Letters 88.1–90.1

Your clergy and Circumcellions are raging against us with a persecution of a new kind and unheard-of cruelty. If they were returning evil for evil, even so they would be acting against the law of Christ; but as it is, when all your deeds and ours are considered, we are found to be suffering what is written: ‘They repaid me evil for good’; and in another psalm: ‘With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they fought against me without cause.’ For since you are of so great an age, we think you know very well that the party of Donatus, which at first at Carthage was called the party of Majorinus, of its own accord accused Caecilian, then bishop of the church of Carthage, before the emperor Constantine of old. But lest your Gravity should perhaps have forgotten this, or pretend not to know it, or even, which we do not think, perhaps not know it, we have inserted in this letter of ours a copy of the report of the proconsul Anulinus at that time, whom the party of Majorinus then petitioned that the charges they brought against Caecilian should be sent by the same proconsul to the said emperor.

To our three Augusti, Anulinus, a man of senatorial rank, proconsul of Africa. My devotion has taken care to communicate, in the records of my lowliness, the heavenly writings of your Majesty, received and adored, to Caecilian and to those who act under him and are called clergy, and has exhorted them that, unity having been established by the consent of all, since they are seen to be freed by the indulgence of your Majesty from every public duty whatever, they should, keeping the holiness of the Catholic law with due reverence, devote themselves to divine things. But after a few days there appeared certain persons, with a crowd of people gathered with them, who thought that Caecilian should be opposed, and who presented to my office a bundle sealed in leather and a petition without a seal, and earnestly demanded that I should send them to the sacred and venerable court of your Divinity. These my lowliness has taken care to send, Caecilian remaining in his position, with the records of the proceedings attached, so that your Majesty may be able to judge everything. Two petitions sent: one in leather, inscribed thus: ‘Petition of the Catholic Church concerning the crimes of Caecilian, delivered by the party of Majorinus’; and the other, without a seal, attached to the same leather. Given on the 17th day before the Kalends of May at Carthage, in the third consulship of our lord Constantine Augustus.

After this report was sent to him, the emperor ordered the parties to come to an episcopal court to be held in the city of Rome. How the case was argued and concluded there, and Caecilian judged innocent, the church records show. Surely after the peaceable control of an episcopal judgment all the obstinacy of contention and animosity ought to have been extinguished. But your forefathers went back to the emperor again and complained that the judgment was not right and that the whole case had not been heard. So he granted another episcopal court to be held in the Gallic city of Arles, where many of your party, having condemned the vain and diabolical dissension, returned to concord with Caecilian, while others, most obstinate and quarrelsome, appealed to the same emperor. Afterwards he himself, under compulsion, heard the bishops’ case between the parties and settled it, and he was the first to make a law against your party, that the places of your assemblies should be confiscated to the treasury. If we wished to insert the documents of all these things, we would make the letter far too long. But this must by no means be passed over: how the case of Felix of Aptunga, whom your fathers, at the council of Carthage held by Secundus of Tigisis, the primate, declared to be the source of all evils, was examined and concluded in a public court at the insistence of your people before the emperor. For the said emperor testifies in his letter that in this very case your people were his accusers and persistent petitioners before him; a copy of that letter we have written below.

The Emperors Caesars Flavius Constantine Maximus and Valerius Licinianus Licinius to Probianus, proconsul of Africa. Your predecessor Aelianus, while the most perfect Verus, vicar of the prefects then in our Africa, was held by ill health, acting in his place, rightly thought that among other things this business, or the odium which seems to have been stirred up concerning Caecilian, bishop of the Catholic Church, should be brought back to his own examination and decision. For when he had caused to be present Superius the centurion, Caecilian the magistrate of Aptunga, Saturninus the former curator, Calibius the younger, curator of the same city, and Solus, public slave of the aforesaid city, he gave a fitting hearing, so that, when it had been objected against Caecilian that he appeared to have been raised to the episcopate by Felix, against whom the betrayal and burning of the divine Scriptures appeared to be charged, it was established that Felix was innocent of this. Finally, when Maximus contended that Ingentius, a decurion of the city of Ziqua, had forged a letter of Caecilian the former duumvir, we saw from the records attached that the same Ingentius had been suspended for torture, but was not tortured, because he asserted that he was a decurion of the city of Ziqua. Therefore we wish you to send this same Ingentius under suitable escort to the court of me, Constantine Augustus, so that, in the hearing and presence of those who are now pleading and do not cease petitioning day after day, it may be shown and made known that they have in vain stirred up odium against Bishop Caecilian and wished to rise violently against him. For so it will come about that, such contentions being dropped, as they ought to be, the people may serve their own religion with due reverence and without any dissension.

