Introduction
In historical scholarship, the traditional interest in the formation of the Christian Church and its institutions, the relationship between church and state, and the influence of Christian ideas on the consciousness of the people of the classical era persist. An idea of the history of Christianity in northern Africa is based on the architecture of the churches, scenery, and traditions1. The African Church occupies a special place here. On par with Rome, Carthage was the largest Christian center of the Latin West. Moreover, it was in Carthage that Christian Latin and Latin theology were born, which formed the basis of the entire Western Christian tradition.
Discussion
North Africa is of particular interest in the study of ancient Christianity. Although Christian communities, as far as can be deduced from extant sources, were formed there later than in many other regions of the Roman world, “North African” Christianity is a remarkably specific phenomenon in early Christian history. Several factors determine this specificity. First, North Africa was, in fact, one of the foundations of “Latin” Christianity. From here, such outstanding thinkers, writers, and figures of ancient Christianity as Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Arnobius, Lactantius, Optatius, Victorinus, and Blessed Augustine originated. Secondly, specific Christian currents emerged in North Africa that agitated the Roman Empire for many decades, such as Donatism, which also had a clear social connotation. Thirdly, the history of ancient Christianity in North Africa has a peculiar and clear periodization, which in some aspects does not coincide with the periodization of the general Christian history, which allows us to date Christian wrote and archaeological monuments with great accuracy.
The first documentary evidence of the Christian faith on the territory of modern Tunisia dates back to the second half of the second century. In 180 AD, the Carthaginian proconsul Vigilius Saturninus condemned to execution 12 residents. Their fault was that they called themselves Christians and refused to participate in official ceremonies to deify the emperor. Also found in their possession were copies of the epistles of the Apostle Paul. The life and writings of the famous ecclesiastical writer Tertullian also belong to this period. Today, on Memorial Day of the Holy Martyrs of Carthage, an Orthodox prayer service is held amidst the remains of the ancient Roman amphitheater. The parishioners of the Resurrection Church in Tunis, along with Father Demetrius, rector, pray at the site of the ancient martyrdoms.
Tertullian’s disciple, the martyr Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was also martyred in the third century. His funeral basilica was built at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. Its ruins can be found at the top of Carthage’s Seida Hill. Agrippinus and Donatus, two bishops, were active before Cyprian, nevertheless2. According to legend, it was on this spot that Monica, the mother of Blessed Augustine of Hippo, prayed all night for her son’s safe return. Incidentally, the life of this spiritual father of the Latin Church was also closely tied to Africa. He was born not far from the border of modern Algeria and Tunisia. In the last years of Blessed Augustine’s life came the invasion of the invading Vandal tribes. In the fifth century, the Roman North African province fell to its blows, thus ending the early Christian era.
Thus, in the history of ancient and early medieval Christianity in North Africa, the following stages can be distinguished:
- The formation of early Christian communities and the North African Church (2nd century).
- The North African Church in the context of the persecution of Christianity (late second century-3113).
- The Christianization of North Africa after the Edict of Milan (313-429).
- The domination of the Arian Church during the Vandal Conquest (429-533).
- The period of Byzantine Christianity (533-698).
From the time of the Arab conquest, which lasted half a century, the importance of Christianity in the region began to decline. Its role under the onslaught of Islam was reduced to a minimum in the following period. It is noteworthy that the Arabs, in most cases, did not destroy ancient centers but created their cities in new places, where the autochthonous population gradually moved, falling under Arab and Islamic influence. As a result, many centers of antique culture and Christianity in North Africa have remained in good archaeological condition. Despite a fairly clear periodization, it is not possible to establish an initial date for the spread of Christianity in North Africa due to the lack of reliable data relating to a century and a half of the initial existence of Christian communities in this region. The question of whether the holy apostles’ sermons were preached here remains open. On the one hand, there are arguments to answer this question in the negative.
Carthage was a cursed territory, and the apostles, as such, chose not to visit the place along with the rest of the surrounding area. However, the curse was “pagan” and had already been “overcome” by Octavian Augustus when Christian preaching began. The preaching of the Apostle Paul and his closest associates was addressed to non-Jewish Gentiles and natives of Canaan inhabited North Africa. Nevertheless, by then, they were a distinct minority among non-Jewish Gentiles. The paths of the apostles passed through the most significant ancient regions and centers. North Africa rapidly became a significant Roman world region in the first century.
