Mutugenna or Muttegena was a colonia (town) of the Roman, Berber and Vandal empires, located in the Maghreb. The city is generally identified with the ruins at Ain-Tebla in modern Algeria. Mutugenna was also the locus of a bishopric and was an important site in the development of the Donatist schism.
The Diocese of Mutugenna (Dioecesis Mutugennensis) is today a suppressed and titular see of the Roman Catholic Church in the episcopal province of Numidia. [1] [2] [3]
Muttugenna was an Early center of Donatism [5] and Augustine of Hippo visited the town to confront the Donatist rebaptising. [6] Indeed, only two bishops are known from Mutugenna, the two rival bishops at the Council of Carthage (411), Catholic Antonio and Donatists Splendonio.
The city was not far from Hippo and the bishop Augustine went there several times. On one occasion he heard there had been rebaptising of Catholics and he went to reproach the practise [7] but was unable to find the people in question. [8] [9] Today Mutugenna survives as titular bishop; the current bishop is Roberto Bordi, auxiliary bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of El Beni.
Donatism was a Christian sect leading to a schism in the Christian Church, in the region of the Church of Carthage, from the fourth to the sixth centuries AD. Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid. Donatism had its roots in the long-established Christian community of the Roman Africa province in the persecutions of Christians under Diocletian. Named after the Berber Christian bishop Donatus Magnus, Donatism flourished during the fourth and fifth centuries.
An apostolic vicariate is a territorial jurisdiction of the Catholic Church under a titular bishop centered in missionary regions and countries where dioceses or parishes have not yet been established. It is essentially provisional, though it may last for a century or more. The hope is that the region will generate sufficient numbers of Catholics for the Church to create a diocese. In turn, the status of apostolic vicariate is often a promotion for a former apostolic prefecture, while either may have started out as a mission sui iuris.
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Thagora was a Carthaginian and Roman town at what is now Taoura, Algeria.
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Quiza, which Pliny the Elder called Quiza Xenitana, was a Roman–Berber colonia, located in the former province of Mauretania Caesariensis. The town is identified with ruins at Sidi Bellater, Algiers.
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