Donatism in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

Church History 10.5.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Constantine writes to Bishop Miltiades of Rome about the accusations against Caecilian of Carthage and the resulting division among African bishops and people.
Church History 10.5.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Caecilian and ten bishops from each side are to come to Rome and be heard before Miltiades and three Gallic bishops.
Church History 10.5.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Constantine reminds Bishop Chrestus of Syracuse that he had earlier summoned bishops from Gaul and Africa to Rome to settle the dispute.
Church History 10.5.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Because some rejected the Roman judgment as hasty and made by too few, causing scandal, Constantine resolved to end the dispute before a larger gathering.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 1Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · The court record of 320 before the governor Zenophilus at Thamugadi, where witnesses and the record of a search of the Cirta church in 303 show that Silvanus, later bishop of Cirta and one of Maiorinus's ordainers, had handed over church property, and that money from Lucilla and fees for ordination went to the bishops.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 2Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · The record of the proconsul Aelianus's inquiry (315) at Carthage, which showed that the Donatists' evidence against Felix of Abthugni, Caecilian's ordainer, rested on a letter of the former magistrate Alfius Caecilianus to which Ingentius had added a forged passage, and cleared Felix.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 3Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · Constantine, informed that the Donatists reject the verdict of the Roman council, orders the vicar of Africa, Aelafius, to send Caecilian and his opponents, with bishops from each African province, to a council at Arles by 1 August (314).
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 5Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · After the council of Arles (314), Constantine thanks the bishops, denounces the Donatists for appealing to him from the bishops' judgment as if from a secular court, and orders the obstinate to be brought to his court.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 6Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · Constantine tells the Donatist bishops that, instead of sending them back to Africa, he will hear Caecilian's case himself, and promises that proof of a single crime will count as proof of all.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 7Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · Constantine tells the vicar Celsus to leave the Donatist agitators alone for now, but to announce that he will come to Africa, judge the case, and punish those who disturb true worship.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 8Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · The praetorian prefects inform the vicar Celsus that the Donatist bishops who came to Gaul have been sent home with the public post as far as Arles.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 9Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · Constantine, abandoning coercion, urges the African Catholics to bear Donatist injuries patiently, leave vengeance to God, and count their sufferings as martyrdom.
Appendix of Ten Documents on the Donatist Controversy 10Anonymous · documents of 303–330 · Constantine praises the Numidian Catholic bishops for not seeking vengeance after the Donatists seized the basilica he had built at Constantina, grants them a property of the treasury for a new church built at public expense, and confirms the clergy's exemption from public duties.
1Anonymous · 314–315 (events of 303) · At Abthugni the former duumvir Caecilianus is summoned with his records to Carthage.
Acts of the Purgation of Felix of Aptunga 4Anonymous · 314–315 (events of 303) · The record of the earlier hearing at Carthage (19 August 314), in which the Donatist Maximus produced Caecilianus's letter against Felix.
Acts of the Purgation of Felix of Aptunga 5Anonymous · 314–315 (events of 303) · Apronianus, for Felix, explains how the letter was forged through Ingentius.
Acts of the Purgation of Felix of Aptunga 6Anonymous · 314–315 (events of 303) · Ingentius gives his story; Caecilianus describes how Ingentius sought the letter.
7Anonymous · 314–315 (events of 303) · Ingentius is put to the rack; Caecilianus repeats his account of the forged request.
8Anonymous · 314–315 (events of 303) · The letter is read again; Caecilianus identifies the forged addition and names Ingentius.
Acts of the Purgation of Felix of Aptunga 9Anonymous · 314–315 (events of 303) · Ingentius confesses the forgery, and the proconsul declares Bishop Felix innocent.
Proceedings before Zenophilus (Gesta apud Zenophilum) 1Anonymous · 320 (inquiry of 3 Dec. 320 into events of 303) · The hearing at Thamugadi (13 December 320) opens with the questioning of Victor the grammarian about Bishop Silvanus of Cirta.
Proceedings before Zenophilus (Gesta apud Zenophilum) 3Anonymous · 320 (inquiry of 3 Dec. 320 into events of 303) · A statement accusing Silvanus of being a traditor and of simony is read.
Proceedings before Zenophilus (Gesta apud Zenophilum) 10Anonymous · 320 (inquiry of 3 Dec. 320 into events of 303) · Victor admits that Silvanus was a traditor and was opposed by the people at his election.
Proceedings before Zenophilus (Gesta apud Zenophilum) 11Anonymous · 320 (inquiry of 3 Dec. 320 into events of 303) · The gravediggers confirm the charges: Silvanus handed over church vessels, took the temple vinegar, and was made bishop by arena-workers.
Proceedings before Zenophilus (Gesta apud Zenophilum) 12Anonymous · 320 (inquiry of 3 Dec. 320 into events of 303) · The deacon Castus confirms the charges about the lamp, the casks, and the money.
Proceedings before Zenophilus (Gesta apud Zenophilum) 13Anonymous · 320 (inquiry of 3 Dec. 320 into events of 303) · The subdeacon Crescentianus confirms the charges.
Life of Constantine 1.45.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine bore patiently with church troublemakers, including the rioters in Africa, whom he judged more pitiable than punishable.
Life of Constantine 2.66.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine had hoped, after defeating Licinius, to send eastern bishops to heal the schism in Africa.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.5Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus sorts Parmenian's treatise into what favors the Catholics, what favors both sides, and what is mistaken, and argues that Parmenian's own praise of the single flood and single circumcision tells against Donatist rebaptism.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.10Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus agrees that heretics lack the church's endowments, being outside the one bride of the Song of Songs, but argues that Parmenian, by joining schismatics to heretics, condemned his own party, since the Donatists are the ones who broke away from Caecilian.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.13Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus begins his history: in the persecution about sixty years earlier, some African bishops handed over the Scriptures, and he names them, including the self-confessed murderer Purpurius.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.15Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus announces that he will trace the schism to its root: the traitor bishops who ordained Maiorinus at Carthage against Caecilian and so went out from the church that is one throughout the world.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.18Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · After the persecution Caecilian was elected bishop of Carthage and ordained by Felix of Abthugni; disappointed candidates, elders who had kept the church's treasure, and Lucilla broke communion with him.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.19Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Numidian bishops came to Carthage, could prove nothing against Caecilian, and with Lucilla's support ordained her household member Maiorinus as a rival bishop, setting up altar against altar.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.21Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus argues that schism is the worst of sins: God spared Cain and Nineveh, but the schismatics Korah, Dathan and Abiram were swallowed alive by the earth.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.22Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Against the Donatist taunt that bishops should have nothing to do with emperors, Optatus quotes the Donatists' own petition to Constantine asking for judges from Gaul.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.23Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Constantine granted the petition, and a council of nineteen bishops under Miltiades of Rome met in the Lateran in October 313; Optatus lists them.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.26Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · While both rivals were detained in Italy, two bishops sent to Carthage declared that the Catholic Church is the one spread through the world, but Donatus returned first and the division was renewed.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.27Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · An inquiry before the proconsul Aelianus found that Felix of Abthugni, who had ordained Caecilian, had not handed over or burned the Scriptures.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.1Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus argues from the Psalms' promises of all nations and the whole earth to Christ that the one church must be the Catholic Church spread through the world, not the Donatist party confined to part of Africa.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.4Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatist bishops at Rome, a line of Africans beginning with Victor of Garba who met in a cave outside the city, cannot claim Peter's chair or even enter the apostles' shrines.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.5Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Expounding Ps 1:1, Optatus says the Donatists walked in the counsel of the ungodly, stood in the way of sinners and sat in the chair of pestilence, and he gathers texts on peace to show they have rejected it, so that the church's endowments are with the Catholics.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.7Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Spirit cannot be confined to the Donatists; Parmenian's charge that Catholics make proselytes into sons of Gehenna rebounds on him, a foreigner brought from abroad to be a Donatist bishop.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.9Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The five endowments belong to the Catholic Church throughout the world, and so also to the Catholics in Africa; the Donatists are branches cut off from the tree.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.16Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists owed their return from exile to the apostate emperor Julian, who granted it by the same decree that reopened the pagan temples.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.17Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · On their return under Julian the Donatists seized basilicas and committed bloody attacks on Catholics, until God's judgment cut off the emperor.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.18Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus recounts Donatist violence after their return: Catholic deacons killed at the altar in Lemellef and Carpi, and a massacre at Tipasa under bishops Urbanus and Felix, and turns Parmenian's charges back on him.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.19Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatist bishops threw the Eucharist to dogs and the chrism out of a window, and Felix of Idicra, after violating a consecrated virgin, deposed an innocent Catholic bishop by laying penance on him.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.21Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists exorcized Catholics, washed the walls of churches, and degraded Catholic clergy to penitents, which Optatus calls a living murder foretold in the Psalms.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.23Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists violate the anointing of Catholic priests, against God's command "Touch not my anointed" and his own example with Saul, whose anointing he did not revoke though he repented of it.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.1Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus begins Book 3 on the union of 347: the harsh measures are to be blamed on the Donatist leaders who provoked them, and the Donatists fled though no one was asked to deny God.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.2Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus reads Isaiah 22 as a prophecy of the Donatist schism: by rebaptizing they diverted the water of the old pool, the one baptism symbolized by the fish ΙΧΘΥΣ (Christ), and God's grief in the valley of Zion (Africa) foretold the events of 347.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.3Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus blames Donatus of Carthage, who rejected the alms that Constans sent to the poor with "What has the emperor to do with the church?", and applies to him Ezekiel's rebuke of the prince of Tyre who said "I am God".
