Biographies

Christian writers of North Africa 200–1947

5 authors · 7 books

Long before Islam, North Africa was one of the heartlands of the church. Carthage, Hippo and Alexandria gave the church a martyr bishop, the defender of Christ's deity, and Augustine with his praying mother.

The writers

Portrait of Cyprian of Carthage

Cyprian of Carthage 200–258

1 book in the library

Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200–258) was a celebrated North African rhetorician who was converted in middle age, gave away his fortune, and was made bishop within two years. In twelve crowded years he led his church through the Decian persecution and the great plague that still bears his name, organising relief for the pagans who had wanted him dead, and wrote the first Latin commentary on the Lord's Prayer. He was beheaded at Carthage on 14 September 258.

Portrait of Athanasius of Alexandria

Athanasius of Alexandria 296–373

3 books in the library

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373) was bishop of Alexandria for forty-five years and spent seventeen of them in exile, driven from his city five times by four emperors for refusing to concede that the Son of God was a creature. He wrote On the Incarnation and the Life of Antony, which carried the monastic ideal into the West, and his festal letter of 367 is the earliest surviving list of exactly the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.

Portrait of Monica of Hippo

Monica of Hippo 331–387

Read full biography

Monica of Hippo (c.331–387) was the mother of Augustine, remembered as the great example of a praying mother. For some seventeen years she wept and prayed for her wayward son’s conversion; a bishop assured her that “the son of these tears shall not perish,” and she lived to see him baptized before she died at Ostia.

Portrait of Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo 354–430

3 books in the library

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was born in Roman North Africa to a pagan father and a praying Christian mother, Monica, whose tears followed him through years of ambition, pleasure, and the Manichaean religion. Baptised by Ambrose, he returned to Africa and served some thirty-five years as bishop of Hippo, writing the Confessions and The City of God and contending for grace against the Donatists and Pelagians.

Portrait of Josephine Bakhita

Josephine Bakhita 1869–1947

Read full biography

Sudanese-born former slave (c. 1869–1947) who found Christ in Venice, won her freedom in an Italian court, and served fifty years as a Canossian sister in Schio, forgiving those who had enslaved her.

Where to start reading

Begin reading
The Treatises of Cyprian
Cyprian of Carthage
12 chapters · 9 hr 57 min read
Begin reading
On the Incarnation
Athanasius of Alexandria
57 chapters · 2 hr 22 min read
Begin reading
Confessions
Augustine of Hippo
13 chapters · 9 hr 22 min read

Questions and Answers

Was Augustine African?

Yes. Augustine was born in 354 at Thagaste, in Roman North Africa (present-day Algeria), and was bishop of Hippo, on the same coast, for over thirty years.

Who was Athanasius of Alexandria?

Athanasius was bishop of Alexandria in Egypt for forty-five years in the fourth century, and defended the full deity of Christ against Arianism through five exiles.

Who was Cyprian of Carthage?

Cyprian was bishop of Carthage in the third century, a writer on the unity of the church, who was martyred in 258.

Biographies