This is a paper I gave at a small colloquy in Waterford, Wisconsin in mid-June of this year. There are benefits to be gained from knowing how the Church dealt with issues that were in some ways not unlike those of our day.

The Donatist heresy about which St. Augustine famously wrote had to do with several controversial matters, chief among them the question of the validity of sacraments administered by bishops who were found to be schismatics. What occasioned the controversy, which raged throughout the 4th century, was the matter of the traditores, or traitors. These were Christians who because of the threat of persecution had responded in ways perceived to be cowardly. Toward the end of the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, during the years a.d. 303-305, the “Great Persecution” began, during which many Christians were imprisoned and martyred. Christian leaders had been ordered to hand over their Scriptures and Sacred Books under the threat of this severe persecution. Some complied with the order and some refused. Those who complied became known as the traditores, because, as traitors, they had handed over the books the government demanded (trado, to hand over).

During the persecution, bishops in Egypt were already divided on how strictly the lapsed were to be treated if they returned. The acuteness of the division can be attested by the report of two bishops in a certain Alexandrian prison—Peter, the bishop of Alexandria, and Meletius, a bishop from Upper Egypt, who saw Peter as lax—who came into such sharp disagreement that they hung a curtain within the prison cell to disassociate themselves from one another. After the persecution, the notorious Arius began to build a reputation within the Meletian ranks. (https://www.churchhistory101.com/century4-p5.php)

When the persecution ended with the ascendency of Constantine to the throne, this controversy emerged. One bishop in particular, Mensurius of Carthage, had been accused of being a traditor, but his defense was that he had actually handed over no sacred books at all, merely some heretical ones he didn’t want in his library anyhow, and evidently the ruse had worked; so, it would seem, no harm, no foul. But this failed to placate the Donatist party who insisted that anything short of an utter refusal to comply was an offense against Christ. When Mensurius died, his supportive archdeacon Caecilian was to become his successor, which further enraged his enemies. They became incensed because, in the first place, one of his opponents was the wealthy and influential Lady Lucilla whose disapproval of him had already arisen from the fact that he had rebuked her excessive devotion to a relic. Secondly, it happened that the chief officiant at the ceremony of Caecilian’s consecration was one Felix of Aptunga, who was himself an alleged traditor. And third and perhaps most egregiously, the ceremony was held in haste, to the chagrin of the bishops of Numidia who found that it was over before they even arrived. In response, at the behest of Lady Lucilla, these 70 jilted bishops themselves consecrated as a rival Bishop of Carthage her own chaplain Majorinus, thus creating a schism. Majorinus soon died and was replaced by Donatus, for whom Donatism was named.

According to Augustine’s biographer J. R. King, the primary concern of Mensurius and Caecilian against the stricter party was “the fanatical spirit in which many of the Christians courted martyrdom.”[1] That, it would seem, was the other side of the coin.

The question that arose in the matter of the traditores was whether the sacrament of Penance could reconcile them to full communion. The Catholic position was to answer in the affirmative, though not without a lengthy period of public penance for such a serious sin. Such penitence would consist in the requirement that the penitent must remain “among the hearers” for three years, and then for seven years “they shall be prostrators,” and for two years continue with the people in their prayers, before being fully restored.[2]

But the Donatists insisted that such a person was still disqualified, and permanently, from leadership in the church, and perhaps in this they even had a point. But what’s more, any such person was not considered eligible to administer valid sacraments. Hence, the acts of Mensurius, whom they considered a traditor, were to be counted as illegitimate, and so, by extension, those of Caecilian. This included Baptisms, which, according to the Donatists, were therefore no Baptisms at all.

The Donatists reported the matter of Caecilian’s consecration to the emperor Constantine, who ordered a commission of Italian and Gallic bishops to rule. The commission found Caecilian innocent of all charges, because among other things, according to Augustine, the charges the Donatists had brought against Caecilian turned out to be lies, and they were shown to be hypocrites in that they had alleged earlier that the Catholics had been wrong to enlist the support of the government, when now they themselves were complaining to the government against the Catholics (NPNF I:4, 635[3]).

