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Thread: Christianity in ancient North Africa

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    Default Christianity in ancient North Africa

    Only a few people are really aware of north africa's christian past and its impact on Latin Western Christianity. Here I will post some christian scholars and quotes I've collected throughout my readings and I apologize if some of my translations are bad (most of my sources are french and english is not my mother tongue).

    If we doubt the effect produced on intelligences [by Islamization], it suffices to compare what was the Berber people and, generally speaking, the peoples living in North Africa, before their conquest by Islam and what they have since become. Nearly all the Latin Fathers are Africans - Tertullian of Carthage, the Numid Arnobius of Sicca and his pupil Lactantius, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, the African Marius Victorinus, the Berber Saint Augustine, in short, all this glorious vanguard of Latin patristic culture. What splendid gifts these were from Africa to the Church of Rome while the latter had only the works of Saint Ambrose and of Saint Jerome to put in the Balance!
    - Etienne Gilson, The Philosopher and Theology (1960), Random House New York, 1962, pp.195-196


    The Christian literature of Africa was the initiator of Christian Latin literature in the West where the Church in the early times spoke and wrote in Greek.
    - Algeria and its past (1951), André Berthier, ed. Picard, 1951, p. 94


    African Christianity was rich in martyrs and writers: Tertullian, Arnobe, Cyprian. The greatest of all was Augustine, who became one of the masters of Western thought for many centuries. Coming from a family of Thagaste (Souk-Ahras), Bishop of Hippo, Father of the Church, St. Augustine attains a universal stature that transcends both his province and the Empire and his time. It is not unimportant that the greatest thinker of the Latin West, the author of the City of God and the Confessions, was a Christian Berber.
    - The Berbers: memory and identity, Gabriel Camps, ed. Wandering, 1987, p. 124



    These Berbers were powerfully Christian even in the countryside and in those distant villages where one finds up to two or three basilicas. They use Latin for their inscriptions. The founders of early Christian literature were Tertullian and this pure Berber St. Augustine. The first translations of the Bible into Latin were made in Africa. The Berber emigrants of that time who have their neighborhood in Rome, contribute to spreading Christianity.
    - The North African Demographic Problem (1947), Louis Chevalier, ed. University Presses of France, 1947, p. 194


    It is paradoxically in North Africa, so in a country today totally Islamized, that was born Latin Western Christianity. [...] In North Africa, from the second half of the second century, the most abundant and dynamic Western Christian community, from the outset of the Latin language, took off in all social circles. It was here also that in the fifth century Western Christianity found its own intellectual and spiritual personality, thanks to the indelible mark that the thought and work of St. Augustine had to impress upon him. [...] The provinces of Roman Africa were among the richest of the immense empire; there were many prosperous cities, where lived a cultured elite, most often formed of Latinized Berbers, as was evidently Augustine himself and his family.
    - Saint Augustine and the influence of his thought", Claude Lepelley (2007), in History of Christianity, under the direction of Alain Corbin, ed. Threshold, 2007, p. 121-122



    The Latin language has taken, in the Christianity of Africa, the preponderant, unique place, which the Greek had been able to contend for it first, when Christianity remained confined in some groups of Eastern origin. Africans have translated into Latin sacred books. By the end of the second century, Christians in Africa had a great writer, the Tertullian apologist, from Carthage, and many cities in proconsular Africa, Numidia and even Mauretania, had a Christian group. directed by a bishop. The persecutions, which begin in 180, under the reign of Commodus, will not stop the zeal of the apostles and will not decrease the number of the faithful. In the middle of the third century, the church of Carthage, with Saint Cyprian for bishop, holds hardly less place in the whole of the Christian life than that of Rome.
    - L'Afrique romaine de Louis Leschi (Forget to note the page sorry !)


    Looking back, it becomes clear that Africa was the motherland of Christian literature in Latin. Starting with Tertullian in the second/third century, numerous works were written in the third/fourth centuries in defense of the Christian faith, such as those of Gaius Marius Victorinus.
    - Roman North Africa ; Environment,society and medical contribution by Louise Cilliers


    Another Christian apologetist was Minucius Felix (fl. 200–240 CE); he probably came from Africa, but acted as an advocate in Rome. He states that he had been a pagan for a long time before converting to Christianity. His famous work, Octavius, a dialogue between a Christian, Octavius, and a pagan, Caecilius Natalis, was praised by Lactantius and St. Jerome as one of the finest defences of Christianity.
    - Roman North Africa ; Environment,society and medical contribution by Louise Cilliers



    But various overlaps allow us to affirm that Christian Africa "filled up" with its episcopate before the end of the fourth century: more than five hundred episcopal seats, from the shores of the Great Sirte in the east to the borders of the Tingitane to the west (the latter province, present-day northern Morocco, being in Late Antiquity attached to Spain).
    https://journals.openedition.org/enc...ieberbere/2276