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.4Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus explains that troops were called in only because Donatus of Bagai gathered the Circumcellions, a violent band whom the Donatist bishops themselves had earlier asked the count Taurinus to suppress; the clash at Bagai was provoked by them.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.6Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus touches reluctantly on Marculus and Donatus, whom the Donatists venerate as martyrs of 347, arguing that those who refused peace were the cause of their own sufferings.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.7Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus defends Macarius by the examples of Moses, Phinehas and Elijah, who killed at God's will those who despised his commands, and answers the objection from Christ's order to Peter to sheathe his sword.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.8Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Those who died under Macarius were not martyrs: no one was forced to deny Christ, as in the persecutions of Decius, Valerian and Diocletian, and without charity and confession there is no martyrdom.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.10Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatist party is the ruinous whitewashed wall of Ezekiel 13, built by false prophets who cry "Peace" without peace; the measures under Ursacius, Gregory and Macarius were the storm, rain and stones God threatened against it.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.11Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatist slogans "Look behind you", "Redeem your souls" and "Be Christians" contradict the gospel: Christ alone redeems, and one baptized in the name of the Trinity cannot be called a pagan.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.12Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The rumor that the imperial commissioners would place an image on the altar proved false, so those who passed from the Donatists to Catholic unity cannot be blamed for changing.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 4.3Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The sinner of Psalm 50 is identified by what follows: one who despises discipline, slanders his brother and sides with thieves and adulterers, which fits the Donatists.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 4.5Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatist bishops, who sit and teach, slander the Catholics in sermons and forbid their people even to greet them, misapplying texts meant for heretics such as Marcion, Praxeas, Valentinus, Arius and Photinus.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 5.3Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Since neither side can judge itself, Optatus appeals to Christ's testament in the gospel: "He who has been washed once has no need to be washed again" and "one faith, one baptism" forbid rebaptism, and Catholics receive Donatist converts without it.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 5.4Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Baptism has three elements, the Trinity, the believer's faith and the minister; the first two are unchangeable and decisive, while the minister is a changeable worker, since Scripture says that God, not man, washes.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 5.7Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Baptism's gift belongs to God, not the minister: the minister is a workman, like a dyer who cannot give color without the dye, or a vinedresser who cannot make the vine grow, as Paul says of himself and Apollos.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.1Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists broke, scraped or removed Catholic altars, the seat of Christ's body and blood, on which they themselves had once offered, and so struck Christ as the Jews did.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.2Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists melted down the chalices that had held Christ's blood and sold the metal indiscriminately, even to pagans for idol worship.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.3Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Against the Donatist use of Haggai (what the polluted touches is polluted), Optatus argues that no Catholic has been shown polluted and that the invocation of God's name sanctifies, as with the censers of Korah's company kept for the sanctuary.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.5Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists used the secular courts to seize Catholic books and altar cloths, and then washed the cloths but could not wash the books, showing their own inconsistency.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.6Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists washed the walls of churches taken from the Catholics with salt water, an act Optatus mocks as inconsistent and designed to frighten simple people into rebaptism.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.7Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Donatists seized basilicas and cemeteries and refused burial to Catholics, quarreling even with the dead.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 6.8Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Those whom the Donatists win over become in turn their decoys, like the dead and caged birds a fowler uses to lure living ones into the trap.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 7.1Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · In the added seventh book Optatus answers the objection that the Donatists, as sons of traitors, should never have been sought for union: handing over the Scriptures under compulsion was a sin of necessity, like Moses' breaking of the tablets or Baruch's surrender of Jeremiah's scroll, the law lives in believers' hearts, and sons do not bear their fathers' guilt.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 7.2Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · The Catholics receive the Donatists because no one is sinless and Christ forbade separating the tares from the wheat before the harvest; judgment belongs to Christ alone.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 7.5Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Parmenian likened the Donatists to Moses and the Catholics to his opponents Jannes and Jambres, but the order is the reverse: the Catholic Church came first, and the Donatist founders, once salt of the earth, lost their savor by schism.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 7.7Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Even if Macarius were guilty, the bishops could not condemn him without an accuser, for God himself, though he knew Cain's crime, questioned him and let Abel's blood accuse him.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:14–16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul's thanks that he baptized few show that baptism's grace belongs to Christ, not the baptizer, against the Novatians and Donatists.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.13.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Donatists are refuted like the Novatians.
Book of Heresies 83.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Donatists rebaptize.
Book of Heresies 85.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Circumcellions seek violent death as martyrdom.
Book of Heresies 85.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Their suicides bring them judgment, not glory.
Letter 23.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine, writing to the Donatist bishop Maximinus, explains why he addresses him as lord, most beloved, honourable and brother, though not as his bishop.
Letter 23.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Maximinus that he heard he did not rebaptize Catholics, but now hears that he has rebaptized a Catholic deacon of Mutugenna, which he hopes is untrue.
Letter 23.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Maximinus to reply openly, to be read in church, and urges him, if he does not rebaptize, to say so freely without fear of his colleagues.
Letter 23.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Maximinus not to fear his own councils and hopes for peace, so that Christian families divided between the two communions may share the table of Christ.
Letter 23.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine proposes that both sides drop the old charges about Macarius and the Circumcellions and that their letters be read publicly, so that the people may learn the difference between the Catholic Church and schism.
Letter 33.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine welcomes Proculeianus's reported willingness to confer before good men about the origin of the schism.
Letter 33.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine appeals to Proculeianus's reputed kindness to agree to a peaceful discussion for the sake of the people.
Letter 34.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports a young man who beat his mother, threatened to kill her, and was received and rebaptized by the Donatists.
Letter 34.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine imagines the young man's reasoning in going over to the Donatists and warns that he may now carry out his threat against his mother.
Letter 34.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Eusebius to find out from Proculianus whether he authorized his presbyter's statement, and accepts his proposal of a conference with ten witnesses from each side.
Letter 34.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine offers that, if Proculianus fears his learning, the unlettered Catholic bishop Samsucius of Turris will debate him instead.
Letter 35.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Eusebius that he asked him not to judge but only to put a question to Proculianus, and that Proculianus now knows of the matricidal young man and should exclude him.
Letter 35.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports a deposed Catholic subdeacon, Primus, who was rebaptized by the Donatists with two nuns and now roams with the Circumcellions, and asks that Proculianus exclude him.
Letter 35.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine contrasts the Catholic practice of receiving degraded Donatist clergy only as penitents with the Donatist rebaptism of disciplined Catholics, who must declare themselves pagans.
Letter 43.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that those who hold an inherited error without obstinacy are not heretics, and that love obliges him to write to Donatists.
Letter 43.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recalls the debate at which the Donatists produced the acts condemning Caecilian, and he answered that Secundus of Tigisis had pardoned confessed traitors who later condemned Caecilian.
Letter 43.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine presses the Donatists with the plain evidence and explains that Secundus pardoned the confessed traitors because he himself was suspected.
Letter 43.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that Caecilian, in communion with Rome and the churches overseas, could rightly refuse a suspect council, and Secundus should not have condemned him in absence.
Letter 43.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the Donatists avoided bringing their charges overseas because they could not prove them there.
Letter 43.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that condemning absent men without a hearing, while pardoning confessed traitors, was unjust, citing Sirach on inquiry before blame.
Letter 43.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the objection that a bishop should not have been cleared by a civil court: the Donatists themselves appealed to the emperor.
Letter 43.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the Roman synod under Miltiades rightly judged the case at the emperor's request and found nothing against Caecilian.
Letter 43.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts how at Rome the Donatists failed to produce accusers and Donatus withdrew, while a further accusation against Caecilian came to nothing.
