Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs by J. Patout Burns and Robin M. Jensen (review)

Early Christianity had a strong and vivacious presence in North Africa, and its most famous theologians exercised a fundamental influence in the formation of the Western Catholic tradition. The Islamic conquest of the region in the seventh century ended this period and contributed to Africa’s unique history among the former Western provinces of the Roman Empire, for contrary to the Iberian Peninsula, Christians never regained the upper hand in the Maghreb. Unsurprisingly, as a residual effect of France’s colonial presence, French academics have long dominated scholarship on Christian North Africa. In recent decades, however, a flurry of publications on late-antique North Africa in English and German has eroded this quasi-monopoly. The work under review continues this trend and thus participates in a healthy internationalization of the field. In engaging with past French scholarship and deploying both archaeological and literary evidence for an English readership, it fills an important gap in current scholarship.

This collaborative book is an impressive work of synthesis covering all major topics of relevance to understanding the daily lives of North African Christians in the first seven centuries of their history. Three historical chapters provide the larger framework within which to understand the period (up to Diocletian, Constantine to the Vandals, and Vandals and Byzantines) and a fourth chapter summarizes archaeological findings that can illuminate this history. A hundred and fifty-three high-quality color plates (grouped together in the middle of the book) accompany the archaeological discussion, all judicious selections of architectural plans, building remains, inscriptions, significant architectural details (such as reliquaries, baptismal fonts, tombs, and stone benches for the clergy in the nave), and the evocative mosaics for which Christian Africa is known. The bulk of the book documents fundamental aspects of Christian life: baptism (chapter 5); “The Celebration of Word and Eucharist” (chapter 6); the treatment of sinners (chapter 7); the clergy (chapter 8); “Marriage, Virginity, and Widowhood” (chapter 9); “Death and Burial” (chapter 10); “The Cult of the Martyrs” (chapter 11); and praying, fasting, and almsgiving (chapter 12). The authors’ method consists in presenting evidence on each topic from Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine, which they take as representative of the second, third, and late-fourth and early-fifth centuries, respectively. Each chapter concludes with brief sections of “Correlation of Archaeological and Literary Evidence,” unfortunately too often less than a page in length, and “Correlation of Theology and Practice.” A final chapter on “The Church and Its Holiness,” which also includes sections on the “Donatist” Tyconius and Optatus of Milevis, concludes the book.

The volume is a mine of information on a wide variety of historical, theological, and archaeological topics. It conjures images of what the life of Christians must have been in North Africa in this period. The thematic organization of the core chapters, which allows a clear presentation of change over time for each topic, is one of the book’s strengths. Chapter 6, for example, shows clear evidence for the transformation of the evening “love feast” (agapē) into a morning Eucharistic ritual during Tertullian’s time, which had become customary by Cyprian’s bishopric. The downside is the repetitions that this thematic organization causes, in the presentation of each topic’s historical context, for instance. This might betray the assumption that few will read the book from cover to cover and that its authors intended it as a work of reference on these specific topics. Another strength of the book is its meticulous documentation from the three great African writers, although the use of parenthetical references for the thousands of short references to abbreviated titles of their works might have alleviated it. It will undoubtedly prove an invaluable work of reference for students of any of the three African tenors or of the multiple topics covered in this book.

The focus...