DONATISTS
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DONATISTS
had hoped for, and he weakly begged the Cathohcs to
suffer the Donatists with patience. This was not
easy, for the schismatics broke out into violence. At
Cirta, Silvanus having returned, they seized the basil-
ica which the emperor had built for the Catholics.
They would not give it up, and Constantine found no
better expedient than to build another. Throughout
Africa, but above all in Xumidia, they were numerous.
They taught that in all the rest of the world the Cath-
olic Church had perished, through having communi-
cated with the traditor CEecilian; their sect alone was
the true Church. If a Cathohc came into their
churches, they drove him out, and washed with salt
the pavement where he had stood. Any Catholic who
joined them was forced to be rebaptized. They as-
serted that their own bishops and ministers were with-
out fault, else their ministrations would be invalid.
But in fact they were convicted of drunkenness and
other sins. St. Augustine tells us on the authority of
Tichonius that the Donatists held a council of two
hundred and seventy bishops in which they discussed
for seventy-five days the question of rebaptism; they
finally decided that in cases where traditors refused to
be rebaptized they should be communicated within
spite of this; and the Donatist bishops of Mauretania
did not rebaptize traditors until the time of Macarius.
Outside Africa the Donatists had a bishop residing on
the property of an adherent in Spain, and at an early
period of the schism they made a bishop for their small
congregation in Rome, which met, it seems, on a hill
outside the city, and had the name of Montenses".
This antipapal "succession without a beginning" was
frequently ridiculed by Catholic writers. The series
included Fehx, Boniface, Encolpius, Macrobius (c.
370), Lucian, Claudian (c. 378), and again Felix in
411.
The Circumcellions. — The dat« of the first ap- pearance of the Circumcellions is uncertain, but proba- bly they began before the death of Constantine. They were mostly rustic enthusiasts, who knew no Latin, but spoke Punic; it has been suggested that they may have been of Berber blood. They joined the ranks of the Donatists, and were called by them agonixtici and "soldiers of Christ", but in fact were brigands. Troops of them were to be met in all parts of Africa. They had no regular occupation, but ran about armed, like madmen. They used no swords, on the ground that St. Peter had been told to put his sword into its sheath; but they did continual acts of violence with clubs, which they called "Israelites". They bruised their victims without killing them, and left them to die. In St. Augustine's time, however, they took to swords and all sorts of weapons; they rushed about accompanied by unmarried women, played, and drank. Their battle-cry was Deo lauded, and no ban- dits were more terrible to meet. They frequently sought death, counting suicide as martyrdom. They were especially fond of flinging themselves from preci- pices; more rarely they sprang into the water or fire. Even women caught the infection, and those who had sinned would cast themselves from the cliffs, to atone for their fault. Sometimes the Circumcellions sought death at the hands of others, either by paying men to kill them, by threatening to kill a passer-by if he would not kill them, or by their violence inducing magistrates to have them executed. While paganism still flour- ished, they would come in vast crowds to any great sacrifice, not to destroy the idols, but to be martyred. Theodoret says a Circumcellion was accustomed to an- nounce his intention of becoming a martyr long before the time, in order to be well treated and fed like a beast for slaughter. He relates an amusing story (Hut. Fab., IV, vi) to which St. Augustine also refers. A number of these fanatics, fattened like pheasants, met a young man and offered him a drawn sword to smite them %vith, threatening to murder him if he refu.sed. He pretended to fear that when he had killed a few,
the rest might change their minds and avenge the
death of their fellows; and he insisted that they must
all be bound. They agreed to this; when they were
defenceless, the young man gave each of them a beat-
ing and went his way.
When in controversy with Cathohcs, the Donatist bishops were not proud of their supporters. They declared that self-precipitation from a cliff had been forbidden in their councils. Yet the bodies of these sui- cides were sacrilegiously honoured, and crowds cele- brated their anniversaries. Their bishops could not but conform, and they were often glad enough of the strong arms of the Circumcellions. Theodoret, soon after St. Augustine's death, knew of no other Dona- tists than the Circumcellions; and these were che tj'pical Donatists in the eyes of all outside Africa. They were especially dangerous to the Catholic clergy, whose houses they attacked and pillaged. They beat and wounded them, put lime and vinegar on their eyes, and even forced them to be rebaptized. Under Axi- dus and Fasir, " the leaders of the Saints" in Numidia, property and roads were unsafe, debtors were pro- tected, slaves were set in their masters' carriages, and the masters made to run before them. At length the Donatist bishops invited a general named Taurinus to repress these extravagances. He met with resistance in a place named Octava, and the altars and tablets to be seen there in St. Optatus's time testified to the veneration given to the Circumcellions who were slain; but their bishops denied them the honour due to martyrs. It seems that in 336-7 the pncfeclus prce- torio of Italy, Gregory, took some measures against the Donatists, for St. Optatus tells us that Donatus wrote him a letter beginning: " Gregory, stain on the senate and disgrace to prefects".
The "Persecution" op MAC.\Hirs. — When Con- stantine became master of the East by defeating Li- cinius in 323, he was prevented by the rise of Arianism in the East from sending, as he had hoped, Eastern bishops to Africa to adjust the differences between the Donatists and the Catholics. Caecilian of Carthage was present at the Council of Nicsa in 325, and his suc- cessor, Gratus, was at that of Sardica in 3-42. The conciliahulum of the Easterns on that occasion WTote a letter to Donatus, as though he were the true Bishop of Carthage; but the Arians failed to gain the support of the Donatists, who looked upon the whole East as cut off from the Church, which survived in .Africa alone. The Emperor Constans was as anxious as his father to give peace to Africa. In 347 he sent thither two commissioners, Paulus and Macarius, with large sums of money for distribution. Donatus naturally saw in this an attempt to win over his adherents to the Church by briberj'; he received the envo.vs with inso- lence: " What has the emperor to do with the Church? " said he, and he forbade his people to accept any largess from Constans. In most parts, however, the friendly mission seems to have been not unfav- ourably received. But at Bagai in Xumidia the bishop, Donatus, assembled the Circumcellions of the neighbourhood, who had already been excited by their bishops. Macarius was obliged to ask for the protec- tion of the military. The Circumcellions attacked them, and killed two or three soldiers; the troops then became uncontrollable, and slew some of the Dona- tists. This unfortunate incident was thereafter con- tinually thrown in the teeth of the Catholics, and they were nicknamed Macarians by the Donatists, who de- clared that Donatus of Bagai had been precipitated from a rock, and that another bishop, Marculus, had been thrown into a well. The existing .\cts of the latter "martyr" do not seem to deserve credit, and the African Catholics believed that the two bishops had sought their own deaths. The Acts of two other Donatist martyrs of 347, Maximian and Isaac, are pre- served; they apparently belong to Carthage, and are attributed by Ilarnack to the Antipope Macrobius. It
