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Since the 1st Century, a new religion, Christianity, quickly spread around the whole Roman Empire. North Africa, from its large, cosmopolitan cities to its most remote rural areas, proved to be an especially fertile ground for the Christian Gospel. Carthage, the capital of Roman Africa, became an influential Christian center.
The Carthaginian church was probably founded from Rome. According to Christian tradition, the first bishop of Carthage was Crispus, followed by Epenetus, two believers mentioned in the Christian Scriptures as members of the church of Rome. Speratus, one of the Scillitan (Kasserine) martyrs, is sometimes mentioned as a bishop of Carthage, but this is uncertain. The first officially documented bishop of Carthage was Agrippinus, around 240.
Tertullian, the first Christian writer in the Latin language, was born in Carthage around 155, in a Romanized Amazigh family. He had a career as a lawyer and rhetorician. After his conversion to Christianity, he decided to put his rhetorical skills at the service of his faith. His passionate writings defended Christianity against the attacks of the people of his time.
The rapid growth of Christianity, with its radically new dogma, also caused hostility. Persecution was often violent. In 203, Perpetua, a 22-year-old noblewoman and the mother of a newborn child, and her slave Felicity, who was pregnant, were put to death for their faith in Carthage. Tertullian, seeing how the unshakable faith of the Christian martyrs, who were ready to die rather than recant, won new souls to their faith, wrote: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
The most influential bishop of Carthage was Cyprian. Born in 210, in a rich, pagan family, he studied law and became a lawyer. After he became a Christian at around 35 years of age, he gave away his wealth to the poor, as the Church taught for rich believers. In 248, he was elected bishop of Carthage. He wrote several books of Christian doctrine. He was martyred in 258.
Augustine of Hippo, the greatest theologian of the Roman-African church, also lived several years in Carthage.
During the episcopate of Cyprian and his successors, the church of Carthage started having a strong influence on the Christian community in all Roman Africa, especially through the regional church councils that were organised in Carthage, with the participation of the bishops of other African cities.
Carthage and the surrounding region probably had a majority-Christian population by the end of the 3rd Century, before Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion, while the new faith was still persecuted. Christianity spread from Carthage through all North Africa.