Moreover, Constantine had already considered the Donatists to be nothing but troublemakers. The Edict of Milan had been enacted in the same year as the verdict, by which Constantine gave legal protection to the entire Christian Church, but notably excluded the Donatists.

They naturally appealed his ruling regarding Caecilian, and complained further, until the matter was finally adjudicated the following year at the first Council of Arles, which condemned the Donatists. Against them the council affirmed that heretical baptisms were indeed to be considered valid so long as the Trinitarian name was used, even those conducted by a traditor. The validity of Baptism was seen to be independent of the worthiness of the administrator of it.[4]

This point of view was decidedly different from what had been espoused a century earlier by Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258). Cyprian, although known for his stance regarding the unity of the church under the primacy of the chair of Peter in Rome, did not on the other hand ascribe to Rome the capacity of ultimate jurisdiction; and he had rejected the decision of Stephen of Rome to restore two bishops who had lapsed during the Decian persecution. Cyprian had insisted that the Holy Spirit could no longer be said to dwell in such a priest and that his sacraments would only lead to perdition.[5] Evidently the Donatist controversy now brought out a countervailing point of view, that it was rather the Trinitarian name that had the power to bring the Holy Spirit, and this is the point of view that prevailed.[6]

The matter of Donatism was not at all settled, however, and the Donatists continued to protest to Constantine, but to no avail. In 316 he rejected them again, and now began to use force against them, because they had proven themselves fanatical and violent. So he ordered their churches to be confiscated and sentenced their leaders to exile, though in 320 he allowed them back. But in the same year another investigation showed conclusively that even some of their own leaders had themselves been traditores.

The pesky Donatists nevertheless continued on their course, by this time attracting lower classes of citizens against landowners, and natives against Roman intruders. From the very start of their schism (NPNF I:4, 537) they had begun to engage in forceful measures of their own, as bands of Circumcelliones arose, violent and profane radicals, “eager to annoy the Catholic Churches by the most violent disturbances . . . with cudgels and massacres” (NPNF I:4,540). These black-cloaked peasants preferred to call themselves agonistici because they considered themselves fighters for Christ (Gk agon, agwn, conflict)[7]. The Circumcelliones had originally formed to seek remedy for social grievances such as poverty and slavery, wanting debts to be cancelled and slaves freed, but soon they became Donatists.[8] They tended the martyrs graves, for martyrdom was dear to them. They considered martyrdom the birthday of the Christian and the way into heaven. They would jump out at random before travelers on the road, shouting "Laus Deo (Praise the Lord!)," swinging large clubs called "Israels," hoping to evoke a violent response that might even result in their own deaths, or rather, to their own way of thinking, their own martyrdoms. This was problematic for them because the persecution of the church had already come to an end. Instead of finding ways to be martyrs, they found themselves considered clowns. People who encountered them, instead of acceding to their demands to be martyred, began to laugh at them. This drove them to change their tactics, and they began to commit acts of mass suicide instead. They would throw themselves off cliffs or into the river, or even, in some cases, they would set themselves afire.

When in 337 Constans, the son of Constantine, became emperor, he found the Donatists as much a nuisance as father had. He tried both threatening and cajoling them, until he finally managed to repel most of them from the country and silence the rest, and peace was declared at Carthage in 348[9].

But under the reign of Julian, which began in 361, the exiled Donatists were again allowed to return, and actually became the majority party for the next 30 years, until the time Augustine entered the scene.

At the end of the century Augustine engaged a Donatist named Petilianus, who had charged Augustine with malice and madness, to which the latter replied, “Address that rather to your own Circumcelliones” (565). Further addressing this Petilianus, he answered their charge that he inflames emperors to take away the lives of other men. He answered, “How often must I tell you the same thing? . . . [those charges are things done] by the furious deeds of the insane, by the luxury of the drunken, by the blindness of the suicides, by the tyranny of robbers” (570). The Circumcelliones “fight under your command in furious troops” (573); “with your cry of ‘Praise to God;’ so full of calumny, that even when you throw yourselves over precipices without any provocation, you impute it to our persecutions” (574, see also 580). “They have learned not only to brandish cudgels, but to wield swords and whirl slings” (576).  You Donatists insist that “innocence is on your side? Look back for a moment on your troops . . . with [their] cudgels . . . axes and lances and swords” [586]. 