Letter 43.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine praises Miltiades's peaceable sentence, which blamed Donatus alone and offered to recognize bishops ordained by Majorinus, over the rash council of seventy.
Letter 43.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that the council against Caecilian was driven by a few guilty bishops and by the money of Lucilla, whom Caecilian had once rebuked.
Letter 43.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts the Donatists' appeal from the Council of Arles to Constantine and the emperor's judgement at Milan in Caecilian's favour.
Letter 43.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine points to the Donatists' own toleration of Circumcellion violence and of Optatus, and argues that schism is punished more severely than idolatry.
Letter 43.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine sums up the history and appeals to the worldwide church, foretold in Ps 2:8, as the proof that the Donatists are cut off from Christ's inheritance.
Letter 43.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine compares the Maximianist schism against Primian with the Donatist schism against Caecilian and asks the Donatists to judge both alike.
Letter 43.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the Donatists to put eternal salvation above human friendships and to find what answer their leaders can give.
Letter 44.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports that Fortunius praised his life but claimed his own communion was worldwide, which Augustine proposed to test by letters of communion.
Letter 44.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts the exchange on false prophets and on persecution, arguing that suffering proves nothing unless it is for righteousness.
Letter 44.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers Fortunius's story of a Donatist interventor killed by Catholics: the story must be verified, and killing does not decide which side is righteous.
Letter 44.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine notes Donatist violence and answers Fortunius's question about killing by citing Elijah, while granting that such deeds are not done by good men now.
Letter 44.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports that Fortunius regretted the Donatist rule of rebaptism and his people's violence, and that they agreed to a further conference of ten bishops on each side.
Letter 49.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Honoratus to explain how Christ's worldwide church could have survived only in the Donatist party in Africa.
Letter 51.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine presses Crispinus with the Donatists' reception of Felicianus and Praetextatus, condemned as Maximianist schismatics, back into their sees.
Letter 51.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes that the Donatists accept the baptism of condemned Maximianists while rejecting that of the worldwide church, and calls on Crispinus to answer.
Letter 52.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that either the Donatists' charges were false or they failed to prove them, and in either case their schism is without excuse.
Letter 52.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Severinus not to let carnal habit keep him from the Catholic Church, warning of God's judgement.
Letter 53.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from Scripture and from the Maximianist affair that the Donatists' charge of contagion through communion condemns themselves.
Letter 56.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Celer to leave the Donatists, admitting that breaking with habit is harder than seeing the truth.
Letter 57.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Celer to promote Catholic unity among his tenants near Hippo and to help a Donatist friend who fears his own party.
Letter 61.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine sets out for Theodorus the terms on which Donatist clergy are received: their error is rejected, their baptism and the name of God they bear are honoured.
Letter 61.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that Donatists coming to the Catholic Church keep their baptism, orders, and vows, and receive the love and unity that make these profitable.
Letter 66.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rebukes the Donatist bishop Crispinus for rebaptizing, by pressure, the tenants of an estate he had bought at Mappalia.
Letter 66.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine proposes that the Mappalia tenants hear both bishops, with an interpreter in Punic, and choose freely.
Letter 70.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine presses the dilemma that the Donatists accepted without rebaptism those Felicianus baptized in schism, yet reject the baptism of the whole world.
Letter 76.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine, speaking for the Catholic Church, urges the Donatists to accept the worldwide Church promised in Scripture rather than unproved charges about the surrender of the sacred books.
Letter 76.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from the parable of the wheat and tares that the Donatists separated themselves wrongly, and summarizes the origins of the schism and its condemnation at Rome, Arles, and by Constantine.
Letter 76.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine contrasts the Donatists’ charge of handing over the Scriptures with their own acceptance of the Maximianist schismatics and their baptism, and urges Donatist laity to question their bishops.
Letter 87.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes that sharing the altar with a sinner does not make one guilty unless one consents to his sin.
Letter 87.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the Donatists, by tolerating Optatus to avoid dividing their own party, condemn their own original division of the Church, a sin punished in Korah’s rebels.
Letter 87.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that if Emeritus could plead ignorance about Optatus, the churches of the East far more can plead ignorance of the African ‘traitors’, yet the Donatists condemn and rebaptize them.
Letter 87.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine defends Catholics’ appeals to imperial protection against Donatist violence, citing Paul’s armed escort and Romans 13, while disapproving of any immoderate Catholic action.
Letter 88.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Catholic clergy of Hippo complain to the Donatist primate Januarius of violence by Donatist clergy and Circumcellions, and recall that the Donatists first appealed to Constantine against Caecilian.
Letter 88.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · A copy of the proconsul Anulinus’s report to the emperors (313) forwarding the petition of the party of Majorinus against Caecilian.
Letter 88.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · A copy of Constantine’s letter to the proconsul Probianus reporting the acquittal of Felix of Aptunga and summoning the forger Ingentius to court.
Letter 88.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Hippo clergy explain that Catholics sought a peaceful conference and leniency for Donatists, but Donatist violence, especially against the bishop of Bagai, led to the harsher imperial laws.
Letter 88.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Hippo clergy describe Circumcellion attacks, including blinding with lime and vinegar, and contrast them with the Donatists’ claim to suffer persecution.
Letter 88.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Hippo clergy ask Januarius to hold a peaceful conference with the Catholic bishops, so that error, not men, may be removed and the settled case shown to those who do not know it.
Letter 88.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Hippo clergy point out that the Donatists accepted without rebaptism those baptized by the condemned Maximianists, and themselves used judges to expel schismatics from basilicas.
Letter 89.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the official Festus that Catholics must labour as tirelessly for unity as the Donatists do for their error.
Letter 89.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts that the Donatists themselves first appealed to Constantine against Caecilian, were defeated at every stage, and now call the consequences persecution.
Letter 89.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the worldwide Church cannot be condemned for crimes it could not know, and that the same Scriptures that foretell Christ foretell the universal Church.
Letter 89.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues against the Donatist view that baptism depends on the minister’s righteousness: it is Christ who baptizes, whoever the minister.
Letter 89.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that converted Donatists keep their sacraments but abandon their error, and that some who came over from fear proved better than old Catholics.
Letter 93.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the Rogatist bishop Vincentius, defending the restraint of the Donatists by the civil authorities because many have been corrected by it.
Letter 93.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Leaving the Donatists unchecked would be repaying evil for evil, as letting a delirious man run off a cliff would be; many former Circumcellions and lethargic Donatists now thank the Catholics.
Letter 93.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Penalties against Donatists (exile, fines) are milder than the capital laws against pagan sacrifice, for their aim is correction; like the Jews of Rom 10, they seek their own righteousness.
Letter 93.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Rogatists seem milder only because they are too few to be violent, and their founder Rogatus himself went to law over property.
Letter 93.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Donatists' forebears first accused Caecilian before Constantine and, though defeated before bishops and the emperor, refused peace.
Letter 93.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The worldwide church could not be guilty of crimes it never knew; the bad are to be tolerated for the sake of the good, as the prophets, Christ, the apostles and Cyprian did.
Letter 93.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · What matters is what one is compelled to; many cities once Donatist became sincerely Catholic through fear of the imperial laws.
Letter 93.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine admits he first opposed compulsion, but was persuaded by the conversion of his own city and others through fear of the laws.
Letter 93.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine refuses to hinder the laws that gather Christ's sheep, contrasting the Donatists' care for their own rights with their denial of Christ's inheritance.
Letter 93.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The civil power is from God; Vincentius does not do good, for at Cartenna with ten followers he denies the worldwide church foretold by the prophets.
Letter 93.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Gospel and Acts foretell repentance preached to all nations; Vincentius would make forgiveness depend on finding him in Mauretania.
Letter 93.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Vincentius explains “Catholic” as observance of all commandments; Augustine replies that the church is proven by Scripture's promise of all nations, not by the name.
Letter 93.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · If separation could be just, the Donatists cannot know whether some unknown group elsewhere separated justly before them; their claim rests only on their own testimony.
Letter 93.37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · If sharing sacraments with sinners destroyed the church, it perished before Cyprian and Donatus were born; so the Donatist separation has no excuse.
Letter 93.44Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Parmenian answered Tyconius but did not deny his facts, which living witnesses could confirm.
Letter 93.53Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine defends the church's different treatment of returning deserters and first-time converts, and closes the long letter.
Letter 105.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The imperial laws were provoked by Donatist violence, as shown by recent attacks on converts at Casphaliana, Victoriana and Urga.
