Often called the Maghreb, North-West Africa is today
divided from west to east into three countries,
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Two thousand years ago
the area was inhabited by a people called the
Berbers, but when the region was conquered by the
Roman Empire, it was also colonized by Roman
settlers.
Following settlement by the Jewish Diaspora and then
the preaching of the Gospel, by the second century
the area had started to become a centre of
Latin-speaking Orthodoxy. Gradually, both Roman
settlers and Romanized Berbers became Christian. In
this way the region was to produce figures such as
the Church writer Tertullian (c 155 - c 202), the
martyr St Cyprian of Carthage (+ 258), the Righteous
Monica, her son the philosopher Blessed Augustine,
Bishop of Hippo I (+ 430)
(1),
the martyr St
Julia of Carthage (5th century) and many other
saints of God.
In the early centuries the Church here was also to
be much shaken and divided by various heresies and
schisms. There was fanatical Donatism from the
fourth century onwards, Manicheanism which so
tempted the pagan Augustine, and then Arianism
brought by the invading Germanic Vandals in the
fifth century. This dissidence and the ensuing
schisms were much coloured by ethnic tensions
between the wealthier Roman settlers and the poorer
native Berbers, some of whom for ethnic and social
reasons wished to differentiate themselves from the
colonists.
Thus, the heresies and schisms of the region were
much conditioned by politically-motivated
nationalism. The process here was therefore similar
to the rise of the ethnic heresies of Monophysitism
and Nestorianism of the Copts in North-East Africa
and the Semites in the Middle East. Nevertheless, in
those areas Orthodoxy survived, whereas in
North-West Africa, where there were once hundreds of
Orthodox dioceses and bishops, today there are none.
What happened? Let us look and see what we can learn
from this tragedy for today.
The beginning of the end of Orthodoxy in North-West
Africa came in the year 647 with the arrival from
the east of the first Arab invaders, bringing Islam
with them. The capture of St. Cyprian's great
Christian Metropolia of Carthage in 698 and the
gradual Islamization of dissident native Berbers
followed. For the Orthodox, Islam was (as it still
is) a Christian heresy, or rather a heresy of a
heresy. Therefore, for political and ethnic Berber
dissidents, Islam was just another opportunity to be
independent of Roman colonial administration.
However, this still does not explain why here in
North-West Africa, Orthodoxy did not survive, unlike
in Egypt and the Middle East, where native Orthodox
Christianity has survived to this day. When and why
then did Orthodoxy disappear in North-West Africa?
Undoubtedly, the main cause was the progressive
emigration of Christians of colonial origin, who
sought refuge from Islamic taxes elsewhere. Many of
them had interests, property and family in other
countries of the Western Mediterranean. In a word,
they had somewhere else to go. Thus, on the capture
of Carthage in 698, there was a huge exodus to
Sicily, Spain and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
This exodus especially affected the educated elite,
including churchmen, many of whom were not of native
Berber origin, but were descendants of the
Latin-speaking settlers of Roman times. This
emigration continued in the eighth century. Some
were even to settle as far north as Germany, as is
mentioned in a letter of Pope Gregory II (715-731)
to St Boniface.
Nevertheless, many Christians stayed on in
North-West Africa throughout the eighth century and
relations between Muslims and the remaining
Christians, who by now often belonged to the same
Berber race, were mainly cordial. Letters from the
Christian Maghreb to Rome from the ninth century
prove that Christianity was still a living faith at
that time too. Although in the tenth century a
reference to forty episcopal towns must be more
historic rather than real, nevertheless Orthodoxy
continued and several bishops and dioceses were
active
(2)
. Relations continued with the Patriarchal See in
Rome and towards the end of the century, under Pope
Benedict VII (974-983), a certain priest called
James was sent to Rome to be consecrated Archbishop
of Carthage. However, it is from this end of the
tenth century that we hear that Christians are
abandoning even the local form of Latin, and as in
the Middle East, are using Arabic to communicate.
Unlike in North-East Africa and the Middle East, it
is in the eleventh century that Orthodoxy finally
begins to disappear in the Maghreb. Communities
become isolated and ever smaller. For example, the
church in Kairouan in Tunisia disappears from
history in 1046 with the victory of militant
Muslims. A second exodus occurs now, further
weakening the Christian presence. In a letter from
the Pope of Rome dated 17 December 1053, we hear
that there are only five bishops left in all the
Maghreb and that they are to recognize Thomas,
Archbishop of Carthage as their Metropolitan. Two
other bishops, Peter and John, perhaps of Tlemcen in
Algeria or Gafsa in Tunisia, are mentioned, but we
do not even know the names of the other two bishops
at this time. By 1073 the Archbishop of Carthage is
called Cyriacus, and there are now only two bishops
left in all of North-West Africa. By 1076 he was
alone and another bishop, Servandus, for Tunis, had
to be consecrated in Rome.
