Vageata, also known as Vageatensis,Historical-Portable Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Sacred Geography, 1759 p733. was a Roman-Berber town in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis.Vageatensis It is also known as Bagatensis,Leslie Dossey, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa (University of California Press, 2010) p205. and epigraphical evidence remains attesting to this etymology,Jesper Carlsen, Vilici and Roman Estate Managers Until AD 284, Part 284 (L'ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER, 1995) p81-82.Leslie Dossey, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa (University of California Press, 2010)p205.Epigraphic Text Database. due to the interchange of 'v' for 'b' is a common phenomenon in Latin and Greek place names.
The city has been identified with ruins at El-Haria, located east of Cirta en route to Thibilis.Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine. (Cambridge University Press, 2011) page xvi. It was mentioned by Optatus of Milevis, in Numidia.Saints Zeno and Optatus, the first at Verona, the works of all the bishops of the other Milevi: Cui accessit - The history of the Donatists, the Bishops of Africa, together with the tombs that belong to it and geography (Vrayet, 1845).
Bishopric The city was also a seat of an ancient bishopric though only two bishops are known to history. Donatus of Vageaensis was known from the Council of Carthage (411).Jean Louis Maier, The Episcopate of Roman, Vandal and Byzantine Africa (Swiss Institute of Rome, 1973) p301.Antoine-Augustin Bruzen from La Martinière, THE GREAT GEOGRAPHIC AND CRITICAL DICTIONARY, Volume 9 (1739).
Fulgentius (Catholic bishop) fl.484 was exiled by Vandal king Huneric in 484AD. Richard Oliver Gerow of Natchez-Jackson was bishop in the 1970s. Long-term bishop Franz Xaver Schwarzenböck(1972-2010) Le Petit Episcopologe, Issue 204, Necrology was then succeeded by Wieslaw Szlachetka, who has been bishop since December 21, 2013.Le Petit Episcopologe, Issue 217, Number 18,066.
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