Since you see that these things are so, why is it that you stir up odium against us over the emperors’ orders that are issued against you, when you rather did all this earlier? If emperors ought to order nothing in these matters, if this concern ought not to belong to Christian emperors, who urged your forefathers to send Caecilian’s case to the emperor through the proconsul, and to accuse again before the emperor a bishop against whom, in his absence, you had already pronounced sentence in some fashion, and, when he was declared innocent, to contrive other slanders against Felix, who ordained him, before the same emperor? And now what else is in force against your party but the judgment of Constantine the elder himself, which your forefathers chose, which they extorted by persistent petitions, which they preferred to the episcopal judgment? If imperial judgments displease you, who first forced the emperors to stir them up against you? For you now cry out against the Catholic Church over what is decreed against you by the emperors, just as if those men had wished to cry out against Daniel who, when he was set free, were sent to be devoured by the same lions by which they had first wished him to be devoured; for it is written, ‘There is no difference between the threats of a king and the wrath of a lion.’ Slanderous enemies forced Daniel to be sent into the lions’ den; his innocence overcame their malice; he was lifted out unharmed; they, sent in there, perished. In the same way your forefathers cast Caecilian and his fellowship to the king’s wrath to be devoured; since his innocence has been set free, you suffer at the hands of the same kings the very things your people wished them to suffer; for it is written, ‘He who prepares a pit for his neighbour will fall into it himself.’

You have, then, nothing to complain of against us; and yet the mildness of the church had altogether refrained even from these imperial orders, had not your clergy and Circumcellions, disturbing and devastating our peace by their most savage wickedness and furious violence, forced these things to be recalled and set in motion against you. For before these more recent laws, of which you now complain, came to Africa, they laid ambushes for our bishops on their journeys, battered our fellow clergy with most savage blows, inflicted very grievous blows on laymen too, and set fire to their buildings. A certain presbyter, also, because by his own free will he chose the unity of our communion, they dragged from his house, beat savagely at their pleasure, rolled in a muddy pool, dressed in a rush mat, and paraded in the pomp of their crime, a sight for some to grieve at and for others to laugh at; then they led him off where they wished and released him barely after twelve days. When Proculeianus was summoned about this by our bishop before the municipal records, he pretended to look into the case; and when he was summoned again at once, he declared in the records that he would say nothing more. And today those who did this are still your presbyters, terrorizing us besides and persecuting us as they can.

Yet our bishop did not complain to the emperors of these injuries and persecutions which the Catholic Church then suffered in our region. But a council was held and it was decided that you should be approached peaceably, so that, if possible, you might hold a conference among yourselves and, error being removed, brotherly love might rejoice in the bond of peace. And what Proculeianus answered at first in that meeting, that you would hold a council and see there what you ought to answer, and then what he declared in the records afterwards, when he was summoned again because of his promise, refusing a peaceful conference, the records themselves will inform your Gravity. Then, since the savagery of your clergy and Circumcellions, well known to all, did not cease, a case was brought, and Crispinus was judged a heretic; but through Catholic mildness he was not allowed to be struck with the penalty of ten pounds of gold which had been established by the emperors against heretics; and yet he thought fit to appeal to the emperors. As for the answer given to his appeal, was it not the previous wickedness of your people and his own appeal that extorted it? And yet even after that rescript he was not fined the same amount of gold, because our bishops interceded with the emperor. And on the advice of our bishop they sent envoys to the court to obtain that not all the bishops and clergy of your party should be held liable to the same fine of ten pounds of gold established against all heretics, but only those in whose localities the Catholic Church suffered some violence from your people. But when the envoys came to Rome, the horrible and very recent scars of the Catholic bishop of Bagai had already so moved the emperor that such laws were sent as were in fact sent. When these came to Africa, since you had begun to be pressed certainly not towards evil but towards good, what ought you to have done but also to send to our bishops, so that, as they had approached you, so they might be approached by you, and the truth might rather appear through conference?

