the declarations of {109}
provincial synods in 646, was the last expression of African orthodoxy.

John, the Jacobite bishop of Nikiu, whose contemporary account of the
Saracen conquest is of the first value, declares that "everyone said
that the expulsion of the Romans and the victory of the Mussulmans were
brought about by the tyranny of the emperor Heraclius and the troubles
which he made the orthodox suffer." A general discontent with the
Byzantine government arose, and Rome, which was more in sympathy with
the people, was unable to help them. In 646 the patrician Gregory, the
imperial governor, orthodox and a protector of the Church, declared
that the Monothelite Constans II. had forfeited the throne, and assumed
for himself the title of emperor. Within a year he was defeated and
slain by the Saracens at Sbeitla, and Byzantine Africa was placed at
the mercy of the Muhammadan invader. The Copts long resisted, but
their resistance was overcome in the autumn of 646. Alexandria fell a
second time and finally into the hands of the Arabs.

[Sidenote: The conquest by the Muhammadans.]

For fifty years the Byzantine power maintained a foothold, precarious
and nominal. Inch by inch, and with intervals of repose and even of
reconquest,--as when John the Patrician, under Leo the Isaurian,
recaptured Carthage,--the infidels advanced, and the Berber tribes of
the interior pressed, too, upon the Christians. Carthage was again
taken by the Muhammadans in 698: the native tribes joined the invaders,
and by 708 Roman Africa was wholly in their hands. Toleration was at
first allowed; but from 717 the Christians had only the choice of
banishment and {110} apostasy. Still many held out: Christian villages
remained, Christian communities, as late as the fourteenth century; and
even now it is said that in some parts Christian customs survive. The
Church at Carthage existed certainly in some organised form till the
eleventh century, and it was not till 1583 that the Church of Tunis was
utterly destroyed.

Meanwhile events in other parts of Africa had run a different course.
The patriarchate of Alexandria had a long and distinguished history,
and from it had spread missions far into the south.

[Sidenote: The Jacobites.]

The Monophysite controversy led to the founding of the Jacobite sect.
Secret consecrations at Constantinople by bishops in prison during
Justinian's severe rule sent a bishop to Hira for the Arabian
Chri