Lyons spoke around 180 of Christians in Germany, Spain, Gaul,
the East, Libya, and Egypt (Against Heresies1.10.2) – but he did
so in order to make a point about the worldwide unity of the
church against heretics who were trying to divide it. Not much
later, the north African writer Tertullian provided a comprehen-
sive list of peoples and regions in the (then) known world and
remarked: ‘The name of Christ is disseminated everywhere,
believed everywhere, revered by all the peoples listed above, it
reigns everywhere, and is everywhere adored’ (Against the Jews
7.9). Tertullian’s testimony is no more reliable than that of
Irenaeus. It comes in a polemic in which Tertullian argued for
the superiority of Christianity over Judaism and claimed for the
Christians and not the Jews biblical proclamations such as that
inPsalm19 (18 in the Septuagint) that God’s glory would be
heard to the ends of the earth.
Such claims will not do for today’s more critical historians.
Any attempt to get beyond them, however, and to come up with
a historically plausible, demonstrable, and quantifiable under-
standing of Christian expansion remains difficult. This is because
Christian communities simply appear, without warning as it
were, in our sources. The surviving correspondence of bishop
Cyprian of Carthage, for instance, contains a letter from a church
council of c. 256 to ‘the presbyter Felix and the laity living at
Legio and at Asturica, and to the deacon Aelius and the laity
living at Emerita’ (Cyprian, Letters67). This is the first clear
evidence for Christianity in Spain (the cities mentioned are,
respectively, modern León, Astorga, and Mérida). The presence
of a presbyter and a deacon suggests some form of hierarchical
organization in these Spanish communities, but how much is not
clear (why are no bishops mentioned?). The existence of the letter
itself implies contact between Spanish Christians and their north
African brethren. Beyond that, however, we can ask questions,
but only grope for answers. When, how, and by whom were these
Spanish congregations founded? Were they even founded, or did
they come into existence by some other, perhaps accidental,
process? We do not know. Nor can we even guess how manyCONTEXTS FOR THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY
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