Under Augustine’s capable rhetorical and theological leadership the Catholic party finally succeeded in bringing about another council at Carthage in which the Donatists were stripped of all civil and ecclesiastical rights. Reduced to severe separatism, they managed to survive into the 7th century, though they didn’t die out entirely until the rise of Islam.[10]

What can we lean?

First, in spite of the acrimony and notoriously violent character of the Donatist controversy, there were some matters both sides consistently agreed upon. No one on either side ever believed that the true traditores had been in the right. No one argued that compliance with Diocletian’s wicked order had been the moral thing to do. No one invoked Romans 13, as far as I can tell. Neither the Donatists nor the Catholics would have thought such an argument anything less than laughable, even though it was no secret that the murderous Nero had been the emperor when Paul wrote Romans. The limitations of the meaning of Paul’s words were evident to all:

For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God . . . [and] therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.

No one thought these words would apply to the emperor’s order to hand over the sacred books, even though one could argue (and nowadays someone probably would argue) that such an order was not in itself a command to sin. The emperor’s power was never assumed to be so great that “except when commanded to sin” was the only exception to it. The question, for all who called themselves Christians, was not whether a perceived traditor had a legitimate excuse for his actions, but rather what was to be done with him after the persecution had passed.   

A second thing we can learn from the controversy, which lasted well over a hundred years, was that the Donatists were intellectually and spiritually bankrupt from the start. I’m assuming that the Circumcelliones became the Donatists’ dominant and representative subset, due to the fact that Augustine’s correspondence certainly operates under that assumption. And these Circumcelliones were essentially wild and foolish, and so, arguably, was the entire party of the Donatists, who had no qualms about associating themselves with them. In confessing the faith against them, the church had to contend with opponents that were without sense. Augustine had no trouble making cogent and persuasive arguments against them not only because of his deft capacity as a rhetorician and brilliant theologian, but because they were easy opponents to oppose. The Donatist party was not intellectual at all, and certainly had no conception of the history of the Christian faith nor of the Sacred Scriptures. I suspect the primary reason for their popularity among many in Egypt had to do more with the fact that they appealed to the ignorant who, as it turned out, were pretty much just like them. [11]  

It's always a good thing to know one’s opponent. And today, similarly to these fools, we have many versions of folly as well. It seems a good thing to remember the greater likelihood that they are deceivers than that they are serious in their assertions, and never to assume too much about them or their specious arguments. For a prime example, consider the Critical Race Theory madness that has infected virtually every corner of society. When the church responds to their folly in a way that assumes their concerns are genuine, nothing is gained, and indeed much can be lost. Yet that is exactly what the Northwestern District of the Missouri Synod did at their 2018 District Convention, in resolving to condemn the sin of racism and calling for the establishment of a task force on the issue of racism. There is now a recently published Task Force Toolkit for their congregations. That is, frankly, utter stupidity and recklessness. Wisdom cries out, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him” (Proverbs 26:4). But it seems that advice has not been heeded.

As an aside, I’m curious about the fact that the Nicene Creed, a product of the fourth century, is primarily confessed against the Arian heresy, though the Donatists were just as heretical. It seems the former garnered far more attention by the Councils than the latter. The Creed came out of the fourth century’s two great ecumenical councils, the first in Nicaea in 325 and the second in Constantinople in 381. This was the heyday of the Donatists as well as of the Arians. Yet I see no clause in the Creed that was crafted specifically against the Donatists. Contrast the many clauses we confess to this day against the Arians: Jesus is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, [and] by whom all things were made.” Each of these parts is easily recognizable as a rejection of the Arian heresy; no Arian could say any of these things. Yet I find nothing in the Creed confessing specifically against the Donatists, as in, say, something on the validity of the Sacraments; though perhaps “one Baptism” may be taken as an implied swipe against them. Why would it be that there is no easy reference by way of opposition to the Donatists in the Nicene Creed? The history of the period shows that the Donatists were a constant thorn in the side of the church. One would think the assembled bishops would have a bit more to say about that. But neither the canons of the Council of Nicaea nor of Constantinople (381) deal with the Donatists at all. One possible reason they did not is that they simply did not bother, at least not yet. The Donatists were a nuisance. They were nuts. They were the objects of ridicule.