Letter 105.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Donatists suffer for their crimes, not as martyrs; the authorities rightly resist their violence, and many converts wish to be compelled so as to escape it.
Letter 105.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · When emperors command unity, Christ commands through them, as Paul forbade divisions; Catholics persecuted by heretical emperors were true martyrs.
Letter 106.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine warns the Donatist bishop Macrobius not to rebaptize a Catholic subdeacon, since the Donatists do not rebaptize those baptized by the Maximianist Felicianus, now reconciled with them.
Letter 108.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the Donatists' proof texts on baptism one by one, showing that their own reception of the Maximianists refutes each.
Letter 108.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the Donatist texts on separation: one shares in others' sins by consent, not by bodily communion, as the parable of the net shows.
Letter 108.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes that those who leave the church's unity in the name of their own righteousness are themselves the tares and chaff.
Letter 108.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the Donatists' lenient treatment of the Maximianists refutes their claim that the whole world was polluted by Caecilian.
Letter 108.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the Donatist boast of persecution by pointing to their own persecution of the Maximianists and to the violence of the Circumcellions.
Letter 128.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Catholic bishops write to the tribune Marcellinus accepting his edict on the arrangements for the conference with the Donatists at Carthage.
Letter 128.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Catholic bishops pledge to give up their sees if the Donatists prove their case, and offer the Donatist bishops their episcopal rank if they join Catholic unity.
Letter 128.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The bishops ask that the Donatists be reconciled, noting their own lenient reception of the Maximianists, and the letter is signed by Aurelius of Carthage and Silvanus of Summa.
Letter 129.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The bishops hope that the Donatists, having searched the Scriptures, will see that they foretell a worldwide church and none confined to Africa.
Letter 129.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The bishops argue that the Donatists' own treatment of the Maximianists, including appeals to the state and acceptance of their baptism, condemns their case against the Catholics.
Letter 129.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The bishops agree that all the Donatists may attend, while limiting their own numbers, and hope that the assembly will end in brotherly unity.
Letter 133.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine begs the tribune Marcellinus not to put to death the Donatist clerics and Circumcellions who confessed to murdering and maiming Catholic presbyters.
Letter 134.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Apringius of the Donatists' confessed crimes and begs him not to sentence them to death.
Letter 134.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that executing the Donatists would discredit the church's martyrs and asks Apringius to spare them so that they may have time to repent.
Letter 139.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Marcellinus for the records of the Donatists' trial, so that their confessions may be read in the churches and posted publicly.
Letter 139.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine again asks that the Donatist murderers not be executed, reports the Donatist bishop Macrobius's activity, and cites an imperial precedent of clemency.
Letter 139.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains his delay in revising his books on infant baptism by listing his urgent writings: the summary of the conference with the Donatists, letters to the Donatist laity, to Marcellinus and Volusian, and a book for Honoratus.
Letter 141.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · A council of Catholic bishops (written by Augustine) warns the Donatist laity that their bishops' claim that the judge at the Conference of Carthage was bribed comes from men caught lying in their own mandate.
Letter 141.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · At the conference the Donatists admitted they had nothing to say against the Catholic Church spread through the world, as Scripture describes it.
Letter 141.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · When the Maximianist schism was raised, the Donatists themselves declared that 'neither case prejudices case nor person person,' which concedes the Catholic argument about Caecilian.
Letter 141.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Donatists padded the record with words, failed to prove anything against Caecilian, and could only call false the records showing that some of his judges were themselves traitors.
Letter 141.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Donatists' own forefathers accused Caecilian before Constantine, so they cannot blame Catholics for appealing to emperors; and Caecilian was in fact cleared by bishops and by the emperor.
Letter 141.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The dates in the record show that Caecilian was cleared by bishops, then Felix by the proconsul, and long afterward Caecilian again by the emperor, so the Donatist claim of a reversal is false.
Letter 141.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The council urges the Donatists to read the proceedings and return to unity, where their sacraments will become profitable to them; dated 14 June 412.
Letter 144.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells the citizens of Cirta that the conversion of many of them from Donatism is God's work, not his, though he still longs to visit them.
Letter 173.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · As men are compelled to become bishops, so those in error may be compelled toward good, though salvation requires a good will.
Letter 173.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Examples from Israel, Paul's conversion, fatherly discipline, and the shepherds of Ezekiel justify restraining a bad will.
Letter 173.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reads “compel them to come in” (Luke 14:23) as warrant for the church, now strong, to compel the Donatists to unity.
Letter 185.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains to Boniface, a military officer, that the Donatists, unlike the Arians, confess one substance of the Trinity and differ only over communion.
Letter 185.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Heresies were foretold to test faith and love; the Donatists accept Christ from Scripture but not the church that Scripture also proclaims.
Letter 185.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The same Scriptures that foretell Christ foretell a church spread through all nations, not confined to Africa.
Letter 185.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Donatists themselves first appealed to Emperor Constantine against Caecilian, so they cannot fault Catholics for appealing to emperors.
Letter 185.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Emperors' laws for the truth rightly punish the Donatists, as Nebuchadnezzar's law protecting the true God was just.
Letter 185.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · It is the cause, not the suffering, that makes a martyr: Sarah persecuted Hagar justly, while Saul persecuted David unjustly.
Letter 185.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · There is just and unjust persecution: the church pursues the ungodly out of love to correct them, as Sarah disciplined Hagar.
Letter 185.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Donatists' self-killing is an old custom, from provoking pagans and travelers to kill them to throwing themselves from cliffs or into fire and water.
Letter 185.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Before the laws, Donatist bands (Circumcellions) terrorized masters, creditors, and officials and killed themselves at will.
Letter 185.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Donatists' readmission of the Maximianist schismatics, with their baptism, exposed their inconsistency and led many to return.
Letter 185.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Donatist violence left bishops a choice between silence and persecution, so appealing to Christian emperors was necessary.
Letter 185.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Now that kings worship Christ, they may not be indifferent to sacrilege any more than to adultery.
Letter 185.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The church rightly compels her lost sons to return, as shepherds recover straying sheep; their baptism, like a royal mark, is recognized, not repeated.
Letter 185.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recalls that he first favored only fining Donatist clergy for violence, not compelling conversion, and the council at first asked for this.
Letter 185.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recounts the Donatist assault on Maximian, Catholic bishop of Bagai, who survived being beaten, stabbed, and thrown from a tower.
Letter 185.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Most remaining Donatists were won over after the Conference of Carthage, but in some places Catholics still suffer maiming, murder, and arson.
Letter 185.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Like David mourning Absalom but consoled by peace, the church grieves for the few who die but rejoices in the many freed.
Letter 185.37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The question is who belongs to the righteous, not who holds property; the Donatist claim to justify those they baptize usurps God's role.
Letter 185.43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Donatists coming over are not rebaptized, but must do penance; they receive the unity of the Spirit and love, without which baptism does not profit.
Letter 185.47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Receiving converted clergy in their offices follows the precedent of the Roman council of 313 and the Donatists' own treatment of the Maximianists.
Letter 185.50Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Holy Spirit gives life only within the Catholic Church, the body of Christ; the Donatists have the sacrament outside but not its reality.
Letter 204.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine replies to the tribune Dulcitius, explaining that the suicides of some Donatists should not halt the work of bringing the many back to unity.
Letter 204.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the many returning to unity outweigh the few Donatists who kill themselves, comparing the Church's grief to David's mourning for Absalom.
Sermon 3.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Hagar and Ishmael are figures of heretics and schismatics: Ishmael's "play" was persecution, and those who have baptism outside the Church will not inherit unless they return.
Sermon 33.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The new song is the grace of the New Testament, sung by deeds of love; the Donatists, cut off from the Church spread through all the earth, cannot sing it.
Sermon 37.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Church’s precious stones are her learned teachers; Cyprian stayed in her setting, but Donatus fell out of it and, lacking charity, became a worthless stone.
Sermon 45.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The mountain is not a place to climb for prayer but Christ and the Church spread through the whole world, against the Donatists, who are only a part.
Sermon 46.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Bad shepherds do not call back the straying; Augustine, against Donatists who say “Why seek us?”, declares that he will be importunate in seeking them, since Christ, not Donatus, will judge.
Sermon 46.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Neglecting the straying endangers the strong too, for if the shepherds keep silent, the faithful will conclude that it makes no difference to join the Donatists.
Sermon 46.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Without a true shepherd the sheep stray onto the “mountains” of proud heresiarchs like Donatus and Parmenian, where they may find Scriptures and sacraments but lose unity; even the good mountains, the apostles and Scripture’s authors, point beyond themselves to the Lord.
