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Donatists
Donatism was a schism from the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Carthage from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid. Donatism had its roots in the long-established Christian community of the Roman province Africa Proconsularis (present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeria, and the western coast of Libya) and Mauretania Tingitana (roughly with the northern part of present-day Morocco), in the persecutions of Christians under Diocletian. Named after the Berber Christian bishop Donatus Magnus, Donatism flourished during the fourth and fifth centuries. Donatism mainly spread among the indigenous Berber population, and Donatists were able to blend Christianity with many of the Berber local customs. Origin and controversy The Roman governor of North Africa, lenient to the large Christian minority under his rule throughout the Diocletianic Persecu ...
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Majorinus
Majorinus was the leader of a schismatic Christian sect in Roman North Africa known as the Donatists. Life Very little is known of his early life, as Donatist writings were mostly destroyed in the following years. What we can garner of his life and beliefs is accessed through what his enemies said against him. He had been a reader or a lector in the church at Carthage Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classic ..., during the time that Caecilianus had been an archdeacon and Mensurius was bishop. He seems to have also had some domestic office in the household of a Roman Nobility, noblewoman Lucilla. In 311 Majorinus was chosen as bishop of Carthage by a council of 70 bishops in Cirta led by Secundus of Tigisis. Secundus was the Primate (bishop), primate of Numidia and as such ...
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Donatus Magnus
Donatus Magnus, also known as Donatus of Casae Nigrae, was the leader of a schismatic Christian sect known as the Donatists in North Africa, Algeria. He is believed to have died in exile around 355. Life Little is known of his early life because of the complete loss of his correspondence and written works. He first appears in Church records as Donatus of Casae Nigrae in October 313 when Pope Miltiades found him guilty of re-baptizing clergy who had lapsed and of forming a schism within the Church. Casae was a settlement located on the extreme southern edge of the plains of Numidia, south of Theveste, an area settled by people predominantly of Berber descent. The Schism During the wave of persecutions of Christians by the Roman Emperor Diocletian Diocletian ( ; ; ; 242/245 – 311/312), nicknamed Jovius, was Roman emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. He was born Diocles to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia (Roman province), Dalmatia. As ...
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Augustine And Donatists
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; ; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430) was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings deeply influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include ''The City of God'', '' On Christian Doctrine'', and '' Confessions''. According to his contemporary, Jerome of Stridon, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith". In his youth he was drawn to the Manichaean faith, and later to the Hellenistic philosophy of Neoplatonism. After his conversion to Christianity and baptism in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and made si ...
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Traditors
Traditor, plural: ''traditores'' (Latin), is a term meaning "the one(s) who had handed over" and defined by Merriam-Webster as "one of the Christians giving up to the officers of the law the Scriptures, the sacred vessels, or the names of their brethren during the Roman persecutions". The word ''traditor'' comes from the Latin ''transditio'' from ''trans'' (''across'') + ''dare'' (''to hand'', ''to give''), and is the source of the modern English words '' traitor'' and ''treason''. The same root word, with a different context of what is handed to whom, gives the word ''tradition'' as well. In the history of the Christian church, it refers to bishops and other Christians who turned over sacred scriptures or betrayed their fellow Christians to the Roman authorities under threat of persecution. During the Diocletianic Persecution between AD 303 and 305, many church leaders had gone as far as turning in Christians to the authorities and "handed over" sacred religious texts to au ...
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Constantine I
Constantine I (27 February 27222 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a Constantine the Great and Christianity, pivotal role in elevating the status of Christianity in Rome, Edict of Milan, decriminalising Christian practice and ceasing Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, Christian persecution. This was a turning point in the Historiography of the Christianization of the Roman Empire, Christianisation of the Roman Empire. He founded the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) and made it the capital of the Empire, which it remained for over a millennium. Born in Naissus, a city located in the Roman province, province of Moesia Superior (now Niš, Serbia), Constantine was the son of Flavius Constantius, a Roman army officer from Moesia Superior, who would become one of the four emperors of the Tetrarchy. His mother, Helena, mother of Constantin ...
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Apostolic Succession
Apostolic succession is the method whereby the Christian ministry, ministry of the Christian Church is considered by some Christian denominations to be derived from the Twelve Apostles, apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops. Those of the Catholic Church, Catholic, Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Lutheranism, Scandinavian Lutheran, Anglicanism, Anglican, Moravian Church, Moravian, Czechoslovak Hussite Church, Hussite, and Old Catholic Church, Old Catholic traditions maintain that a bishop's orders are neither regular nor valid without consecration through apostolic succession. These traditions do not always consider the Episcopal polity, episcopal consecrations of all of the other traditions as valid. This series was seen originally as that of the bishops of a Apostolic see, particular see founded by one or more of ...