It is also assumed that the apostolic sermon was preached in Roman Africa. However, like many other events of early Christianity, this fact must be reflected in the surviving texts. Legends transfer to African soil many famous persons from Holy Scripture: the Apostles Peter and Paul, Simon the Zealot, the Evangelists Mark and Matthew, and many others, but even their brief stay on African soil is extremely doubtful. All the more so because these names in connection with Africa are absent from the texts of early Christian authors, including natives of Africa. There are still debates in the literature as to which way Christian preaching came to Roman Africa – from Rome and Palestine to the Diaspora through Judeo-Christian communities or Asia Minor migrants.
The penetration of Christianity to Africa, together with the Asia Minor traders or immigrants, is justified by the spread of the Greek language among African Christians, including Tertullian, who wrote his first works in Greek. This fact is indirectly confirmed by the fact that researchers note this region’s insignificant degree of Hellenization prior to the Roman conquest; in any case, Greek was not widely spoken in the Carthaginian power.
It seems most probable, however, that Christian ideas and accounts of events in Palestine reached here through Jewish traders and travelers who kept in touch with the Diaspora. As in other parts of the Roman world, synagogues in which itinerant preachers spoke may have been focal points for the spread of Christianity in North Africa in the first century. Nevertheless, their names and the details of the initial spread of Christianity remain unknown. The fact also remains that there is only reliable information about the activities of Christian communities in Roman Africa from the last quarter of the second century until the last quarter of the second century.
One of the earliest and most negative references to Christians in Roman Africa comes from Apuleius, a famous writer from Madavra, although the reference may also refer to the Jews. Another striking evidence of the spread of Christianity in North Africa is the first local council, attended by seventy bishops of the Proconsular Province and Numidia, led by Bishop Agrippinus, who first raised the question of the crossing of heretics. Thus, in the middle of the third century, almost three-quarters of a century before the Edict of Milan, North Africa appeared as one of the most Christianized regions of the Roman world. Moreover, from the first mention of North African Christians in the sources to the 70 bishoprics, less than half a century elapsed; this rate of Christianization can be regarded as the fastest in almost the entire history of antique Christianity. This raises the problem of identifying features of the Christianization of North Africa, which might shed light on this phenomenon.
Certainly, as noted above, Christian communities had existed in Roman Africa since at least the late first century. During the century, the total number of Christians spread inland, including the countryside, and their social composition changed considerably. There is no way to estimate the extent of this change, but it can hardly be argued that the number of Christian communities and their members could have increased tenfold in half a century. The Roman community was led by Victor, a native of Africa, who rose to such heights that he could even obtain the return of Christians from exile3. According to St. Jerome, he was the first Christian writer to speak Latin, which is circumstantial evidence of the prevalence of Christianity in Africa by the end of the second century. Jerome, in turn, because of his Roman activities, was called a cardinal, and later iconography depicts him in this garb4. The election of an African native as Primate of the Roman throne could hardly have happened without the support of the African Christians who inhabited the whole quarter of Rome between the Calais and the Aventine hills.
Another circumstance to be noted in connection with the reasons for the spread of Christianity is that in the early 3rd century, unlike many other regions of the Roman Empire, which were gradually being drawn into a comprehensive crisis, North Africa was at the height of its development. The crisis was less destructive for this region than in other parts of the Roman. As scholars believe it stemmed not from internal development but was “imported” from other parts of the Empire. This fact is partly explained by the fact that Roman policy in Africa led to widespread economic units of a certain type of large land holdings (latifundium) belonging to Roman viceroys, senators, and emperors. These large estates were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the municipalities, and imperial officials were exempt from several taxes and needed to be better connected with the urban market. They were usually divided into relatively small plots and leased to free landless peasants in the colonies or given to enterprising enslaved people with a certain autonomy.
At the same time, the municipal aristocracy, which owned slave villas, was more numerous in Africa than in other provinces and expressed a smaller scale of wealth so that a large part of the urban population was drawn into the management of the cities, hence the social contrast in African cities was not as sharp as in other provinces of the Empire. Thus, in North Africa, the main reason for the spread of Christianity in the early and middle third centuries can hardly be considered a crisis and social contradictions. They produced an atmosphere of hopelessness and despair, a decline in morals, a change in the system of moral values, and all the shifts in social and individual consciousness that contributed to the rejection of previous worldviews.
