Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Gnostic-Manichaean Tradition in Roman North Africa

1953; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0022046900025628

1469-7637

W. H. C. Frend,

Byzantine Studies and History

Throughout its history one may detect three principle tendencies at work in the African Church. First, and probably the strongest, was the traditional Cyprianic and Donatist view of Christianity. This was a Biblical religion, rejecting the culture and society of the surrounding pagan world and exalting the qualities of the prophet and the martyr. Its ideas can be traced in unbroken sequence through the Montanists of Tertullian's time and the confessor party during the primacy of Cyprian down to the Donatists themselves. This religion interpreted the ideas of the majority of the North Africans at least as late as the first decades of the fifth century, and in particular it appealed to the labouring population of Numidia for whom it provided means of voicing hostility to the Roman taxes and Roman institutions.