Near the close of the century Augustine did take pains to reply to their venomous words. Maybe the reason for the earlier Councils’ tendency to craft the Creed more in response to the Arians than to the Donatists was due to a sentiment among the church’s bishops that what was needed was not so much the church’s confession against the Donatists as the government’s action against them. In short, perhaps they thought it was Constantine that was needed, not an ecumenical Council.

But the Donatists were claiming to be the true church, to the extent that they refused to recognize as valid any baptisms other than their own. To this Augustine did see the need to respond. On the one hand he sought to bring them back into the Catholic fold, insisting that Baptism is one, it is Christ’s. As the Lord’s threshing-floor has chaff along with the wheat, so there are always going to be unworthy members mixed in with the faithful. On the other hand he regarded rebaptism as an imannissimum scelus, a monstrous crime.[12] That is, while sacraments administered by unworthy ministers in the church are nevertheless valid, a sacrament wrongly administered, or administered outside the church, was no sacrament at all. In fact, as early as the Council of Nicaea in 325, the followers of Paul of Samosata were indeed required to be rebaptized if they wished to join the church.[13] Not all baptisms were valid; but the worthiness of the priest was not a criterion; only whether his church was legitimately church. Though this may seem a distinction without a difference, perhaps the difference is that what the Donatists had done was determine that when a priest or a bishop was found to be a traditor, his own worthiness was called into question, and therefore the validity of his acts; but what the Catholic church did, by contrast, was in some cases determine the church in which a ‘baptism’ occurred was in fact no church at all.

If so, then this difference could also be applied today. When we consider, for instance, the phenomenon of supposedly administering the Sacrament of the Altar over the internet, we are not calling into question the worthiness of the administrator, but whether there’s any administration going on at all. There is no church there, but only cyberspace.  It isn’t the worthiness of the administrator we call into question, but the legitimacy of his administration. Just as the proverbial pastor baptizing passers-by with a water hose is not truly baptizing anyone, so also the one who thinks he has the capacity to consecrate the elements in some place other than where he is standing has no such capacity at all, and these are no sacraments at all either. They are, to use Augustine’s term, monstrous crimes, perhaps even more so than the Donatist rebaptisms. They have no standing, no power, and no validity.

There are some other comparisons that can be made to our day. There are all kinds of crazy people about these days, as we all know. Gone are the simple, halcyon days of same-sex marriages or of mere homosexuals roaming the streets. Now there are more radical concerns: transgender madness, multi-gender madness, and the madness of thinking you can switch genders just because they figured out how remove some things from your body and paste some other things on. You might well say that today’s Circumcelliones aren’t wielding cudgels; they’re wielding scalpels. But they’re violent too: rioting in our cities and bringing civility to nothing wherever they can.[14] And of course they’re claiming to be pious and holy in doing so. They think you are the wicked ones because you won’t support their madness. They won’t even debate you; they’ll silence you, cancel you. In their madness they have infected every corner of society, including the business world, and the schools, even down to kindergartens. The list goes on, and I don’t really need to go into the grotesque details.

So a third lesson we might draw from the fourth century could be gleaned from a look at how Augustine finally did deal with the Circumcelliones. These bands of marauders essentially claimed that they fought as soldiers of Christ, agonistici. This is quite evidently a tactic of those who do evil. They mask their evil under the guise of goodness and faithfulness. It’s worth noting that they were easy for Augustine to condemn by his exposing of the thin veneer under which their own hypocrisy lay. Augustine’s chief defense of the church against the charges of Petilianus was to show, time and again, the utter duplicity of their claims. “How neatly it is said under covering of the sheep’s clothing, ‘Charity beareth all things, endureth all things!’ but when you come to the test, the wolf’s teeth cannot be concealed” (NPNF I:4, 570).