But not only have you not done this, but your people are now doing worse evils to us. They not only batter us with clubs and cut us down with the sword, but even, by an incredible invention of crime, throw lime mixed with vinegar into our eyes to blind them. Plundering our houses besides, they have made themselves huge and terrible weapons, armed with which they run about in various directions, threatening and breathing out murder, robbery, arson, and blinding. Compelled by these things, we have complained first to you, so that your Gravity may consider how many of you, nay all of you who say you suffer persecution, sit securely on your own and others’ estates under these supposedly terrible laws of the Catholic emperors, while we suffer such unheard-of evils from your people. You say you suffer persecution, and we are cut down by your armed men with clubs and the sword; you say you suffer persecution, and our houses are plundered and laid waste by your armed men; you say you suffer persecution, and our eyes are put out by your armed men with lime and vinegar. Moreover, if they bring any deaths on themselves of their own accord, they want them to bring odium on us and glory to themselves. What they do to us they do not impute to themselves, and what they do to themselves they impute to us. They live as robbers, die as Circumcellions, are honoured as martyrs; and yet we have never heard that even robbers blinded those they had plundered: they take the slain away from the light, they do not take the light away from the living.

We, meanwhile, if we ever catch any of yours, keep them unharmed with great love; we speak with them and read to them everything by which the error is refuted that separates brothers from brothers; we do what the Lord commanded through the prophet Isaiah, saying: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble; say, You are our brothers, to those who hate you and curse you, that the name of the Lord may be honoured and may appear to them in joy, but they shall be ashamed.’ And so some of them, considering the evidence of the truth and the beauty of peace, we unite, not to baptism, which they had already received like the royal mark, as deserters, but to the faith which they lacked, to the love of the Holy Spirit, and to the body of Christ. For it is written, ‘Cleansing their hearts by faith’; and likewise it is written, ‘Love covers a multitude of sins.’ But if, through too great hardness, or through shame, not bearing the taunts of those with whom they used to spread so many falsehoods against us and devise so many evils, or rather through fear that they should now suffer with us such things as they used to do to us before, they have been unwilling to consent to the unity of Christ, then, as they were held unharmed, so they are released by us unharmed. As far as we can, we admonish our laity too to hold them unharmed and to bring them to us to be rebuked and instructed. But some hear us and, if they can, do so; others deal with them as with robbers, because in truth they suffer them as such; some ward off the blows threatening their bodies by striking, so as not to be struck first; some seize them and bring them before the judges and do not spare them even at our intercession, since they greatly fear suffering monstrous evils from them. In all of this those men do not lay aside the deeds of robbers, and they demand for themselves the honour of martyrs.

