Concept

Decline of North African Christianity

Intro

For about five hundred years, the Roman provinces of North Africa, roughly modern Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Morocco, held one of the strongest churches in the world. It produced Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage and Augustine, hundreds of bishops, and a long line of martyrs. Yet by the 1100s this Latin-speaking church had almost vanished.

It did not disappear in a single blow. It was weakened by internal division, persecuted by the Arian Vandals, burdened under Byzantine rule, and then slowly worn away over several centuries after the Arab conquest of the late 600s. At the same time, the Coptic church of Egypt and the Ethiopian church survived and still exist today. Asking why one African church faded and the others endured is one of the most instructive questions in the history of Christianity.

The ruins of the Damous el Karita basilica, Carthage, one of the largest churches of Christian North Africa. Photo: Rais67, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons), resized.

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In full

The Latin church of Roman Africa (the provinces of Africa Proconsularis, Byzacena, Numidia, Tripolitania and the Mauretanias) was at its height in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, when councils regularly gathered hundreds of bishops. Its decline unfolded in stages: the century-long Donatist Controversy (from c. 311) divided it; the Arian Vandal kingdom (429-534) confiscated churches, exiled bishops and, under Huneric (484), persecuted Nicene Christians severely; the Byzantine reconquest (533-534) restored Catholic worship but brought heavy taxation, Berber wars and the alienating Three Chapters controversy; and the Arab-Muslim conquest (from 647, with Carthage falling in 698) began a long process of conversion, emigration and Arabization. Latin-speaking Christian communities persisted into the 11th and 12th centuries: Latin Christian epitaphs from Kairouan run into the 11th century, Pope Leo IX corresponded with a much-reduced African episcopate in 1053, and Gregory VII wrote in 1076 to Cyriacus of Carthage and to the Hammadid emir al-Nasir. Almohad policy in the mid-12th century, including forced conversions in Tunis in 1159, is generally taken to mark the end of an organized indigenous church, though scattered Christian communities are attested later. Historians weigh several explanations: division, persecution, the church's Latin and urban character and its limited translation into Punic or Berber languages, elite emigration, and the social and fiscal pressures of life under Islamic rule. The contrast with the survival of Coptic, Ethiopian and, for centuries, Nubian Christianity is central to the discussion.

Stages of decline

Why did it decline? The main explanations

1. Division. The Donatist schism split African Christianity for a century and left a legacy of bitterness. Many historians count it as a lasting weakness.
2. Persecution by fellow Christians. The Vandals were Arian Christians. Their confiscations and exiles (see Arianism) gutted the Nicene hierarchy for two generations.
3. A Latin, urban church. The church's language of Scripture and worship was Latin. W. H. C. Frend and others argued that the church never translated the Bible into Punic or the Berber languages and remained tied to the Romanized towns, so that when Roman culture collapsed the faith had shallower roots in the countryside. Others reply that Donatism was strong precisely among rural Numidians, and that Punic-speaking clergy existed (Augustine sought Punic-speaking priests). The translation argument is often linked to the wider principle defended by Lamin Sanneh: churches that make the faith at home in a people's own language tend to endure. See Missionary Translation and African Languages.
4. Emigration of the elite. Clergy and educated Latin speakers left for Italy, Sicily, Spain and Gaul during the Vandal persecution and the Arab conquest, taking leadership and learning with them.
5. Life under Islamic rule. Christians and Jews were tolerated as protected peoples (dhimmi) but paid a poll tax (jizya) and faced legal and social disadvantages. Over centuries, conversion offered relief from tax, access to power, and intermarriage. Conversion was mostly gradual rather than forced, until the Almohads. See Forced Conversion By Sword Objection Defeater for the wider debate.
6. Isolation. Cut off from Rome by sea and from Constantinople by the conquest, the African church could not easily renew its clergy or maintain its institutions.

No single cause suffices; most historians treat the decline as the result of all of these acting together over six centuries.

Why did the Coptic and Ethiopian churches survive?

• Egypt. The Coptic church had translated the Bible, built a rural monastic culture, and possessed an identity distinct from Constantinople. Copts remained the majority of Egypt for several centuries after the conquest and are still millions strong. See Coptic Orthodox Church and Desert Fathers and Mothers.
• Ethiopia. Christianity was the faith of the kingdom itself, worshipping in its own language, and the highlands protected it. See Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Kingdom of Aksum.
• Nubia. The Nubian kingdoms negotiated a treaty with Muslim Egypt (the Baqt) that preserved their independence for some six centuries before their Christian states declined in the late Middle Ages. See Christian Nubia.

Lessons the historians draw

• Translation matters. Churches that rooted Scripture and worship in the vernacular survived better.
• Unity matters. A church that spent a century fighting itself was less able to face outside pressure.
• Christianity in Africa was not a colonial import. The very fact that there was an ancient African church to decline is part of the answer to the claim that Christianity is a European religion. See Christianity Is the White Mans Religion Objection Defeater.

Tensions

• Forced or gradual? Some popular accounts describe the end of North African Christianity as a forced conversion by the sword. Most historians describe a long, mostly non-violent attrition under discriminatory rule, punctuated by episodes of real coercion, especially under the Almohads. Both the pressure and the gradualness are real.
• The translation thesis. Frend's emphasis on the church's failure to evangelize the Berber countryside in its own languages is influential but contested, since Donatism was a strongly rural movement and evidence for Punic-language Christianity exists.
• How late did it last? The evidence for Christians after the 11th century is thin and scattered (later Arabic writers mention Christian communities in parts of southern Tunisia), so historians differ on when to date the end. The organized episcopate is not attested after the 12th century.
• Oden's question. Oden's admirers and critics both use this history: for critics it shows the fragility of Roman African Christianity; for Oden's admirers the Egyptian, Ethiopian and Nubian survivals show its depth. See How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind.

See also

• Donatist Controversy, the schism that divided the church
• Arianism, the theology of the Vandal persecutors
• Augustine, who died during the Vandal siege of Hippo
• Coptic Orthodox Church, the African church that survived Islamic rule in Egypt
• Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the African church that kept its independence
• Christian Nubia, the Nile kingdoms that endured for centuries
• Islam, the faith of the conquerors
• Africa and Christianity, the master hub