Primate of Africa

The Primate of Africa is an honorific title in the Roman Catholic church, but in early Christianity was the leading bishop (primas) in Africa except for Mauretania which was under the bishop of Rome and Egypt which was suffragan to Alexandria.

There were at times primates in Numidia and Byzacena, and Donatist claimants, but generally the role of the bishop of Carthage was seen as total.

In the 3rd century, at the time of Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage exercised a real though not formalized primacy in the Early African Church, not only in the Roman province of Proconsular Africa in the broadest sense (even when divided into three provinces including Byzacena and Tripolitania) but also, in some supra-metropolitan form, over the Church in Numidia and Mauretania. The provincial primacy was associated with the senior bishop in the province rather than with a particular see and was of little importance in comparison to the authority of the bishop of Carthage, who could be appealed to directly by the clergy of any province.

Pope Leo confirmed the primacy of the Bishop of Carthage in 446 when he wrote: Indeed, after the Roman Bishop, the leading Bishop and metropolitan for all Africa is the Bishop of Carthage.

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