community
Britannia: earliest claims (Tertullian, Origen)
Roman Britain (region; pin at Londinium), United Kingdom · Britain & Ireland
51.513, -0.089
Approximate location. The map shows a region, not a pin.
Disputed. DISPUTED: the claims are attested in the texts, but most historians treat them as rhetorical exaggeration. Firm evidence for British Christians begins with Alban's cult and the bishops at Arles in 314.
Britannia: earliest claims (Tertullian, Origen)
Roman Britain (region; pin at Londinium)
Around 200 CE Tertullian claimed that places of the Britons 'inaccessible to the Romans' had been 'subjugated to Christ'. In the 3rd century Origen also mentions Christianity in Britain. These are the earliest written claims, but they are rhetorical lists of distant peoples, not reports of known churches.
Source stance: insider. Christian apologists making a rhetorical point.
People and groups named here
- Tertullian
- Origen
Sources
- Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews 7 (Britons 'subjugated to Christ')
tr. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 3 (1885), public domain; New Advent. Accessed 2026-11-11.
- Christianity in Roman Britain (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors. Accessed 2026-11-11.
- Pleiades place 79574: Londinium/Augusta
Pleiades Gazetteer (ISAW, NYU). Accessed 2026-11-11.
Further reading
Councils here
None in this list.