This, then, is our desire, which we put before your Gravity by this letter and by the brothers whom we have sent: first, if possible, that you confer peaceably with our bishops, so that, wherever error is found, not men but the error itself may be removed; that men may not be punished but corrected; that you may now approach them, since you formerly despised their approach. How much better it is for you to do this among yourselves, so as to send the emperor a written and signed record of what you have done, than that it should happen before earthly powers, who cannot but serve the laws already given against you! For your colleagues who had sailed overseas said before the prefects that they had come to be heard, and named our holy father, the Catholic bishop Valentinus, who was then at court, saying they wished to be heard with him; which the judge could not grant them, since he was already judging according to the laws established against you; nor had that bishop come for that purpose or received any such commission from his bishops. How much better, then, could the emperor himself, who is not subject to those laws and has power to make other laws, judge the whole case when your conference has been read to him, although it was declared settled long ago! But we wish you to confer, not so that the case may be settled again, but so that it may be shown to those who do not know that it has been settled. If our bishops refuse to do this, what do you lose by it, and do you not rather gain, since your willingness becomes known, so that you are not rightly blamed for lack of confidence? Or perhaps you think it is not lawful to do this, though you know that the Lord Christ spoke about the law even with the devil, and that not only Jews but also philosophers of the Gentiles of the sect of the Stoics and Epicureans conferred with Paul? Or perhaps these laws of the emperor do not permit you to approach our bishops? See, approach meanwhile our bishops in the region of Hippo, where we suffer such great evils from your people. For how much more lawfully and freely may your writings reach us through your people than their weapons!

Finally, write back such things by these very brothers of ours whom we have sent to you. But if you do not want even this, at least hear us together with your people, from whom we suffer such things. Show us the truth for which you say you suffer persecution, when we suffer such cruelty from your people. For if you convince us that we are in error, perhaps you will grant us not to be rebaptized by you, thinking it just to give us, who were baptized by men whom you condemned by no judgment, what you gave to those whom Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras had baptized over so long a time, when you were trying to drive them out of the basilicas by order of the judges because they communicated with Maximianus, with whom they had been expressly and by name condemned by you at the council of Bagai. All this we demonstrate by judicial and municipal records, in which you also cited that council of yours, when you wished to show the judges that you were driving your schismatics out of the basilicas. And yet you who have made a schism from the very seed of Abraham, in which all nations are blessed, do not wish to be driven out of the basilicas, not by judges, as you did to your schismatics, but by the very kings of the earth, who, in fulfilment of prophecy, worship Christ, before whom you accused Caecilian and went away defeated.

But if you will neither hear nor teach us, come, or send people, with us into the region of Hippo, to see your armed army; although no soldier has ever added lime and vinegar for the eyes of barbarians to the number of his weapons. If you do not want even this, at least write to them that they stop doing these things now, that they now restrain themselves from murdering, robbing, and blinding us. We do not wish to say, ‘Condemn them’; for you must see how it is that those whom we now show to be robbers in your communion do not defile you, while those whom you could never show to be traitors defile us. Choose from all these whatever you will. But if you despise our complaints, we shall not at all regret having wished to act in a peaceable order. The Lord will help his church, so that you rather may regret having despised our humility.

If men, for the sake of error, and of a damnable dissension, and of a falsehood refuted in every way, presume so much that they do not cease to lay ambushes and make threats so boldly against the Catholic Church, which seeks their salvation, how much more just and fitting is it that those who maintain the truth of Christian peace and unity, which is plain to all even who pretend otherwise and suppress it, should take pains urgently and tirelessly, not only for the protection of those who are already Catholics, but also for the correction of those who are not yet! For if obstinacy tries to have invincible strength, how great a constancy ought that to have which, in the good it does perseveringly and tirelessly, knows that it pleases God and certainly cannot displease prudent men!

But what is more unhappy and perverse than what the Donatists do, who boast that they suffer persecution, not only not to know how to be ashamed of the restraint of their iniquity, but even to wish to be praised for it, not knowing, through amazing blindness, or pretending not to know, through damnable animosity, that it is not the punishment but the cause that makes true martyrs? And this indeed I would say against those who were wrapped only in the darkness of heretical error, for which sacrilege they would pay a most deserved penalty, though they dared not harm anyone with any violent madness. But what shall I say against these, whose so pernicious perversity is either restrained by the fear of losses or taught by exile how widely spread everywhere is the church, as it was foretold that it would be, which they prefer to attack rather than acknowledge? And if what they suffer through most merciful discipline is compared with the deeds they commit with furious rashness, who does not see which ought rather to be called persecutors? Although bad sons, merely by living dissolutely, even if they lay no violent hands on them, persecute the devotion of their parents more grievously than when a father or mother, the more they love them, the more they press them without any pretence towards a good life.

