Page 89 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

The Nile Corridor Churches

In addition, Werner and colleagues refer to the ninth through the
twelfth centuries as Nubia’s golden age (50).

Communication through the Nile corridor was consistent. Philae, near
the border, was a stronghold of Egyptian Coptic Christianity. There seems
to have been interaction between the Nubian kingdoms, as Paas indicates:
“Like Byzantium (and in Ethiopia), the Nubian Church was headed by the
king. Under the king, state and church were bound together in a kind of
theocracy” (38). While this could have produced a superficial, nominal
kind of Christianity, the church was strong enough to resist Islam during
the time that much of Christianity disappeared in North Africa.

From the twelfth century onward, the Nubian church began to
decline. Some authors point to the date of A.D. 1317, “when a church at
Dongola, capital of the middle Nubian kingdom, was reputedly turned
into a mosque, suggesting the collapse of Christian Nubia early in the
fourteenth century” (Bowers, 14). Recent research indicates that the
building in question may not have been a church but a palace. If so, this
suggests that the government may have changed but the rulers were
tolerant toward Christianity, much like what happened to the Coptic
Church in Egypt. Thus, it is not historically correct to say that Islam
conquered Christianity rapidly.

In this regard, Millet notes: “Archaeologists have now come up with
solid material evidence that a Nubian Christian sub-kingdom in one part
of Nubia was still functioning officially, with king and bishop, as late as
1484” (quoted in Bowers, 15). Adams adds:

A sixteenth century Portuguese missionary in Ethiopia, Alvarez,
reports a Nubian delegation arriving there in 1520 to beg the
Ethiopians to supply them with trained religious leaders—which
the Ethiopians felt unable to do.… As late as 1742 the Nubian
servant of a Franciscan in Cairo reported a single isolated
Christian community still existing in his homeland, in the region
of the Third Cataract, despite persecution. (quoted in Bowers, 15)

The mighty river, which God intended to flow like the Nile, was
reduced to a trickle and perhaps eventually became a “dry river bed.”

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