§ 63.1. The Donatist Schism, A.D. 311-415.—In North Africa, where echoes of the Montanist enthusiasm were still heard, many voluntarily and needlessly gave themselves up to martyrdom during the Diocletian persecution. The sensible bishop of Carthage Mensurius and his archdeacon Cæcilian [Cæcilius] opposed this fanaticism. Both had given up heretical books instead of the sacred books demanded of them. This was sufficient to make the opposite party denounce them as traditores. Mensurius died in A.D. 311, and his followers chose Cæcilian [Cæcilius] as his successor, and had him hastily ordained by bishop Felix of Aptunga, being sorely pressed by the machinations of the other party. The opposition, with a bigoted rich widow Lucilla at its head, denounced Felix as a traditor, and so treated his ordination as invalid. It put up a rival bishop in the person of the reader Majorinus, who soon got, in A.D. 313, a more powerful successor in Donatus, called by his own followers the Great. The schism spread from Carthage over all North Africa. The peasants, sorely oppressed by exorbitant taxes and heavy villeinage, took the side of the Donatists (Pars Donati). Constantine the Great at the very first declared himself against them. When they complained of this, the emperor convened for the purpose of special investigation a clerical commission at Rome in A.D. 313, under the presidency of the Roman bishop Melchiades, and then a great Western Synod at Arles in A.D. 314. Both decided against the Donatists. They appealed to the immediate decision of the emperor, who also heard the two parties at Milan, but decided in accordance with previous judgments in A.D. 316. Now followed severe measures, taking churches from them and banishing their bishops which powerfully excited and increased their fanaticism. Constantine resorted therefore to milder and more tolerant procedure, but in their fanatical zeal they repudiated all compromises. Under Constans the matter became still more formidable. Ascetics mad with enthusiasm, drawn from the very dregs of the people, who called themselves Milites Christi, Agonistici, swarmed as beggars through the country, Circumcelliones, roused the oppressed peasants to revolt, preached freedom and fraternity, forced masters to do the work of slaves, robbed, murdered, and burned. Political revolution was carried on under the cover of a religious movement. An imperial army put down the revolt, and an attempt was made in A.D. 348 to pacify the needy Donatists by imperial gold. But Donatus flung back the money with indignation, and the rebellion was renewed. A severe sentence was now passed upon the heads of the party, and all Donatist churches were closed or taken from them. Julian restored the churches and recalled the exiled bishops. He allowed the Donatists with impunity to take violent revenge upon the Catholics. Julian’s successor however again issued strict laws against the sectaries, and schisms arose among themselves. Toward the end of the 4th century bishop Optatus of Mileve opposed them in his treatise De Schismate Donatistarum Ll. VII. In A.D. 400 Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius, began his unwearied attacks upon this sect. The mildest terms were offered to induce the Donatists to return to the church. Many of the more moderate took advantage of the opportunity; but this only made the others all the more bitter. They refused repeated invitations to a discussion, fearing Augustine’s masterly dialectic. Augustine, who at first maintained that force should not be used in matters of faith, was moved by the persistent stiffneckedness and senseless fanaticism of his opponents to change his opinion, and to confess that in order to restore such heretics to the church, to salvation, recourse must be had to violent compulsion (coge intrare, Lk. xiv. 23). A synod at Carthage in A.D. 405 called upon the Emperor Honorius to take proceedings against this stiffnecked sect. He did so by imposing fines, banishing their clergy, and taking their churches. Augustine renewed the challenge to a public disputation. The Donatists were at last compelled by the emperor to enter the lists. Thus came about the three days’ Collatio cum Donatistis of A.D. 411 at Carthage. There appeared 279 Donatist and 286 Catholic bishops. Petilian and Primian were the chief speakers on the side of the Donatists, Augustine and Aurelian of Carthage on the other. The imperial commissioner assigned the victory to the Catholics. In vain the Donatists appealed. In A.D. 414 the Emperor declared that they had forfeited all civil rights, and in A.D. 415 he threatened all who attended their meetings with death. The Vandals, who conquered Africa in A.D. 429, persecuted Catholics and Donatists alike, and a common need furthered their reconciliation and secured a good mutual understanding.—The Donatists started from the principle that no one who is excommunicated or deserves to be excommunicated is fit for the performance of any sacramental action. With the Novatians they demanded the absolute purity of the church, but admitted that repentance was a means for regaining church fellowship. They maintained that they were the pure and the Catholics were schismatics, who had nothing in common with Christ, whose administration of the sacraments was therefore invalid and useless, so that they even rebaptized those who had Catholic baptism. The partiality of the state for their opponents and confused blending of the ideas of the visible and invisible church led them to adopt the view that church and state, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, had nothing in common with one another, and that the state should not interfere in religious matters.