Nevertheless, the crisis did affect North Africa. It caused a whole series of social movements there, so we cannot completely ignore this reason for the spread of Christianity, but it is not specific to that region. On the contrary, those mentioned above economic and social peculiarities, which softened the manifestations of the crisis, can be regarded as specific. Another peculiarity of the ethnic composition of the population can be considered the preservation of the Punic component and even the Punic language by the 3rd century. This ethnos considered Canaan its ancestral home and may have been susceptible to Christianity, which came out of this region of the Mediterranean. The translation of the Bible into Punic in the Christian community of Carthage and the fact that the heretics of North Africa, the Donatists, and Circumcellians, were mostly Punic and used this language in worship can prove that the Punic people were susceptible to Christianity.
The Jews may have similarly perceived Christian preaching. According to a legend among North African Jews, the first Jewish families settled on the island of Djerba (located off the coast of Tunisia) during the time of King Solomon. The synagogue still exists today and is considered one of the oldest on the continent. Some scholars dated the arrival of the Jews in North Africa to the 6th century B.C. when the first temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. However, archaeological traces of Jewish presence in North Africa (at least in the territory of modern Tunisia) appear only after its conquest by the Romans and date back to our era.
When speaking of social consciousness, one should remember that the Carthaginian characteristics were still preserved in the second and third centuries. Carthage, founded in the ninth century B.C., dominated the region for at least six centuries, while Rome if we count from the destruction of the Punic capital, was half as long. Besides, after the conquest and destruction of Carthage, the Romans left intact those Punic cities (Gadrumet, Utica, Taps, and others), which sided with Rome in the Third Punic War, so the influence of Carthage civilization on public consciousness continued after the Roman conquest. Moreover, the Romans began to pursue an active Romanization policy only from the time of Octavian Augustus, so Christianization almost coincided with Romanization.
This has been the determining factor for the rapid spread of Christianity in Roman Africa. In the competition between the imposition of imperial ideology, which accompanied Romanization, and Christian preaching, which sounded simple and accessible and reached the very depths of the minds of ordinary people, whose genetic memory still retained memories of the former greatness and prosperity of Carthage, Christianity inevitably had the upper hand. The ideas of the new religion turned out to be just the kind of support that the Punic population was looking for under the Roman imposed order. The Punic, converting to Christianity themselves, carried the Christian sermon to the Berbers, with whom, it must be assumed, under increasing pressure from the Romans, they had much better relations than they had in the days of Carthaginian than they had been under Carthaginian domination.
In the early fourth century, at the end of the Diocletian persecutions, a schism began in the Church of North Africa, the reason for which was the assumption that the new bishop of Carthage, Cecelia, had been ordained by a traitor bishop. The transfer of the sacred books to the representatives of the pagan authority was seen by many as a betrayal, and some saw the traitor bishops themselves as having lost all spiritual authority and grace. So this turned out to be a good enough reason for the Numidian episcopate not to recognize this consecration and to elect and then ordain a “pure” candidate. The ruler of Numidia, Julius Fortunatian, opposed the laity, and Terentius and his companions were among his victims5. However, this was soon replaced by Bishop Donatus, whose name was given to the North African schismatic movement, often called the Donatist Church or the Donatus Party.
Such was the beginning of this conflict, which is different from all others. Similar ones have arisen more than once: for example, in North Africa itself, after the persecutions of Emperor Decius, there was no less controversy about what to do with the fallen, those who had taken part in pagan sacrifices to preserve life. Just as in the case of the election of Bishop Cecilian, the election of the future Archbishop Cyprian of Carthage was contested by part of the clergy, who enlisted the support of confessors. In the end, however, St. Cyprian attracted the latter to his side, and his opponents united with the Roman schismatic Novatian. Like the Donatists in the future, St. Cyprian’s opponents had quick success and even managed for a time to shake his authority. Like the Donatists, they stressed the high standard of morality, the purity of the Church, and the inadmissibility of accepting the fallen. However, their success was extremely short-lived, their alternative candidate for the Carthaginian chair was supported by only 25 bishops of Numidia, and that support was mostly theoretical. In the end, the African Church remained united, fully supporting its Primate.
Of all such histories, the Donatist schism stands out for its longevity. However, in this case, the schism became permanent and remained so in some regions until Christianity disappeared from the confines of Africa. The schism went through several periods of prosperity and persecution. Nevertheless, even nearly a century after it began, Donatism remained one of the most significant Christian movements in North Africa. Thus, when St. Augustine became bishop of Hippo of Regina, one of the most pro-Roman cities in North Africa, the Catholics were in the minority there and also experienced some harassment by the Donatist party. For example, the Donatist bishop could forbid the bakers to bake bread for the Catholics. Undoubtedly the activities of St. Augustine and his associates bore fruit even at the Council of Jerusalem in 415. 415, the Hippo saint was referred to as “the bishop, through whose mouth the Lord granted unity to all Africa6.”
