Tea at Trianon: Africa and the Early Church

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Africa and the Early Church

From Homeschool Connections:

Today we tend to think of Africa as mission territory. We forget, however, that the roots of Christianity on this continent are very ancient. As Aquilina points out, it was here that the Latin language was first used in Christian worship. The Church in Rome was using Greek into the second century.
It was here that the theological vocabulary of the Trinity was first hammered out. It was here that the Church worked out its theology of the sacraments. Africa provided fertile soil for the growth of Christianity and was a seedbed for some of Catholicism’s most fundamental ideas.

Sadly, much of Africa’s Christian heritage has been lost because, by and large, Christianity has been overtaken by Islam in the once Catholic lands of North Africa. Aquilina’s book helps us return to a time before the armies of the Caliph swept away the old Romano-Byzantine civilization of Africa, when places like Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia were intellectual hubs of the Christian world governed by saintly bishops and home to renowned theologians.

Aquilina’s book is divided up into three sections: the first deals with Roman “Africa,” which roughly corresponds to modern day Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria; the second treats Egypt with a focus on Alexandria, the intellectual heart of the Roman Empire; the final third of the book deals with Christianity in Ethiopia, the only African country to retain its Christian identity throughout the era of the Islamic conquests. Let us say a bit about each section:

Aquilina spends the first third of the book educating us about Roman Africa, which was centered around the city of Carthage. I have always been enthralled by the history of Christianity here because its origins are so elusive; unlike other churches that were founded by an apostle, the founder (or founders) of the church in North Africa remain anonymous. Nevertheless, this became the first intellectual center of western Christendom.

Aquilina devotes chapters to the lives of the three great North African fathers: Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. Their lives and writings are considered in turn. It is really astonishing what a debt the Church owes these North African fathers. Tertullian was the first Latin father to use the word “Trinity”. St. Cyprian is responsible formulating the first Christian ecclesiology (theology of the Church). And who can calculate the immense value of St. Augustine’s work? (Read more.)