There exist most reliable documents in the public records, which you can read if you will; indeed I ask and urge you to read them. By them it is proved that the forefathers of these men, who first divided themselves from the peace of the church, of their own accord dared to accuse Caecilian before the emperor Constantine through Anulinus, then proconsul. If they had won in that trial, what would Caecilian have suffered from the emperor but what he pronounced against them after they were defeated? But no doubt, if, on their accusation and victory, Caecilian and his colleagues had been driven from the sees they held, or even more severely punished for persisting in their conspiracy (for the royal authority could not disregard the defeated and resisting), then these men would be trumpeting their foresight and their anxious care for the church as worthy of praise. But now, because they themselves were defeated, being quite unable to prove what they alleged, if they suffer anything for their iniquity they call it persecution; and they not only fail to restrain their abandoned fury but even seek the honour of martyrs; as if the Catholic Christian emperors, against their most obstinate iniquity, were following anything other than the judgment of Constantine, before whom they were the accusers of Caecilian of their own accord, whose authority they preferred to all the bishops overseas, so that they referred the church’s case not to them but to him; so that, after the episcopal court which he granted in the city of Rome, in which they were first defeated, they accused again before him; so that from the second episcopal court, granted at Arles, they appealed to him; before whom, defeated at last, they nevertheless remained in their perversity. I think that the devil himself, if he were defeated so many times by the authority of a judge he had chosen of his own accord, would not be so shameless as to persist in that case.

But let these be counted human judgments, and let it be said that they could have been circumvented and deceived or even corrupted. Why then is the Christian world still accused and defamed with some crimes or other of traitors, when it certainly neither could nor should believe anyone but the chosen judges rather than the defeated litigants? Those judges have their case before God, whether good or bad; what has the church spread throughout the world done, that it is judged by these men to need rebaptizing, for no other reason than that, in a case in which it could not judge what was true, it thought those who could judge were to be believed rather than those who did not yield even when defeated? O great crime of all the nations, which God promised would be blessed in the seed of Abraham, and, as he promised, has shown! When they say with one voice, ‘Why do you want to rebaptize us?’ the answer given them is, ‘Because you do not know who were the traitors of the holy books in Africa, and in what you did not know you chose to believe the judges rather than the accusers.’ If another’s crime burdens no one, what has the whole world to do with what anyone committed in Africa? If an unknown crime burdens no one, how could the whole world know the crime either of the judges or of the accused? Judge, you who have a heart. Is this heretical justice, that, because the whole world does not condemn an unknown crime, the party of Donatus condemns the whole world unheard? But truly it is enough for the whole world to hold the promises of God and see fulfilled in itself what the prophets sang so long before, to recognize the church in the same Scriptures in which its king, Christ, is also recognized. For where such things were foretold of Christ as we read fulfilled in the Gospel, there such things were foretold of the church as we now see fulfilled throughout the world.

Unless perhaps any sensible person will be moved by what they are accustomed to say about baptism, that the baptism of Christ is true when it is given by a righteous man; since on this point too the whole world holds the most evident gospel truth, where John says: ‘He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descending like a dove and remaining on him, he it is who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ Hence the church, secure, does not place its hope in man, lest it fall under that sentence in which it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man,’ but places its hope in Christ, who so took the form of a servant that he did not lose the form of God, of whom it was said, ‘He it is who baptizes.’ Accordingly, whatever man is the minister of his baptism, whatever burden he bears, it is not he but he on whom the dove descended who baptizes. But such absurdity follows those who hold empty views that they cannot find where to flee from it. For since they admit that baptism is valid and true when some criminal among them, whose crimes are hidden, baptizes, we say to them, ‘Who baptizes then?’ And they have nothing to answer but ‘God’; for they cannot say that an adulterous man sanctifies anyone. We answer them: If, then, when a manifestly righteous man baptizes, he himself sanctifies, but when a secretly wicked man baptizes, then not he but God sanctifies, those who are baptized ought to wish to be baptized by secretly wicked men rather than by manifestly good ones; for God sanctifies them much better than any righteous man. But if it is absurd that anyone to be baptized should wish to be baptized by a secret adulterer rather than by a manifestly chaste man, it certainly remains that, whatever human minister comes, baptism is valid because he on whom the dove descended himself baptizes.