Sermon 46.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The heretic is like the contentious partridge, caught by its love of fighting: the Donatists, who once accused “traditors” and appealed to the emperor, now say they do not want to fight.
Sermon 46.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatists show they lack the Shepherd’s voice by turning away Catholic Christians from their churches, as happened to some of Augustine’s people the day before, while Catholics welcome Donatists who come to listen.
Sermon 46.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatists cannot show from Scripture that the Church is the party of Donatus, while the Shepherd’s voice proclaims a Church spread to all nations.
Sermon 46.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Accusations against particular bishops as “traditors” prove nothing; Scripture, from Genesis to the Psalms, everywhere speaks of the Church spread through the world and nowhere of the party of Donatus or of the Church perishing.
Sermon 46.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s word that many will come from East and West shows the Church in every land, so no Donatist can plead ignorance at the judgment.
Sermon 46.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatists cite Song 1:7, “where you lie down at noon,” taking “noon” (the South) as Africa; Augustine replies that obscure riddles must be read in the light of plain texts about the worldwide Church.
Sermon 46.38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “Noon” can be read in many senses, but even taken as Africa it does not favor the Donatists; nor does Habakkuk’s “God will come from Africus,” since Christ came from Jerusalem and filled the world with the Gospel.
Sermon 46.39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatist schism came from bare, treeless Numidia, through Secundus of Tigisis and Lucilla’s patronage, so it cannot be the “shady mountain” of Habakkuk.
Sermon 46.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatists’ appeal to Simon of Cyrene as an “African” fails, since Cyrene lies in the East and has no Donatists; and if being compelled to carry the cross pleases them, the Catholic emperors rightly compel them to unity.
Sermon 47.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who scattered the flock with their horns are the Donatists, who called themselves righteous and separated before the harvest, which belongs to the angels.
Sermon 47.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatist who calls himself righteous is the “bad son” of Proverbs who cannot wash away his going out from the Church spread through the whole world; let him return and bear fruit in Catholic peace.
Sermon 47.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A seeker who compares the Donatists, full of the sinners they claim to have fled, with God’s word about a Church in the whole world chooses the Catholic Church.
Sermon 88.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whoever leaves the unity of the Church violates charity; the parable of the weeds shows that the field is the whole world, not Africa, and that the Church must bear the bad until the harvest.
Sermon 88.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Donatist claim that the true Church has shrunk to Africa, the parable says both wheat and weeds grow throughout the world until the harvest.
Sermon 88.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Departing from the bad means departing in heart, not leaving the Church as the Donatists did; the prophet who gave the command stayed among his people and rebuked them.
Sermon 99.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ foresaw the Donatists, who claim that they themselves forgive and sanctify and who, like the Pharisee, refused at the Conference of Carthage even to sit with Catholics, saying “do not touch me, for I am clean.”
Sermon 129.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since Christ and the Church are one flesh and one voice, the Church may say to the Donatists what Christ said to the Jews: search the Scriptures, which bear witness of me.
Sermon 129.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The risen Christ himself foretold both his resurrection and the preaching of repentance to all nations; the Donatists, who say “I sanctify, I justify,” establish their own righteousness instead of God’s.
Sermon 129.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatist who says “I justify” imitates Antichrist, who honors his own name; a believer baptized anywhere in the Catholic Church is clean, because Christ, who is everywhere, is the one who baptizes.
Sermon 129.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Catholic ministers tell the people not to place their hope in them, good or bad; the Donatists make salvation hang on the minister, as if he, and not Christ, were the rock.
Sermon 129.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Moses wrote of the Church as well as of Christ; the Donatists, who believe what Christ said of the head but not what he said of the body spread through all nations, would behead the Church; Augustine asks prayer for them.
Sermon 137.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The robbers who climb in another way are the Donatists, who exalt themselves as those who sanctify; the hireling flees in spirit when he fails to rebuke an influential sinner for fear of losing his advantages.
Sermon 138.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatists read “where you lie down at noon (in the south)” as Christ’s answer that the Church is in Africa; but even on their reading the Church who asks the question is outside Africa.
Sermon 138.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even granting that “noon” means Africa, the words are the bride’s, not the bridegroom’s: the Church overseas asks where in divided Africa Christ’s true flock is, so as not to fall among the Donatists and their rebaptism.
Sermon 164.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Donatists, who refuse communion with Catholics in order to stay holy, carry heavier burdens of schism, slander, and animosity, and refuse to put them down.
Sermon 164.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Caecilian's condemnation by seventy bishops in his absence was later overturned three times, and the Donatists themselves do not accept the Maximianists' condemnation of their own absent bishop Primian; imperial laws are tools to bring back the wheat.
Sermon 164.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · At the Conference of Carthage the Donatist advocate himself said “neither case prejudges case, nor person person,” which, like Caiaphas's prophecy, confirms that each bears his own burden and that Caecilian's guilt could not defile the world-wide Church.
Sermon 164.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine hopes the Donatist leaders will admit their error to their people and lead them back into the Church as they once led them away.
Sermon 164.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Catholics must treat the Donatists patiently and gently, without gloating over their victory, since no one is wholly healthy and all must bear one another's burdens.
Sermon 183.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Donatists who deny the Son's equality with the Father deny Christ; most Donatists, however, confess the same faith in the Son as Catholics.
Sermon 183.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Donatists who confess the orthodox doctrine of the Son still deny Christ by their deeds, by pride and schism, for Christ loves unity; the Bridegroom himself must tell who his bride is.
Sermon 183.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, the Bridegroom, defined his bride in Luke 24: repentance preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem; so his bride is the worldwide Church, not the party of Donatus, and to claim otherwise is to deny Christ.
Sermon 202.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Magi's gifts fulfil Isaiah's prophecy of the spoils of Damascus and Samaria; Christ's flight to Egypt and the innocents foreshadow his members' sufferings.
Sermon 252.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As on a threshing floor, winds carry off only chaff, which may later be blown back, as a Catholic who joins the Donatists for worldly gain may return for the same reason; only at the Lord’s winnowing is all chaff removed.
Sermon 285.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against Peter’s charge to feed Christ’s sheep, the Song’s ‘go out’ describes the Donatists, who left the Church because they did not know themselves, claimed their sacraments as their own, and feed their own kids.
Sermon 292.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · John had his own disciples and even baptized Christ, yet humbly confessed he was not the Christ; this shames those (the Donatists) who boast ‘I baptize’, and shows the greatest of men recognizing the God-man.
Sermon 292.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Donatist claim that a baptizer makes the baptized like himself, as a good tree bears good fruit, Augustine points out that John baptized Christ and Ananias baptized Paul, the greater by the lesser.
Sermon 292.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The parable of the good and bad tree concerns a person’s deeds, not baptism; if a hidden adulterer baptizes, the Donatist must say the baptized is born of God, which would make him more fortunate than one baptized by a chaste minister.
Sermon 295.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Peter fed Christ’s sheep, not his own; the heretics, who claim their own baptism makes clean, feed their own kids, while the Church spread through all nations knows herself; baptized by Peter or by Judas, the sheep are Christ’s.
Sermon 296.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine rebukes members of his church who drove away a returning Donatist who confessed rebaptism, and insists that such converts, even lapsed Catholics, be admitted to penance and later reconciled by their own will.
On Illustrious Men 93Jerome · 392–393 · Donatus founded the Donatist schism in Africa, charging Catholics with surrendering the Scriptures.
On Illustrious Men 110Jerome · 392–393 · Optatus of Milevis wrote six books against the Donatists.
Lines 1–13Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Augustine opens his popular song against the Donatists with Christ’s parable of the net, which holds good and bad fish together until they are sorted at the end of the world.
Lines 14–26Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The net was broken by proud men who, after handing over the sacred books in persecution, set up a rival altar in time of peace and blamed others for their own crime.
Lines 27–38Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Augustine prays for deliverance from false prophets in sheep’s clothing who deceive the unlearned with the charge of ‘traitors’ that they cannot prove.
Lines 39–51Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Augustine tells how Numidian bishops, themselves traitors, came to Carthage, found Caecilian already ordained, and with his enemies accused his ordainer of handing over the Scriptures.
Lines 52–64Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Quoting the psalm on brothers dwelling in unity, Augustine argues that the charge of handing over was never proved and was invented by the guilty to hide themselves.
Lines 65–77Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The condemnation of Caecilian had no proper judges, accuser, witnesses, or proof; a bad bishop should have been deposed or else tolerated within the net.