§ 63.2. The Concilium Quinisextum, A.D. 692.—This Council claimed to be regarded as œcumenical and was recognised as such even by Pope Sergius I. The Greeks had not yet got over their vexation at the triumph which Rome had won at the last œcumenical Council (§ [52, 8]). It thus happened that among the multitude of harmless decrees the following six were smuggled in which were in flat contradiction to the Roman practice.

  1. In enumerating the sources of the canon law alone valid almost all the Latin Councils and Papal Decretals were omitted, and the whole 85 Canones Apostt. (§ [43, 4]) included, whereas Rome had pronounced only the first 50 valid.
  2. The Roman custom of enforcing celibacy on presbyters and bishops is condemned as unjustifiable and inhuman (§ [45, 2]).
  3. Fasting on the Saturdays of the Quadragesima is forbidden (§ [56, 4]).
  4. The 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon which makes the patriarch of Constantinople equal to the bishop of Rome is repeated and anew enforced (§ [46, 1], [7]).
  5. The Levitical prohibition against blood and things strangled is sanctioned as still binding upon Christians, although it had never been enforced by the Roman church.
  6. Images of Christ in the shape of a lamb, which were very common in the West, were forbidden. The papal legates subscribed the decrees of the Council; but the Pope forbade their publication in all the churches of the West. Compare further § [46, 11].

VI. THE CHURCH OUTSIDE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.[185]

§ 64. Missionary Operations in the East.

The real missionarizing church of this period was the Western (§ [75 ff].). It was pre-eminently fitted for this by its practical tendency and called to it by its intimate connection with the hordes of the migrating peoples. Examples of organized missionary activity in the East are rare. Yet other more occasional ways were opened for the spread of Christianity outside of the empire, by Christian fugitives and prisoners of war, political embassies and trade associations. Anchorets, monks and stylites, too, who settled on the borders of the empire or in deserts outside, by their extraordinary appearance made a powerful impression on the surrounding savage tribes. These streamed in in crowds, and those strange saints preached Christ to them by word and work.

§ 64.1. The Ethiopic-Abyssinian Church.[186]—About A.D. 316 a certain Meropius of Tyre on a voyage of discovery to the countries south of Egypt was murdered with his whole ship’s company. Only his two nephews Frumentius and Aedesius were spared. They won the favour of the Abyssinian king and became the tutors of the heir apparent, Aizanas. Frumentius was subsequently, in A.D. 438, ordained by Athanasius bishop of the country. Aizanas was baptised, the church spread rapidly from Abyssinia to Ethiopia and Numidia. A translation of the bible into the Geez dialect, the language of the country, is attributed to Frumentius. Closely connected with the Egyptian mother church, it fell with it into Monophysitism (§ [52, 7]). In worship and discipline, besides much that is primitive, it has borrowed many things from Judaism, and retained many of the old habits of the country, e.g. observing the Sabbath alongside of the Sunday, forbidding certain meats, circumcision, covenanting. Their canon comprised 81 books: besides the biblical, there are 16 patristic writings of the Pre-Chalcedonian age.

