Augustine the African
Generations of historians have represented Augustine of Hippo as the single most important figure in Christianity’s transition from antiquity to the medieval world. He is usually seen as an intransigent defender of classical values against the inevitable erosion caused by the spread of Christianity to multiple locations and populations. Yet Augustine was not Roman, nor was Latin his native tongue. He was born and raised in North Africa; Punic was the language of his childhood. Catherine Conybeare presents Augustine as a passionate and complex man who, rather than suppressing his loyalty to either Latin- or Punic-speaking churches, remained loyal both to the Roman church that baptized and ordained him and to his African identity.
Conybeare reveals an Augustine who was a Latin-speaking classicist with strong affinities with the Punic-speaking African churches. Yet, as an adult, his Punic was “pointillist and superficial.” In fact, historians’ knowledge of Augustine’s world is complicated by the fact that all of the relevant written sources are in Latin; Punic left no written voice. Conybeare has worked with classic texts for many years, and her peerless Latin allows her translations to achieve not only accuracy but also delicate shades of feeling-infused meaning. Augustine the African is an excellent book; it is both scholarly and engaging to the nonspecialist reader.
The differences between the two North African churches of Augustine’s era—which Conybeare calls “the church in Africa” (Latin-speaking) and “the African church” (Punic-speaking)—were largely geographical and institutional. Doctrinally, the churches believed alike: “Both adhered to orthodox trinitarian doctrine. Both said the Nicene Creed. Both accepted the primacy of the bible—Hebrew and Christian scriptures together—as spiritual authority and guide.” Yet the Punic-speaking African church was considered “schismatic, a group that had splintered off from the main church, but not heretical.” The only “fundamental difference” between the churches concerned the efficacy of baptism. Augustine’s church—the church in Africa—believed that the baptismal rite itself conferred sanctity, while the African church believed that sanctity was conferred by the legitimacy (read: African identity) of the person doing the baptizing. “One side looked to Rome for its legitimacy; the other insisted on its pure African lineage and inheritance.”