So also in our day comes the claim that we who refuse to go along, when we do not fall for the various complaints against us that we lack understanding or compassion, whether it’s because we don’t want to “understand” the plight of certain minority populations, or because we fail to show pity for someone “afflicted” with gender dysphoria, or because we “carelessly” refuse to comply with the government’s covid orders. Somehow we have supposedly become guilty of lovelessness and the charge that we don’t care, or are insensitive, because we don’t concern ourselves with the conditions or well-being of people. But how, we might well reply in good Augustinian fashion, is it not loveless to assume that racism abounds in our actions, when you have ignored the Eighth Commandment’s warning to explain everything in the kindest way? Tell us how it is uncaring to reject our society’s Circumcelliones’ eagerness to emasculate themselves or their unsuspecting and confused children. Or how is it not loveless, under the veneer of caring for the physical well-being of the sheep, to withhold from them their food, or to spew your vomited canard that the sheep’s green pastures may just as easily be found in front of a computer screen, while they sit alone at home in their pajamas? And we are somehow the loveless? Physician, heal thyself. The enemy always accuses, in one way or another; and usually when he does, he’s projecting. He’s guilty of the very things he charges against us.

There are doubtless other lessons to be gleaned from the fourth-century church’s contentions against the Donatists. These are some, tentatively offered here, with an eye toward learning either from the church’s earlier successes, that perhaps they may be of assistance today, or from her earlier errors, that we may not be doomed to repeat them.

 

[1] Preface to The Seven Books of Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, on Baptism, against the Donatists (NPNF Vol. 4), 406.

[2] Canon 11 of the First Council of Nicaea. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm

[3] The Three Books of Augustine in Answer to the Letters of Petilian, the Donatist, c.400.

[4] See Wisconsin Lutheran College, the Canons from the Council of Arles (A.D. 314), Canon 9.  https://www.fourthcentury.com/arles-314-canons/

[5] Britannica, sv. St. Cyprian. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Cyprian-Christian-bishop 

[6] This view is of course reflected in the Lutheran Confessions: “Neither does the fact that the Sacraments are administered by the unworthy detract from their efficacy, because, on account of the call of the Church, they represent the person of Christ, and do not represent their own persons, as Christ testifies, Luke 10:16: He that heareth you heareth Me. [Thus even Judas was sent to preach.] When they offer the Word of God, when they offer the Sacraments, they offer them in the stead and place of Christ. Those words of Christ teach us not to be offended by the unworthiness of the ministers” (Apology VII. VIII. 28. Trigl. 237).

[7] see the Oxford dictionary of the Christian church, New York: Oxford University Press.

[8] See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/feb/27/christianity-religion-martyrdom-circumcellions  

[9]  Wand, 143-8

[10] (Brittanica.com, s.v. Donatists)

[11]Notably, however, Philip Schaff disagrees with the idea that the Donatists were intellectually bankrupt. My own sentiments arise primarily from the connection with the Circumcelliones and with the correspondence between Augustine and Petilianus. Schaff’s point of view is this: “The literary creations of Donatism had been somewhat more fertile than that of Cæcilianism.  We must not belittle Donatus the Great, Parmenian, Petilian, Gaudentius, and certainly the eminence of Tychonius is confessed by Augustin himself.  Up to this time Optatus of Milevis had been the only forcible opponent.  But against the great Augustin whom could they bring into the field?  And against the great Augustin, backed by the energy of the State, there was little hope of fairness.  Augustin found a new and weighty school.  Donatism, with its impossible ideal, already began to despise the culture which seemed to help its defeat and withdrew into its sensitive shell after the manner of all puristic tendencies under persecution.” Schaff, NPNF I:4, 373.

[12] Ibid., 374.

[13] Canon 19 of the First Council of Nicaea. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm

 

[14] I’m assuming, perhaps rashly, that the rioters and the proponents of CRT are essentially in the same group. Though I believe one can make the connection, demonstrating it is beyond the scope of this paper.