Roman ruins from North Africa

Carthage was established as a Roman city in the second century and was the chief urban center of North African Christianity for several centuries. Carthage was the site for a prolonged struggle between advocates of the strenuous and morally strict posture of early North African Christianity and the more pliant, comprehensive Christianity of Rome. The Carthaginian bishop Cyprian eventually prevailed in his struggle to readmit those who had lapsed during persecutions. Later a series of Catholic bishops and synods in Carthage succeeded in overcoming the strongly indigenous Donatist movement which called for moral purity among the ministers of the church as a requirement for the effective administration of office. Carthage remained an important Christian center in North Africa until it was overrun by Vandals in the fifth and sixth centuries and Arabs in the seventh.