Soon after that, the movement gradually waned. In 414, the thirty Donatist bishops still managed to hold their council at Zirta; after the conquest of North Africa by the Arian Vandals in 429, the conflict was completely forgotten, and after the Arab conquest of that former Roman province, the Donatists disappeared almost completely from the pages of history. Political and religious reasons could have dictated the actions of the Vandal king7. Some historical accounts suggest the existence of the Donatists until 722. There are various explanations for the reasons for the prolonged vitality of the schism. A large part of these explanations looks for causes outside the religious sphere. It should be noted that this is largely the result of a kind of revolution in historical scholarship due to its departure from a purely theological perception of church history, which began in the late seventeenth century.
Since the nineteenth century, it has become common to see Donatism as a convenient cover for political separatism and social protest. While it is true that sometimes one can find socio-political factors overlapping with ecclesial and theological factors or even replacing them altogether, in the case of the Donatist movement, it is difficult to say that such an effort is entirely justified. The peasants often held the same religious views as the landowners in whose territory they lived, but this did not always play into the hands of the Catholics. For example, the Donatist bishop of Calum. Calama, not far from Hippo, acquired a landed property and, under threat of violence, crossed all the peasants who lived on it. There was no significant difference in class, ethnicity, or education between St. Augustine and his opponents. The idea of a conflict between the Romanized and, therefore, Latin-speaking “bourgeoisie” represented by the Catholics and the Berber-speaking “proletariat” represented by the Donatists, clearly inspired by Marxism, is also somewhat far-fetched since, for example, in Numidia, everything was exactly the opposite.
Thus the main reasons for the rapid spread of Christianity in North Africa can be considered, on the one hand, the transformation of the Punic religion and religious syncretism, which tended toward monotheism, and, on the other hand, the competition between the processes of Romanization and Christianization, which especially intensified in North Africa in the second century. In this competition among certain segments of the population, especially those of Punic ethnicity, Christianity triumphed, leading to a sharp increase in the number of supporters of the new religion. The specific features of Christianity on African soil can also be largely explained by its roots going back to the depths of the Carthaginian civilization.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Christianization of North Africa had its peculiarities and specificities in subsequent times. In the fourth century, it took place against the background of a deep division of the African Church in connection with Donatism; in the fifth century, the specificity of Christianization was determined by the Vandal conquest, which brought Arianism to Africa, and the sixth century brought Byzantine Orthodoxy here. However, these later stages of Christianization are separate topics that require special consideration beyond the scope of this publication.
Bibliography
“Unlocatable Christian Communities in North Africa.” The Expansion of Christianity (2004): 328–329. Web.
Birley, A. R. “A Persecuting Praeses of Numidia under Valerian.” The Journal of Theological Studies 42, no. 2 (1991): 598–610.
Chrysostom, John, Robert P. Russell, Robert Sider, M. Josephine Brennan, and Thomas P. Halton. The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2000.
Leone, Anna. “Christian North Africa in Antiquity.” A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity (2022): 354–371. Web.
Speel, C. J. “The Disappearance of Christianity from North Africa in the Wake of the Rise of Islam.” Church History 29, no. 4 (1960): 379–397. Web.
Zocca, E. “Holiness, Martyrdom, and Saints as Communication Strategies in Augustine’s Polemical Discourse. The Role of Rhetoric.” Cahiers d’études du religieux. Recherches interdisciplinaires, (24), (2022). Web.
Footnotes
- Leone, Anna. “Christian North Africa in Antiquity.” A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity (2022): 354
- “Unlocatable Christian Communities in North Africa.” The Expansion of Christianity (2004): 302
- Speel, C. J. “The Disappearance of Christianity from North Africa in the Wake of the Rise of Islam.” Church History 29, no. 4 (1960): 379
- Chrysostom, John, Robert P. Russell, Robert Sider, M. Josephine Brennan, and Thomas P. Halton. The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2000. 26
- Birley, A. R. “A Persecuting Praeses of Numidia under Valerian.” The Journal of Theological Studies 42, no. 2 (1991): 609
- Zocca, E. “Holiness, Martyrdom, and Saints as Communication Strategies in Augustine’s Polemical Discourse. The Role of Rhetoric.” Cahiers d’études du religieux. Recherches interdisciplinaires, (24), (2022).
- Speel, C. J. “The Disappearance of Christianity from North Africa in the Wake of the Rise of Islam.” Church History 29, no. 4 (1960): 387