And yet, though so plain a truth strikes the ears and hearts of men, the whirlpool of bad habit has so swallowed up some that they would rather resist all authorities and reasons than agree. They resist in two ways: either by raging or by growing sluggish. What, then, is the church’s medicine to do here, seeking the salvation of all with motherly love, anxious as among the frenzied and the lethargic? Ought it, or can it, despise them or give up? It must needs be troublesome to both, because it is hostile to neither. For the frenzied do not want to be bound, and the lethargic do not want to be roused; but the diligence of love perseveres in restraining the frenzied, stimulating the lethargic, loving both. Both are offended, but both are loved; both, while troubled, are indignant as long as they are sick; but both, when healed, give thanks.

Finally, we do not receive them, as they think and boast, such as they were, but wholly changed, because they do not begin to be Catholics unless they have ceased to be heretics. For their sacraments are not hostile to us, since in them they are common to us, because they are not human but divine. What must be taken away is their own error, which they wrongly imbibed, not the sacraments, which they received alike, and which they carry and have to their own punishment, the more unworthily they have them; but still they have them. So, having abandoned error and corrected the perversity of separation, they pass from heresy to the peace of the church, which they did not have, and without which what they had was harmful to them. But if they are insincere when they pass over, this is no longer our judgment but God’s. And yet some, though they were thought insincere because they came over to us out of fear of the imperial order, were afterwards found in some temptations to be such that they were preferred to some old Catholics. So it is not for nothing that one acts urgently; for the wall of hard habit is not stormed by human terrors alone, but the faith and understanding of the mind are also instructed by divine authorities and reasons.

Since these things are so, your Kindness knows that your people who are in the region of Hippo are still Donatists, and that your letter has had no effect on them. Why it has had no effect there is no need to write; but send someone of yours, either of your household or of your friends, to whose good faith you can entrust this, who will come not to those places but first to us, without their knowing anything at all, and, having first taken counsel with us, will do what seems best to be done with the Lord’s help. For when we do this we act not only for them but also for our people who have already become Catholics, to whom their neighbourhood is so dangerous that we can in no way disregard it. And I could have written this briefly; but I wanted you to have something of our letters, by which you might not only know the reason for my concern yourself, but also have something to answer anyone who dissuades you from urgently devoting effort to the correction of your people, and disparages us for wishing such things. But if I have done this superfluously, because you had already learned or thought of these things yourself, or have been burdensome, because I have pressed a long letter on one so occupied with public cares, I ask you to forgive me, provided you do not despise what I have suggested and asked. So may the mercy of God protect you.

How great is the love of one’s country, since you know it, I pass over. For it alone surpasses by right the affection of parents. If there were any measure or limit to the good man’s care for it, I would by now deservedly have earned release from its duties. But since love and goodwill toward the city grow day by day, and the nearer age is to its end, the more it desires to leave its country safe and flourishing, I rejoice, first, that this discourse of mine is addressed to a man instructed in all learning. In the colony of Calama there are many things that we rightly love, either because we were born there or because we seem to have rendered it great services. This town, then, most excellent lord, deservedly to be revered, has fallen through no light offence of its people. If indeed we measure it by the rigour of public law, it ought to be punished with a severer sentence. But it is not right for a bishop to do anything but bestow salvation on men, to stand by causes for the better state of things, and to obtain from almighty God pardon for the faults of others. Therefore I ask with all the supplication I can that, if the matter is to be defended, the harmless be defended and trouble be kept from the innocent. Grant this, which you see, in accordance with your nature, is being asked. An assessment of damages can easily be made; we only beg that there be no punishments. May you live more acceptable to God, distinguished lord and brother, deservedly to be revered.