Lines 78–90Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The Donatists now tolerate many violent men in their own communion, yet their fathers would not bear with one innocent bishop for the sake of unity.
Lines 91–103Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Donatus, seeking to rule all Africa, asked the emperor for overseas judges, lost his case at Rome, appealed to the emperor, and, defeated everywhere, began to rebaptize.
Lines 104–116Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The Donatists should have sought overseas judges before making a schism; now they know the truth but pride keeps them in the seat of pestilence.
Lines 117–129Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Augustine appeals to the Donatist laity: they would never side with bishops who rejected the verdict of neutral judges, yet that is what their party did.
Lines 130–142Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The documents prove the case; if the Donatists charge Macarius, the Catholics can charge the circumcellions, whose violence still continues and on whom the Donatist bishops depend.
Lines 143–155Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Macarius may have exceeded Christian bounds but acted under the emperor’s law; the circumcellions’ private violence with clubs, excused by a literal reading of ‘put back your sword’, is worse.
Lines 156–168Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Bad members of the church harm no one who does not consent; like those sealed in Ezekiel, the faithful groan over sins without leaving their mother the church.
Lines 169–181Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The first harvest from Israel was winnowed by the cross; the second, from the whole world, grows among weeds and chaff until the final winnowing, so the sins of a Macarius are no ground for rebaptism.
Lines 182–194Augustine of Hippo · 393 · In Israel, too, the righteous lived among idolaters and prophet-killers, yet none of them set up a separate altar.
Lines 195–205Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Christ kept Judas among the apostles, sent him to preach, and did not exclude him from the Last Supper, giving the church an example of tolerating bad brothers.
Lines 206–218Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The Donatists do not rebaptize those baptized by their own deposed bishops, so their rebaptism of Catholics is inconsistent; the sins of the fathers do not pass to the sons, but no one cut off from the vine bears fruit.
Lines 219–231Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Catholics do not rebaptize because Donatist baptism has the true form, like a severed branch, but without life from the root; the succession of bishops from Peter’s see is the rock the gates of hell do not conquer.
Lines 232–244Augustine of Hippo · 393 · A Catholic asked to be rebaptized answers that if unknown sins of others defile, the Donatist himself is defiled by his own communion’s hidden sins.
Lines 245–257Augustine of Hippo · 393 · The Donatists cannot appeal to the mixed net or the chaff, since they broke the net; the apostles received the Supper with Judas and were not defiled.
Lines 258–288Augustine of Hippo · 393 · In the epilogue mother church pleads with the Donatists: she prayed for kings as the apostle commanded, bears the bad she cannot expel until the end, and asks why her sons have left her.
On the Christian Struggle 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Augustine rejects the Donatist claim that the true church survives only in Donatus's party in Africa, citing the prophecies of a worldwide church and the Donatists' own divisions.
On Christian Doctrine 3.30Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Augustine introduces the seven rules of Tyconius, a Donatist, as useful but not all-sufficient keys to Scripture, to be read with caution.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Augustine explains that he is answering a letter of the Donatist bishop Parmenian to Tyconius, a Donatist who had argued from Scripture that the church is spread through the whole world.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Against Parmenian’s unproved claim that the churches overseas share the guilt of African traitors, Augustine sets God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all nations would be blessed in their seed, which is Christ.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · God promised not to leave Jacob until his word was fulfilled; it is more credible that Parmenian’s envoys were refused communion overseas and spread rumours than that God’s promise to the nations has failed.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The absence of schism overseas does not prove those churches guilty: some offenders stayed hidden, others were convicted and stopped, and uncertain cases were left to God for peace.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Citing Optatus’s account of Lucilla and the Numidian bishops who condemned the absent Caecilian while pardoning their own confessed traitors, Augustine argues that to tolerate unknown or unproved sins in the church is not to consent to them.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Even if traitors had been received overseas through the fault of bad judges, the deceived Christian world would not lose its innocence; God’s promise to bless all nations outweighs Donatist accusations.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Even if Ossius of Cordoba was guilty, the Donatists must prove that others knew it; more likely the Spaniards condemned him wrongly and humbly yielded when the Gauls acquitted him, rather than fall into schism.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatists refused to accept the overseas verdict lest they condemn their own sentence, misusing Gal 2:18; their own Maximianist schism repeated the same error against Primian.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian’s own party received back Maximianist bishops Praetextatus and Felicianus without rebaptizing those they had baptized in schism, contradicting his rebuke of the Spaniards.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatists themselves appealed to Constantine, lost before Bishop Miltiades of Rome, and then accused the judge; the churches overseas rightly believed the party that had won before church judges.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · After losing again at the Council of Arles and before Constantine, the Donatists accused their judges; impartial people believe the judges rather than defeated litigants.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Augustine imagines the church of Philadelphia answering the Donatists: far from Africa and bought by Christ’s blood like all the nations, she rightly believed the neighbouring judges, and Donatist hatred and rebaptism of distant brothers show their condemnation was just.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Against Parmenian’s complaint that Constantine ordered Donatists put to death, Augustine argues that punishment for schism is just and that suffering at the hands of the authorities does not make anyone a martyr.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatists suffer less than they inflict; people mourn bodily wounds but not souls killed by schism, and the Donatists call Catholics persecutors while refusing to debate them.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Punishment by Christian emperors does not make the Donatists martyrs, any more than it makes punished pagans or the demons martyrs; Christ blessed only those persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Heresies are listed by Paul among works of the flesh, so rulers who bear the sword may punish them as they punish idolatry and sorcery; the Donatists themselves used imperial officers against the Maximianists and the usurper Firmus against Rogatus.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Donatist violence through the circumcellions, now armed with iron as well as clubs, exceeds what the Donatists suffer, yet their bishops disown it while condemning distant churches for African deeds they could not know.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · If coercion of schismatics is permitted, as the Donatists’ own use of the courts against the Maximianists shows, their punishments are just; laws took their basilicas after they resisted imperial orders and attacked the bearers of the emperor’s gifts.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Only Julian the Apostate decreed in the Donatists’ favour, and they flattered him that justice alone had a place with him; later laws fined their clergy, confiscated their meeting places, and restricted their bequests.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Catholic mildness leaves the Donatists in many basilicas, and any excessive measures against them displease the faithful of the Catholic Church throughout the world.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 1.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Christ said the field is the world, not Africa, and the weeds grow with the wheat until the angels reap at the end; the Donatists, claiming the wheat survives only in Africa, show that they are the weeds.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Scripture texts the Donatists hurl at Catholics rebound on them: Isaiah’s woe on those who call good evil fits those who call the unity of brothers evil.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatists call their presumption light and God’s fulfilled promise darkness; and either tolerating the notorious Optatus did not stain them, in which case their schism was groundless, or it stained them more surely than unknown African traitors could stain the world.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Isaiah’s woe falls on those who commit or praise evil, not on those who tolerate bad men they cannot remove; the peacemaker corrects, excludes, or disapproves and bears with them while keeping the bond of peace.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The curse on those who call the righteous unrighteous falls on the Donatists, who condemned the whole world unheard while keeping Optatus the Gildonian in communion and who deny God’s promise that the wheat grows everywhere until the harvest.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Augustine sets Christ’s words in the parable of the wheat and weeds against Donatus’s claims, point by point, and asks the Donatists to choose whom to believe.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Isaiah’s description of the wicked harms no good person who tolerates them, as Ezekiel’s sealed men show; it fits rather the drunken, violent circumcellions and their suicidal false martyrdom.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatist council of Bagai itself called the Maximianists ‘asps’ eggs’ swift to shed blood, yet the Donatists readmitted Felicianus and Praetextatus and kept Optatus, the basilisk; their rebaptism sheds blood spiritually.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · ‘As is the ruler, so are the people’ cannot mean that a bad bishop makes his people bad, since Christ commanded to do what bad teachers say; on the Donatist reading, they are all like Optatus of Thamugadi.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The true ruler of the people is Christ, governor of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the devil rules Babylon; the two cities will be separated only at the final winnowing, and until then the wheat tolerates all things.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Isaiah’s condemnation of bad sacrificers fits the schismatic altar; a bad priest harmed neither Zechariah nor Nathanael, and still less does a bad bishop harm good Christians now that Christ is high priest.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The same sacrament is judgment or grace to each according to his own heart, as Paul says ‘to himself’, so bad ministers harm only themselves; the schismatics who divided families and Christ’s co-heirs should ask whether they eat worthily.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian cites the law’s demand for holy, unblemished priests, but in Israel the good lived alongside bad priests and peoples without harm, for each carried his own load.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · No Donatist bishop, not even Donatus, is without moral blemish, yet the notorious Optatus offered the sacrifice and his people received it; drunkenness and greed, which Paul condemns, are also blemishes.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · No one in this life is without sin while the flesh fights the spirit; the law’s unblemished priests prefigured Christ alone, the spotless lamb and high priest who intercedes in heaven, not proud bishops who put themselves in the bridegroom’s place.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · If God does not hear sinners, the good among the bad are safe and there is no reason for schism; and John, by saying ‘we have an advocate’, included himself among those who need Christ, the one mediator, whereas Parmenian made the bishop a mediator.