    If we can no longer follow developments in the life of communities almost day by day, as in the time of Saint Augustine, our documentation, despite its shortcomings, shows that the implantation of Christianity in Africa remains strong. Already, at the end of the vandal domination, the debates of the Council of Carthage in 525 had revealed a surprising dissemination of the monastic institution, in particular in Byzacene. These monasteries remained flourishing throughout the sixth century. The bishop in his city was never invested with more powers than at that time, including in the administrative and financial fields. Not only did the Christian establishment remain strong, but it was even experiencing a marked expansion, especially in two distant regions where the Christian presence had remained modest even at the beginning of the fifth century. In the south of the Byzacene, where many Christian populations then inhabit the oases of Chott el Djerid, as well as the region of Aurčs and Nementchas. Still further, beyond the limes, where Christianity seems to have penetrated late, in particular in the pre-Saharan regions of the southern Algerian-Moroccan borders, if we believe representations depicted on steles of Djorf Torba, to the east of Bechar. Still in the western regions of the Maghreb, but further north, in Mauretania Caesarean, this late period of the end of the fifth century and the sixth century is the one for which the traces of a strong Christian implantation are most marked. The dynasty whose power is manifested by the Djedars, near Tiaret, is Christian. The persistence - and the similarity in the form - of the Christian epitaphs of Altava, of Pomaria, of Numerus Syrorum, in Cesarean, and of those of Volubilis, in Tingitane, which bear dates which lead up to 655: There was obviously, between these cities distant several hundred kilometers, relationships and symbiosis on the eve of the Arab invasion.
    https://journals.openedition.org/enc...ieberbere/2276



    Some north african christian figures :


    The famous Saint Augustine and his mother Monica (saint Monica) :




    (Painted by Ary Scheffer, 1854)


    Tertullian :

    "He was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity" and "the founder of Western theology." Though conservative in his worldview, Tertullian originated new theological concepts and advanced the development of early Church doctrine. He is perhaps most famous for being the first writer in Latin known to use the term trinity (Latin: trinitas). Unlike many Church fathers, Tertullian was never recognized as a saint by the Eastern or Western catholic tradition churches. Several of his teachings on issues such as the clear subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, as well as his condemnation of remarriage for widows and of fleeing from persecution, contradicted the doctrines of these traditions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertullian (references at the bottom of the page)





    Cyprian :

    "Cyprian of Carthage, his real name Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, born around 200 and died a martyr on September 14, 258 under the persecution of Valerian, is a Berber converted to Christianity, bishop of Carthage and Father of the Church. He is, after Saint Augustine, one of the greatest witnesses to the doctrine of the Latin Church of the first centuries. [...] The treaty (De Catholicae Ecclesiae unitate (From the Unity of the Catholic Church published in 251) is one of his key works, considered to be the first ecclesiology treaty in Christian literature, Saint Cyprien never ceasing to recall the unity of the Church. He warns his Christian contemporaries against the proud temptation to create a church parallel to the “great Church.” This would be fruitless because outside the Church, he there is no salvation (no one can save himself outside the Church) This expression (in Latin Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) has often been misunderstood." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian





    Arnobius :

    "Arnobius of Sicca (died c. 330) was an Early Christian apologist of Berber origin, He successfully taught rhetoric at Sicca Veneria (El Kef), in Proconsular Numidia (Tunisia), under the reign of Diocletian (284-305), and had as a student the future writer Lactantius; dreams would have prompted him to convert to Christianity; as the bishop did not want him to "share a belief that he had always fought against" (which does not necessarily mean that he was a fierce and virulent enemy of Christians), he undertook to write against the pagans of books still widely used at the time of Jerome; by this pledge of his piety, he obtained to become a Christian (Jérôme, uir. ill. 79 and chron. ad 327). [...] Arnobe shows in the Aduersus nationes a deep attachment to his homeland. He is proud of African heroes and recalls that Hannibal the Carthaginian made Rome tremble (2, 73; 7, 50). This African patriotism leads him to condemn the conquests of Rome (2, 1). Not only does he speak abroad of Roman domination (7, 40), but he compares it to a torrent which has submerged and crushed all nations (1, 5); in his eyes, Rome was born for the loss of the human race (7, 51)."

    https://journals.openedition.org/enc...ieberbere/2593


    Lactantius :

    "Lactantius, in full Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, Caecilius also spelled Caelius, (born AD 240, North Africa—died c. 320, Augusta Treverorum, Belgica [now Trier, Ger.]), Christian apologist and one of the most reprinted of the Latin Church Fathers, whose Divinae institutiones (“Divine Precepts”), a classically styled philosophical refutation of early-4th-century anti-Christian tracts, was the first systematic Latin account of the Christian attitude toward life. Lactantius was referred to as the “Christian Cicero” by Renaissance humanists." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactantius





    More christian figures here :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_African
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Minucius_Felix
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possidius
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellinus_of_Gaul
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Vincent_of_Digne
    https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org.../Pope_Victor_I
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Miltiades
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gelasius_I
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatus_Magnus
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassian_of_Tangier
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_of_Canterbury

    etc...

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    they forgot Zidane tho

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    Makes me proud to be over 10% Berber genetically, rofl.

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    Are there any Christians today?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hahns View Post
    Are there any Christians today?
    yes some kabyle communities are christian but they are recent converts ...christianity disappeared in north africa during the XIth century

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nassbean View Post
    yes some kabyle communities are christian but they are recent converts ...christianity disappeared in north africa during the XIth century
    It Is Time They Return To The Truth/True Religion
    Last edited by renaissance12; 04-28-2020 at 07:29 PM.

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    bump

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    Yes, North Africa had a strong Christian tradition. Such a shame that the Islamic invasion destroyed it all there.
    Help support Apricity by making a donation

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    Only the big cities had Christianity (like Tunis and Tanger), the majority of North Africans were pagans (which is why berber pagan tradition still exists today). Old remains of churches are only found in those big urbanized cities, some pagans even existed not even 100 years ago like the Zekara tribe (which is related to the Zenati Iznasn tribe), last century the tribe was fully pagan and they only became muslim after French occupation).

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