§ 64.2. The Persian Church.—The church had taken root in Persia as early as the 3rd century. With the 4th century there came a sore time of bloody persecution, which was constantly fed partly by the fanatical Magians, partly by the almost incessant wars with the Christian Roman empire, which aroused suspicion of foreign sympathies hostile to the country. The first great and extensive persecution of the Christians broke out in A.D. 343 under Shapur or Sapores [Sapor] II. It lasted 35 years and during this dreadful time 16,000 of the clergy, monks and nuns were put to death, but the number of martyrs from the laity was far beyond reckoning. Only shortly before his death Shapur [Sapor] stopped the persecution and proclaimed universal religious toleration. During 40 years’ rest the Persian church attained to new vigour; but the fanaticism of Bishop Abdas of Susa who caused a fire-temple to be torn down in A.D. 418, occasioned a new persecution, which reached its height in A.D. 420 under Bahram or Baranes V. and was carried on for 30 years with the most fiendish ingenuity of cruel tortures. The generosity of a Christian bishop, Acacius of Amida in Mesopotamia, who by the sale of the church property redeemed a multitude of Persian prisoners of war and sent them to their homes, at last moved the king to stop the persecution. The Nestorians driven from the Roman empire found among the Persians protection and toleration, but were the occasion under king Firuz or Peroz of a new persecution of the Catholics, A.D. 465. In A.D. 498 the whole Persian church declared in favour of Nestorianism (§ [52, 3]), and enjoyed forthwith undisturbed toleration, developed to an unexpected extent, retained its bloom for centuries, gave itself zealously to scientific studies in the seminaries at Nisibis, and undertook successfully mission work among the Asiatic tribes. The war with the Byzantines continued without interruption. Chosroes II. advanced victoriously as far as Chalcedon in A.D. 616 and persecuted with renewed cruelty the Catholic Christians of the conquered provinces. Finally the emperor Heraclius plucked up courage. By the utter rout of A.D. 628 the power of the Persians was broken (§ [57, 5]), and in A.D. 651 the Khalifs overthrew the dynasty of the Sassanidæ.

§ 64.3. The Armenian Church.—There were flourishing Christian churches in Armenia so early as Tertullian’s time. The Arsacian ruler Tiridates III., from A.D. 286, was a violent persecutor of the Christians. During his reign, however, Gregory the Illuminator, the Apostle of Armenia, carried on his successful labours. He was the son of a Parthian prince, who, snatched when a child of two years’ old by his nurse from the midst of a massacre of his whole family, received in Cappadocia a Christian training. In A.D. 302 he succeeded in winning over to Christianity the king and the whole country. He left behind him the church which he thus founded in a most prosperous condition. His grandson Husig, his great grandson Nerses I. and his son Isaac the Great held possession of the patriarchal dignity and flourished even in the hard times, when Byzantines, Arsacides, and Sassanidæ fought for possession of the country. Mesrop, with the help of Isaac, whose successor he became in A.D. 440 (dying in A.D. 441), gave to his church a translation of the bible into their own tongue, for which he had to invent a national alphabet. Under his successor, the patriarch Joseph, the famous religious war with the Persian Sassanidæ broke out, who wished to lead back the Armenians to the doctrine of Zoroaster. In the fierce battle at the river Dechmud in A.D. 451 the holy league was defeated. But Armenia still maintained amid sore persecution its Christian confession. In A.D. 651 the overthrow of the Sassanidæ brought it under the rule of the Khalifs.—The Armenian church had vigorously and earnestly warded off Nestorianism, but willingly opened its arms to Monophysitism introduced from Byzantine Armenia. At a synod at Feyin, in A.D. 527, it condemned the Chalcedonian dogma.—Gregory the Illuminator had excited among the Armenians an exceedingly lively interest in culture and science, and when Mesrop gave them an independent system of writing, the golden age of Armenian literature dawned (the 5th century). Not only were many works of classical and patristic Greek and Syrian literature made the property of the Armenians through translations, but numerous writers built up a literature of their own. The history of the conversion of Armenia was written in the 4th century by Agathangelos, private secretary of the king. Whether this was composed in Greek or in Armenian is doubtful; both texts are still extant, evidently much interpolated with fabulous matter and also in many points conflicting with one another. In the 5th century Eznik in his “Overthrow of Heretics” addressed a vigorous polemic against pagans, Persians, Marcionites and Manichæans. Moses of Chorene, also a scholar of Mesrop, composed from the archives a history of Armenia, and Elisaeus described the Armeno-Persian religious war, in which, as secretary of the Armenian commander in chief, he had taken part.On the service done by the Mechitarists to the old Armenian literature, see § 164, 2.[187]