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Christians pray for one another, but Christ alone intercedes for all as the one mediator; even Paul asked the church’s prayers as a member of the body, and in Christ the members stay one by bearing with the bad.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Balaam’s blessings were heard though he was bad, so bad bishops’ prayers for the people can be heard; ‘God does not hear sinners’ was said by the blind man before he knew Christ, and the tax collector was heard as a sinner.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The psalm’s rebuke of the sinner who recites God’s statutes means that God’s word does not profit the bad preacher, but it profits hearers who obey it, as Christ taught about the Pharisees.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The psalm describes the Donatists themselves; and if they say others’ sins do not stain them within their party, they admit they had no reason to leave the Catholic unity, so schism is the crime of all of them.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian cites Jeremiah and other texts to show that those who forsake God cannot give true baptism; Augustine replies that on that reading the Donatists’ own hidden sinners, ‘dead’ men, and the readmitted Felicianus could not baptize either.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · If the texts meant that bad ministers cannot baptize, the Donatists’ hidden sinners could not have baptized either; if they reply that the Spirit cleanses the recipient while fleeing the false minister, they have answered for the Catholics too.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The sacraments harm those who handle them unworthily but profit worthy recipients; Augustine offers other readings of the Donatists’ texts: the broken cisterns and lying water are carnal people, the dead are pagan gods, the sinner’s oil is flattery, and the flies are crowds of careless converts.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Spiritual sons are begotten through the gospel and the Spirit, not by the minister’s own holiness, as Judas’s preaching shows; otherwise hidden sinners among the Donatists could not baptize, so it is Christ who baptizes through any minister.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Christ’s gift of the Spirit before the power to forgive sins shows that the Spirit, not the minister, forgives; the Spirit flees a deceitful minister’s heart but not his ministry, as Paul rejoiced that Christ was preached even by envious men.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Nothing is graver than schism, since the good can tolerate the bad without harm and use church discipline when it can be done without division; one departs from iniquity in heart now and will be separated in body at the end.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · ‘Praise is not beautiful in a sinner’s mouth’ refers to the deceitful, not to every sinner, since the tax collector and Daniel confessed sins; even so, God’s praise from such a mouth remains beautiful to those who hear and believe, as with Caiaphas’s prophecy.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian’s use of ‘what have you that you did not receive?’ fails, since by the Donatists’ own practice baptism is not lost by leaving a communion; so even Caecilian, if he had left, could still give it, and still more the world from which baptism came to Africa.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Ordination, like baptism, is a sacrament that schismatics do not lose and the Catholic Church does not repeat; returning Donatist clergy are not reordained, and what they had to their ruin comes to be had healthfully through correction.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Baptism given by a layman in necessity, or even unlawfully, remains given; like the emperor’s stamp on coins or the military brand, the sacrament’s mark is recognized and approved on correction, not repeated.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Whether non-Christians can baptize is left to a council, but schismatics both have and can give baptism and ordination, wrongly but truly; the sacraments remain holy in the bad, for reward in the good and for judgment in the bad.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatists readmitted Felicianus, condemned at Bagai, in his rank with those he had baptized in schism, without rebaptism or reordination, proving Tyconius’s saying of them: ‘What we want is holy.’
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Against Parmenian’s claim that only a living, healthy, enlightened, clothed, clean minister can give these gifts, Augustine shows from Scripture that God alone gives life, healing, light, clothing, and cleansing, working even through bad ministers such as Judas and the Pharisees.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian’s text, ‘A man cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven’, says ‘from heaven’, not from Donatus, Parmenian, or even a righteous man; the chain of human givers must begin with one who received from God.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · ‘Given from heaven’ means looking to God, not the minister; every Donatist rule about who can give baptism is broken by their own practice, and Scripture shows God giving without human intermediaries, as to the apostles at Pentecost and to Cornelius.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian cites ‘what is crooked cannot be adorned’, but even the Donatists would not rebaptize someone who had held a false belief about Christ when baptized; the sacrament does not adorn the crooked but remains whole in him for judgment.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Christ’s baptism by John shows humility and that the baptizer does not matter, not that one must seek a holy minister; Christ was circumcised by Jews, presented in a temple full of the bad, and lived with Judas, untouched by their evil.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Jehoshaphat was rebuked for helping Ahab sin, not for living among sinners; Paul’s command to ‘come out and be separate’ means not consenting to sin, and the faithful separate from the bad in heart, not by schism.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatists do not glorify God, since they deny the fulfilment of his promises to the nations and despise his baptism; Catholics glorify him by trusting his promises and honouring his sacraments even when handled by the unworthy.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · ‘Do not take part in the works of darkness’ means not consenting and also rebuking for correction, but always within the peace of unity, lest the wheat be uprooted with the weeds.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · ‘Do not share in others’ sins; keep yourself chaste’ means not doing, not consenting to, and rebuking evil; Parmenian quoted Tyconius’s point that one need only not do the deeds of the wicked, a third of the truth, only to reject it.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · One is ‘mixed with the guilty’ only by consent; the righteous man who neither does nor approves evil stays incorrupt anywhere, and where he can, he also corrects, rebukes, and removes sinners in love, as far as peace allows.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · ‘A little leaven leavens the whole lump’ condemns the Donatists themselves, who readmitted the Maximianists and kept Optatus; the lump corrupted is only those who consent, though negligence in discipline, where peace allows it, risks consent.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 2.43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The command to distinguish holy and unholy is fulfilled by knowledge and judgment, as the servants recognized the weeds, while still letting both grow until the harvest.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Church discipline must serve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; the Donatists twist Paul’s ‘remove the evil from among yourselves’ into a warrant for schism.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Paul says ‘remove the evil from yourselves’, not ‘remove the bad’, because one who cannot expel the bad separates from them by not sharing their evil; yet neglect of possible discipline is itself a sin.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Whoever Paul meant in 2 Corinthians, he showed that discipline must proceed with love; the Donatists, who misread ‘the righteous will correct me in mercy’, persecuted the innocent Caecilian and flattered the tyrant Optatus.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian quoted only the end of 1 Cor 5, omitting ‘not even to eat with such a one’, because the Donatists themselves share the Lord’s table with greedy men, revilers, and drunkards.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Cyprian lamented greedy, fraudulent bishops in his own communion, yet did not separate from them but shared the Lord’s table with them; either the church still existed then, or the Donatists have no origin.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Greed is no small sin, since Paul calls it idolatry and excludes the greedy from God’s kingdom; Cyprian nevertheless shared the Eucharist with greedy bishops, separating from them in heart to avoid schism.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The church without spot or wrinkle was found in those who groaned over the sins done in their midst, as in Ezekiel, where the wicked are said to be within, among the good.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · If communion with greedy bishops destroyed the church in Cyprian’s time, the Donatists have no church to descend from; since the church remains in the good, even guilty men should have been tolerated until the harvest rather than divided by schism.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Excommunication works when one notorious sinner stands among the unlike; when sin has spread to many, Paul and Cyprian chose mourning and left correction to God’s scourge, since separation would harm the weak and is sacrilegious.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian used Jeremiah’s ‘What has chaff to do with wheat?’ against Tyconius to claim that the Donatists are already the purified church of the last day, a presumption that breeds every schism.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Augustine mocks the idea that Majorinus, Donatus, and Parmenian winnowed the world, pointing to the circumcellions, drunkards, and usurers in the Donatist party and to Primian’s schism and readmission of Felicianus with those he baptized.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · ‘What has chaff to do with wheat?’ will be fulfilled in the barn, not in the field or on the threshing floor, as the sheep and goats and the good and bad fish are separated only at the end; now the difference is that the wheat has its heart in heaven.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Isaiah’s ‘depart, touch nothing unclean’ means separation of heart by refusing consent to sin, together with discipline in peace; bodily separation from the known bad means deserting the unknown good.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · The Donatists accept the baptism of the Maximianists whom their own Council of Bagai condemned, yet rebaptize the world they never condemned in any council; Augustine ironically suggests they condemn the world at Bagai so as to spare its baptism.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · By accepting only the baptisms of Maximianists who returned with their bishops, the Donatists honour Felicianus more than Christ, whose baptism they reject throughout the world.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Jeremiah, Isaiah, and David, whose words the Donatists cite, never separated bodily from their sinful people; David even revered Saul’s anointing; their separation was of heart and consent.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · On the Donatist principle, unknown righteous separatists elsewhere could already have left them behind as chaff; just as the Donatists judge splinter groups from their own party, the world securely judges that those who separate from the whole world are not good.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Neither Paul, who tolerated envious preachers, nor Cyprian, who lived among greedy bishops, separated bodily; Cyprian loved the Lord’s house, where vessels for honour and dishonour are found together, and cleansed himself by not imitating the bad.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Psalm 26, which Parmenian quotes, is the prayer of one who loves God’s house and therefore tolerates its vessels for dishonour while asking not to perish with them; the Donatists, claiming to be pure wheat, dare not rebuke their own sinners and flatter them instead.