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Muslim Conquest Of The Maghreb
The conquest of the Maghreb by the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates commenced in 647 and concluded in 709, when the Byzantine Empire lost its last remaining strongholds to Caliph Al-Walid I. The North African campaigns were part of the century of rapid early Muslim conquests. By 642 AD, under Caliph Umar, Arab Muslim forces had taken control of Mesopotamia (638 AD), Syria (641 AD), Egypt (642 AD), and had invaded Armenia (642 AD), all territories previously split between the warring Byzantine and Sasanian empires, and were concluding their conquest of Sasanian Persia with their defeat of the Persian army at the Battle of Nahāvand. It was at this point that Arab military expeditions into North African regions west of Egypt were first launched, continuing for years and furthering the spread of Islam. In 644 at Medina, Umar was succeeded by Uthman, during whose twelve-year rule Armenia, Cyprus, and all of modern-day Iran, would be added to the expanding Rashidun Caliphate. Wi ...
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Augustine Of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; ; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430) was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings deeply influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include '' The City of God'', '' On Christian Doctrine'', and '' Confessions''. According to his contemporary, Jerome of Stridon, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith". In his youth he was drawn to the Manichaean faith, and later to the Hellenistic philosophy of Neoplatonism. After his conversion to Christianity and baptism in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and m ...
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Circumcellions
The Circumcellions, or Agonistici (as called by Donatists), were bands of Roman Christian radicals in North Africa in the early to mid-4th century. They were initially concerned with remedying social grievances. They condemned poverty and slavery and advocated canceling debt and freeing slaves. The term "Circumcellions" may have been coined by critics who referred to them as "circum cellas euntes" (''they go around larders'') because "they roved about among the peasants, living on those they sought to indoctrinate." Background The Circumcellions first appeared about 317 and were active primarily in Numidia and Mauretania Sitifensis. They promoted ideas of social reform along with eschatological hopes. Bishop Optatus of Milevis says that around 340 they started an uprising directed at creditors and slave owners. They regarded as martyrs those among them killed when the disturbance was put down. Augustine of Hippo likened them to a rustic mob encouraging violence against landlords. ...
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Pope Miltiades
Pope Miltiades (, ''Miltiádēs''), also known as Melchiades the African ( ''Melkhiádēs ho Aphrikanós''), was the bishop of Rome from 311 to his death on 10 or 11 January 314. It was during his pontificate that Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan (313), giving Christianity legal status within the Roman Empire. The pope also received the palace of Empress Fausta where the Lateran Palace, the papal seat and residence of the papal administration, would be built. At the Lateran Council, during the schism with the Church of Carthage, Miltiades condemned the rebaptism of apostatised bishops and priests, a teaching of Donatus Magnus. Background The year of Miltiades' birth is unknown. Still, it is known that he was of North African descent and, according to the ''Liber Pontificalis'', compiled from the 5th century onwards, a Roman citizen. Miltiades and his successor, Sylvester I, were part of the clergy of Pope Marcellinus. It has been suggested that he wa ...
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Felix Of Aptungi
Felix, Bishop of Aptunga, in proconsular Africa was a 4th-century churchman, at the center of the Donatist controversy. Felix was one of those who consecrated Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage in 311 A.D. This act led to a major schism in Early North African Christianity. Biography Felix of Abthugni, the bishop of Aptunga had escaped arrest during the Diocletian Persecution in 303. He held an administrative office within the town council, and was on friendly relations with the local magistrate who was to implement the persecution. It is therefore probable he was warned of the coming persecution, and was away at the time. The cathedral and some documents were destroyed in his absence. Felix consecrated Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage in 311. The proto-Donatist in a Council at Cirta called this consecration invalid because of Felix's participation. However, Felix was considered to have been a '' traditor'' during the Diocletian Persecution and as such Caecilian's consecration was ...
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Carthage
Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classical world. It became the capital city of the civilization of Ancient Carthage and later Roman Carthage. The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic people, Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Elissa, Alyssa or Dido, originally from Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre, is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. In the myth, Dido asked for land from a local tribe, which told her that she could get as much land as an oxhide could cover. She cut the oxhide into strips and laid out the perimeter of the new city. As Carthage prospered at home, the polity sent colonists abroad as well as magistrates to rule t ...
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