Byzantine North African territory over 15 years wore down the smaller and less motivated imperial forces, until finally Moslem tribesmen laid siege to the city of Caesarea and, although the defenders were resupplied by Byzantine fleets, finally overwhelmed it. Much of the Byzantine nobility and officials fled to other parts of the Empire, while most of the remaining Roman and semi-Roman Berber population accepted Islamic rule which granted them protected status.

Some remained Christians, but hope of living as free Christians under Islamic rulers was dashed.[14] For two generations what remained of the Roman population and Romanized Berbers launched several revolts often in conjunction with reinforcements from the Empire. In turn, Islamic forces would react with even more death and oppression. After several revolts by Berbers and what remained of the Romano-Berber and tiny partially Vandal populations, Arab Moslems in the ninth century tore down much of the city's defences and recycled its crumbling Roman buildings, leaving the former city little more than a small village and pale relic of its former glory, surrounded by a camp of Moslem warriors and their retinue. Additionally, the various Jihads and growing numbers of Arab tribesmen forcibly converted the majority of the population to Islam over two centuries of oppression and war. As a result, most of what remained of Roman and Vandal civilization, including the language and christianity disappeared under the onslaughts of Arab attacks.

Nonetheless, after the tenth century later Berbero-Islamic rule was more tolerant and respectful of the Greco-Roman Christian past and endeavored to rebuild aspects of the town's former civilization. For the following few centuries, the city remained a power center of Arabs and Berbers with a small but significant population of semi-Roman Christians who were fully assimilated by the beginning of the early Renaissance.

The inhabitants became increasingly Arabised. By the 10th century, the city's name had transformed in the local dialect from a Latin to a Berber and ultimately into the Arabised form Sharshal (in French orthography, Cherchell).

Remains

Chercell Archaeological Museum

Earthquakes have ravaged many of the ancient remains.

The town (of Caesarea) remains insufficiently known....The town walls, studied in 1946, pose more problems; and the monuments are more often simply marked than completely known. The amphitheater, which has been excavated, remains unpublished; the very large hippodrome, which appears clearly on aerial photographs, is known only through old borings. The temples, which have been found on a spur of the mountain to the E of the central esplanade, on the edge of the route from Ténès to the W of the modern town, are too much destroyed to warrant publication even of plans. The baths along the edge of the sea, rather majestic, are also badly preserved. One would scarcely recognize several houses recently excavated. Grouped around peristyles with vast trichinia, they are readily adapted to the terrain and are constructed on terraces on the lower slopes or on the edge of cliffs with views over the sea. They often are preserved for us only in a late form—4th c. A.D.—and traces of the era of Juba are found only in the lower strata. The theater is an exception; still well preserved in 1840, it has since served as a quarry. It was set against the slope of the mountain. At the back of the scaena towards the N was a portico, covered over today by a street, where Gsell saw the S side of the forum. Of the rich scaenae frons there remain only traces and several statues, of which two are colossal muses. The orchestra had hater undergone great modification which had resulted in the disappearance of the platform of the stage: an oval arena had been built, intended for hunting spectacles, and a wall was raised between the first row of seats and the cavea to protect spectators from the wild beasts. The sumptuously decorated monument is consequently very much mutilated, but is of interest specifically because of its complex history.The amphitheater, in the E part of the town, was erected in flat open country. It was not oval but rectangular, with the short sides rounded. The tiers of seats, for the most part missing, were carried on ramping vaults, and the arena floor was cut by two perpendicular passages intended for beasts. It is in this arena that St. Marciana was martyred.[15]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Detailed map of Mauretania Caesariensis". Retrieved 2014-08-27.
  2. ↑ "Scholar research on Caesarea and surrounding areas" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-08-27.
  3. ↑ "Juba II's Mauretania". Lunalucifera.com. Retrieved 2014-08-27.
  4. ↑ Leveau, Philippe. "Caesarea de Maurétanie, une ville romaine et ses campagnes" first chapter
  5. ↑ "Caesarea's Amphiteater-Theater" (in French). Persee.fr. Retrieved 2014-08-27.
  6. ↑ Philippe Leveau et Jean-Claude Golvin, « L'amphithéâtre et le théâtre de Cherchel : Monuments à spectacle et histoire urbaine à Caesarea de Maurétanie »
  7. ↑ Leveau, Philippe. "Caesarea de Maurétanie. Une ville romaine et ses campagnes" Section: Population
  8. ↑ "Christian Caesarea". Newadvent.org. 1908-11-01. Retrieved 2014-08-27.
  9. ↑ Joseph Mesnage, L'Afrique chrétienne, Paris 1912, pp. 447–450
  10. ↑ Charles Courtois, v. Césarée de Maurétanie, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. XII, Paris 1953, coll. 203-206
  11. ↑ Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 867
  12. ↑ Leveau, Philippe. "Caesarea de Maurétanie, une ville romaine et ses campagnes" third chapter
  13. ↑ Smith Reid, James. "The Municipalities of the Roman Empire" Fourth chapter
  14. ↑ Virginie Prevost. "Prevost: Les dernières communautés chrétiennes autochtones d’Afrique du Nord". Rhr.revues.org. Retrieved 2014-08-27.
  15. ↑ "Caesarea-Iol". Perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2014-08-27.

Bibliography

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