Against the Letter of Parmenian 3.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400 · Parmenian urged Tyconius to endure persecution with the Donatists, but punishment for schism is God’s merciful warning, not martyrdom; the Donatists’ own mistreatment of the Maximianist Salvius of Membresa and their acceptance of Maximianist baptism expose them.
Canon 57 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · Those baptized as children among the Donatists who later join the catholic church by the laying on of hands may be ordained clergy.
Canon 66 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · The council resolves to deal gently and peaceably with the Donatists.
Notice before canon 66 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · The council of 13 September 401 receives the letters of Anastasius of Rome urging action against the Donatists.
Canon 68 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · Rome is to be asked to allow converted Donatist clergy to keep their ranks where this serves unity, as an exception to the overseas council's ruling.
Canon 69 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · Envoys are to show the Donatists from public records that they themselves readmitted Maximianists, and so cannot condemn the catholic church for communion with those they accused.
Canon 92 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · The form of summons to the Donatists, inviting them to choose delegates for a peaceful conference; then the notice of the council of 404 sending Theasius and Evodius to the emperors.
Canon 93 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · The instructions to the legates of 404: they are to ask the emperors for protection against Donatist violence and the Circumcellions and for the enforcement of the laws against heretics.
Canon 99 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · Converted Donatist congregations with bishops may keep them; after the edict of unity, Donatist churches and property pass to the catholic bishop of the place.
Notice before canon 108 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · Notice of the council of 410 sending an embassy against the Donatists.
Canon 117 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · Where both catholic and Donatist congregations existed under different sees, a reunited place keeps its existing allegiance, whenever the union was made.
Canon 121 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · A bishop who neglects to win his Donatist places within six months of a warning loses them; no appeal lies from judges chosen by consent; a bishop negligent against heretics is excluded from communion.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 4.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine leaves the question unsolved for now, asking his hearers to discuss it peaceably, and promises that its solution will silence the Donatists' arguments about baptism.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 5.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine answers Donatist complaints of persecution: they suffered lawful correction, while they themselves persecute the spirit by trying to take from Catholics, through rebaptism, the baptism by which they live.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 5.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Rebaptism makes a Christian deny his baptism as the pagan persecutors tried to make martyrs deny Christ; against Donatist charges about the minister, the Catholic answers that the dove taught that Christ is the one who baptizes.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 5.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · As the Pharisees were confounded by the question about John's baptism, so the Donatists, their peers, are confounded by the same 'lamp', John.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 5.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Ministers of baptism ought to be righteous, but an unworthy minister cannot defile Christ's gift, which passes through him like water through a stone channel or light through unclean places.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 5.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · To the Donatist argument that those baptized by John were rebaptized, Augustine answers that heretics, however wicked, give Christ's baptism, which John did not.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 5.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · If baptism must be repeated after a worse minister because the apostles baptized after John, the Donatists would have to rebaptize those baptized by their own drunken clergy.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 5.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Baptism given even by Judas was Christ's and was not repeated, while John's was his own and was followed by Christ's; so baptism given by any minister, however sinful, is Christ's.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine states the Donatist objection: if the Catholic Church is the one dove outside which there is no baptism, why does it not baptize those who come to it from outside?
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Donatists, too, have bad members and do not rebaptize those baptized by them; since Christ is the one who baptizes, baptism given by chaff is valid, and the 'raven' should not rebaptize after the 'dove'.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · One can have baptism outside the dove, the one Church, but it cannot profit him there; the Donatist asks why he should become a Catholic if he already has baptism.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Holy things received unworthily bring judgment, like the Eucharist to the unworthy or the morsel to Judas; baptism outside the Church is like the emperor's mark on a deserter, and Catholics should call the Donatists back with groaning love.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Donatists should not boast of having the same baptism, since even bad Catholics, drunkards and secret consulters of astrologers, have it; what they lack is humility, love, and peace.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The olive's fruit signifies love, which like oil rises above all; without love even the tongues of angels are noise, as Augustine tells Donatus.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Catholics seek the Donatists precisely because they are not yet good; baptism without love is nothing.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Donatists' alms and sufferings are for Donatus, not Christ, and without love profit nothing; their so-called martyrs, who threw themselves from cliffs, acted from pride, not love.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · All Scripture cries out against the Donatist schism; Catholics should groan, pray, and love, trusting that the grain among the Donatists will return to the ark.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · To Donatist complaints about confiscated church property, Augustine answers that property is held by human law, given through emperors, and imperial law forbids those outside Catholic communion to hold property as a church.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 6.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Those who reject the emperor cannot claim property held by imperial law, and by divine right they cannot claim to be the Church; Augustine invites them to the Catholic Church, where they will have both land and its Creator.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The fig tree signifies sin, under which Christ saw Nathanael, as he sees and seeks all sinners before they know him; so Catholics seek the Donatists because they themselves were first sought and found.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 9.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The fourth jar is the age of David, whose psalm proclaims God's inheritance among all nations; the Donatists, out of communion with the nations, are like the guest without a wedding garment, thrown out and speechless.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 11.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Donatists' complaints of persecution by Catholic rulers are answered by Sarah's affliction of Hagar, which was meant to make her return to her mistress.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 11.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine disputes the Donatist claims about their martyrs Marculus and Donatus of Bagai and urges the Donatists, like Hagar, to return to the Catholic Church.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 13.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The psalm proclaims God king of all the earth, which the Donatists deny by confining him to Africa; Christ's hidden divinity must be seen with the inner eye of understanding.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 13.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Psalm 22, read by both Catholics and Donatists in Holy Week, shows that Christ bought not Africa alone but all the nations of the earth.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 47.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ came in person only to Israel, where his saving presence was shown, but sent his messengers to the Gentiles; the one fold excludes following Donatus.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Those who hate their brothers are blind, stumbling at the Church, which like the mountain of Daniel and Isaiah fills the whole earth; so the Donatists separate from the world.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The Donatists refuse communion with the Church that began at Jerusalem and speaks in all languages, while their own party has only Latin and Punic; their hatred of the brothers blinds them.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love is not laxity but corrects and disciplines without bitterness, like the gall-less dove; the Donatist schismatics hate both love and the dove, and their baptism, bearing Christ's mark, is recognised, not repeated, in the Catholic Church.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love of Christ must extend to his body spread through the whole world, not be confined to Africa; to honour the head while trampling the members hurts the whole Christ, as the tongue cries out when the foot is stepped on.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The Donatists claim to have suffered persecution but have themselves divided the Church; they should return like Hagar to her mistress and believe Christ's word that forgiveness of sins is preached in the Church throughout all nations.
On the Soul and Its Origin 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine takes no offence at Victor’s criticism, excuses his motives, and says the recent convert from the Rogatists should be corrected gently.
On the Soul and Its Origin 3.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine warns Victor against taking the name of the dead Rogatist bishop Vincentius and trusting a vision of him, which may be Satan disguised as an angel of light.
Retractations 1.20Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing his lost Against the Letter of Donatus, Augustine leaves the reader to choose between two interpretations of the rock in Matt 16:18 and corrects several historical statements about Donatus.
Retractations 2.27Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine describes his lost book of proofs against the Donatists, posted on a basilica wall, and corrects the date of Felix's acquittal and his use of Jude 19 and 1 Cor 2:14.
Commonitory 4Vincent of Lérins · 434 · The examples of the Donatists and the Arians show the harm done by novelty and the safety of holding to the universal and ancient faith.