These are the last communications that we have
between the Christian Maghreb and Rome, which was by
now in any case undergoing its own Gregorian
Revolution. From this time on it is clear that
surviving Christian communities are ever smaller and
fewer, as emigration continues. With the capture of
the Christian centre of Tunis in 1159 by the
militant Muslim leader Abd al-Mu'min, who in 1160
also chased the Normans from what is now Tunisia,
there was a further weakening. Without the
protection of the Normans, a third exodus of
Christians, following that of the end of the seventh
century and the mid-eleventh century, now occurred.
Without monastic centres and writers, the Christians
of the Maghreb faced assimilation. Unlike in the
Middle East, where there were great figures like St
John Damascene, there was no-one to argue the
Orthodox cause with understanding of Islam, its
culture and its language. There are no literary
monuments, no Patristic figures, writing in either
Latin or Arabic, from this period. The old Orthodox
culture of North-West Africa was disappearing. True,
even after the eleventh century, isolated survivals
continued. Thus a Christian community is recorded in
1114 in Qal'a in central Algeria. In the mid-twelfth
century an Africanized Latin was still being spoken
by Orthodox in Gafsa in the south of Tunisia - at a
time when Latin was nowhere spoken in Western
Europe. And in 1194 a church and community dedicated
to the Mother of God is recorded in Nefta, in the
south of Tunisia
(3).
In the thirteenth century, the apogee of Papal
power, Spanish and Italians tried to conquer
North-West Africa for Catholicism, as the Spanish
had done in the Iberian Peninsula, and convert the
Arab-speaking Muslims. However, importing Dominicans
and other Catholics and setting up tiny chapels on
the coastal fringes of the Maghreb led them nowhere.
Not only did they fail to convert Muslims, but some
of these imported Catholics within a few years
themselves became Muslim
(4)
. Moreover, these new religious imports had no
contact whatsoever with the few remaining native
Christians of the far older Orthodox Tradition. The
latter were faithful, not to the new medieval
Catholicism, but to the ancient Orthodox life of
North-West Africa.
Thirteenth and fourteenth century Catholicism came
from a different planet from that of historic
Maghreban Orthodoxy. Thus, even though Berber
Christians continued to live in Tunis and Nefzaoua
in the south of Tunisia up until the early fifteenth
century, they did not recognize the new Catholicism.
In the first quarter of the fifteenth century, we
even read that the native Christians of Tunis,
though much assimilated, extended their church,
perhaps because the last Christians from all over
the Maghreb had gathered there
(5).
Moreover, this is the last reference to native
Christianity in North-West Africa. Tunis seems to
have been the last citadel from over twelve hundred
years of Orthodoxy in North-West Africa. With
assimilation in the sea of Islam, native
Christianity now died out all over the Maghreb.
Enfeebled by ethnic and social division, weakened by
the emigration of their elite and deprived of
monastic life, not persecuted as such but
nevertheless reduced by Islam to second-class
citizens, isolated from the outside world, the
Orthodox of the Maghreb were over seven centuries
assimilated into the Muslim universe. In about 1400,
after 700 years of faithfulness, the lamp of
Orthodoxy in North-West Africa went out through lack
of oil. It left vestiges only in folklore and
language. For example, to this day the Touareg word
for 'sacrifice' is 'tafaske', derived from the Latin
word for Easter 'Pascha'.
From their tragic history, we can learn various
lessons for today:
Firstly, we can learn of the need for Christians of
different nationalities to work together in justice,
without treating each other as second-class
citizens. Whether they are Roman or Berber, Greek or
African, Ukrainian or Romanian, Russian or English,
they must treat one another as Orthodox Christians,
avoiding divisions, putting their Faith, and not
their ethnicity, first.
Secondly, we can learn of the vital importance of
monastic life and the spiritual and intellectual
training given there for clergy, thus ensuring the
future survival of the Faith. A local Church can
survive even with emigration, providing that it has
a monastic basis. Whether, it is in North-West
Africa or modern Western Europe, the United States
or Australia, a Church without monastic life is a
Church destined to close.
Thirdly, we can learn that to oppose the heterodox
counter-culture surrounding us, we must first
understand it and explain our views in terms and
language which it can understand. Whether it is in
Arabic or English, French or German, Spanish or
Portuguese, a Church which does not speak the local
language and understand the local culture, is a
Church whose young are doomed to assimilation.
Finally, we can learn that it is vital for Orthodox
not to become isolated from one another. If Orthodox
have contact with other Orthodox, especially in
other countries, they are more likely to remain
Orthodox, remaining faithful to the Tradition,
resisting local assimilation through uniatization
and other forms of secularism.
May the Saints of North-West Africa, led by St
Cyprian, protect us!
Notes:
1 Now called Annaba. In
1963 Matushka was the last Christian to be baptized
in St Anne's church in Blessed Augustine's City of
Annaba, before it was destroyed the very next day by
Muslim bulldozers.
2 See P. 332 of Le
Christianisme maghrébin (LCM)
by Mohamed Talbi in Indigenous
Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, M.
Gervers and R. Bikhazi, Toronto, 1990. I am indebted
to this valuable article, which is largely based on
Arabic sources, for much of this article.
3 LCM, Pp. 338-9
4 LCM, Pp. 342 and 346
5 LCM, Pp. 344-45
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Morocco
Libya
Algeria
Tunisia
Mauritania
