Augustin and Donat: the Algerian Amazigh soul in the service of justice

“They treat the Algerians of Bougnoules, forgetting that in this, Saint Augustine, undisputed master of the West, would also be. What ignorance! »»
– François MauriacNobel Prize in literature

On May 8, 2025, the conclave elected Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as 267ᵉ Pope of the Catholic Church. Around 6 pm, the white smoke appeared, and the new pope presented himself as a “son of Saint-Augustin”, paying homage to one of the pillars of the Christian church, whose roots are deeply rooted in Algerian earth.

An hidden memory

The West, in his hegemonic claim, proclaims that there is only civilization in him. However, long before it is called thus, brilliant kingdoms and prestigious cultures flourished in North Africa, while Europe, with the exception of Rome and Athens, had not yet penetrated the frame of history. Hegel, rightly, evoked these peoples “not yet entered history” – a formulation which, although arodent, reveals the blindness of Europeanocentrism.

The famous joke of François Mauriac sets the record straight. She condemns a filthy ignorance: that which denies that Augustin – one of the greatest thinkers of Christianity – was Berber, African, and therefore, for certain narrow minds, assimilated to a “bougnoule”.

René Naba¹ recalls that this abusive word is of its origin from the First World War: ” Aboul Gnoul “, He who” brings gnôle “, had become, in the mouths of soldiers, a term of contempt for all the colonized of the Empire.

In the same vein, Kamel Mellouk² says: “Do not say that Augustine is of Western culture, but rather that the West is of Augustinian culture”. This fertile paradox reverses the dominant perspectives. Augustin, a child prodigy of Thagaste, spiritual descendant of Massinissa and Jugurtha, but also of Apuleius and Maxime the grammarian, forever marked the base of Christian thought. The imprint of this Numidian Chaoui is so powerful that we find his traces until the line of Lutheranism and Calvinism.

Pope Léon XIV: a “son of Saint-Augustin”

Pasteur trained at the Augustinian school, Léon XIV said he was turned upside down by the decline in faith in the face of new idols: technology, money, power, pleasure. From his first interventions, he asked that the Saint-Augustin Basilica of Annaba, a spiritual and intellectual high place, symbolically figures in his pontifical office.

As noted The world“The Vatican recognizes its North African roots” ³. The Guardianmeanwhile, headlined: ” From Chicago to Annaba ⁴, in reference to the participation of the Pope, then bishop, in the first congress on the philosophy of Saint-Augustin in 2001, organized by the University of Annaba.

The commemorative plaque for the restoration of the basilica, inaugurated on October 19, 2013, already bears its name, alongside the local authorities and the apostolic nonce Mgr Thomas Yeh.

Having become Cardinal-Diacre of Santa Monica in 2023, he still paid tribute to Souk Ahras, declaring:

“Taghaste, today Souk Ahras, cited of the Numidian heights, you are not a city like the others: you are a spiritual matrix, a source of eternity (…) The Christian world owes you a part of its soul. Glory to you, Algerian city, which gave the heavens two of its most beautiful stars ”⁵.

A spiritual Algeria which forces respect

Thus, Léon XIV is part of a spiritual filiation which links it deeply to Algeria. He says it bluntly: Annaba is his attachment port, literally and figuratively. A strong message, in contrast to the words of Emmanuel Macron, who questioned the existence of the Algerian nation before colonization.

Saint Augustine: a rooted African

Born in Thagaste in 354, Augustin grew up in a family where the Punic and Berber resounded. He writes in Confessions⁷:

“In my childhood, I had tasted the truth through my mother’s milk (…). I grew among mine, in Numidia, without still knowing the sweetness of your name. »»

His mother, Monique, an emblematic figure of Amazigh piety, embodies the popular North African faith, mixing spiritual resistance and inflexible patience. Augustin will never deny his roots. His language, his vision of the body, time, and the incarnation testify to an assumed Africanity.

Donat and Augustin: two figures, two visions

Besides Augustin, known and recognized, Donat the Grand, bishop of Carthage, forgotten figure, deserves to be rehabilitated. He too Berber, also a man of faith, he embodies another Church: that of the oppressed. Donatists from the Amazigh campaigns rejected the official church, deemed corrupt and accomplice of Rome.

Donat and his supporters advocated a pure, radical, liberating church. Augustine, on the contrary, defended the unity of the Church, even at the cost of the use of constraint. In a famous letter, he writes:

“We must not consider the constraint in itself, but to consider what it is aimed at: if it is good or evil. »»

The conflict between Augustine and Donat is also that between imperial order and popular resistance. The circumcices⁸, close to the Donatists, refused the hierarchies, released slaves, burned the debts registers, sometimes to the martyrdom. Their struggle, spiritual and social, foreshadows that of modern liberation theologies.

The legacy of Christian Africa

North Africa has known, between the IIᵉ and the fifth century, three Berber Popes: Victor I, Miltiade and Gelase Ienter¹. The Trinitarian dogma itself, defined at the councils of Nicée (325) and Constantinople (381), found in Augustine his deepest theologian. His “inner trinity” – Memory, Intelligence, will – expresses an unrecognized metaphysical Africanity.

Donatists and Arianists¹¹ resisted this imperial theology. For them, faith should not be submitted to Rome. Their refusal of a God in three people was as much in their spirituality as in their rejection of religious colonialism.

Gaza, today: humanity in crisis

During the bombing of Gaza, on December 23, 2023, Pastor Munther Isaac denounced Western hypocrisy¹²:

“Gaza has now become the moral compass of the world. (…) If you are not shaken by what is going on, your humanity is in default. »»

Pope Francis, November 25, 2024, in turn denounced “the arrogance of the invaders”. But do these words are enough in the face of current purification? The silence of the church painfully resonates, like that of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War.

Jérémiah Wright said: “Jesus Christ is Palestinian. »» Gaza is no longer a geography; She became a cry.

Conclusion: Between the city of God and that of men

Augustin and Donat, two Numidians, two believers, two irreconcilable visions. One defends unity, order, forgiveness; the other, purity, resistance and justice. Augustine founded the city of God; Donat embodies the martyrs church. One has triumphed in official history; The other remains alive in the margins, among the oppressed.

Léon XIV, by claiming to be Augustine while standing alongside the poor, reopens a secular debate: should the church be rampart for power or refuge for the suffers?

Algeria, land of mind, keeps this memory in it. She must now wear it high, not as a nostalgia, but as a promise. Through Augustin and Donat, it is two readings of the world that challenge us: that of power and that of truth.

References

¹ René Naba – Le Bougnoule: its meaning, its evolution
² Kamel Mellouk – Saint Augustin, this “bougnoule” master thinker of the West
³ The world -The Vatican recognizes its North African roots (11.05.2025)
⁴ The Guardian – “From Chicago to Annaba”
⁵ Akram El Kebir – The Sovereign Pontiff Léon XIV has already come to Souk Ahras (11.05.2025)
⁶ Amar Zitouni – Annaba, my home port
⁷ Confessions from Saint Augustin – Wikipedia adaptation
⁸ https://chatgpt.com/share/68204d83-3244-800c-bd7f-e9e4530c0baa
⁹ Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorumtrad. A. Mandouze, The adventure of reason and graceParis, Augustinian studies, 1968
¹⁰ https://books.openedition.org/pusl/21232?lang=fr
¹¹ Read Magazine – Who was Saint Augustine?
¹² Michel Marchand – The Church of France facing the conflict in Palestine
¹³ https://chatgpt.com/share/6823861a-9b94-800c-8620-09f449f64f488