CHAPTER IX
CONSTANTINE AND THE DONATISTS

If Constantine hoped that by the Edict of Milan he had stilled the voice of religious controversy, he was speedily disillusioned. He was now to find the peace of the Church violently disturbed by those belonging to her communions, and the hatreds of Christians against one another almost as menacing to the tranquillity of the imperial rule as had been the bitter strife of pagan and Christian. In the same year (313) he received an appeal from certain African bishops imploring him to appoint a commission of Gallican bishops to settle certain difficulties which had arisen in Africa. The Donatist schism, which was destined to last for more than a century, had begun.

Its rise may be traced in a few words. Northern Africa had long been the home of a perfervid religious fanaticism. Montanism and Novatianism had found there their most violent adherents, to whom there was something peculiarly attractive in extravagant protest against the laxity or the liberalism of the Church elsewhere, and in emphatic insistence on the narrowness of the way which leads to salvation. Those who set up the most impossible standard of attainment; those who demanded from the Christian the most absolute spotlessness of life; those who insisted most strenuously on the enormity of sin and made fewest allowances for the weakness of humanity—these were surest of being heard most gladly in northern Africa. During the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian many of the African Christians had ostentatiously courted martyrdom. According to Catholic authors, such martyrdom had been sought not only by saints, but by men of immoral and dissolute life, who thought to purge the stains of a sinful career by dying in the odour of sanctity. Others, again, while not prepared to die for the faith, were not unwilling to suffer imprisonment for it, inasmuch as their fellow-Christians looked well after the creature comforts of those who languished in gaol. Mensurius, Bishop of Carthage and Primate of Africa, strongly disapproved of these proceedings. He discountenanced the fanaticism, which he knew to be the besetting weakness of his people; refused to recognise as martyrs those who had provoked death; and checked, as far as possible, the indiscriminate charity of his flock. If his critics are to be believed, Mensurius had resort to a trick in order to save the Holy Books of his own cathedral and thus escape the choice of being a traditor or of suffering for conscience’ sake. It was said that when the officers of the civil power demanded the Holy Books in his keeping, he handed over to them a number of heretical volumes, which were at once burnt, while the Sacred Scriptures were carefully concealed. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Mensurius was charged with actual persecution of those Christians who had a sterner sense of duty than himself.

It is manifest, however, from what took place at a synod of bishops held in Cirta in 305 that many of the natural leaders of the African Church had quailed before the persecution of Diocletian. They had assembled, under the presidency of Secundus, Bishop of Tigisis and Primate of Numidia, in order to fill the vacant see of Cirta. Secundus opened the proceedings by inviting all present to clear themselves of the charge of having surrendered their Holy Books, and began to put the question directly to each in turn. Donatus of Mascula returned an evasive answer, and said that he was responsible only to God. Many pleaded that they had substituted other books for the Scriptures; Victor of Russicas alone confessed that he had handed over the Four Gospels. “Valentinianus, the Curator, himself compelled me to send them,” he said; “pardon me this fault, even as God pardons me.” Then came the turn of Purpurius, Bishop of Limata. Secundus accused him not of being a traditor, but of the murder of two of his nephews. Purpurius stormed with rage. He vowed that he would not be browbeaten, and declared that Secundus was no better than his fellows and had purchased his own immunity, like the rest of them, by surrendering the Scriptures. As for murdering his nephews, the charge was true. “I did kill them,” he said, “and I kill all who stand in my way.” This candid avowal seems to have occasioned no surprise among the members of this extraordinary synod; they were all too indignant with Secundus for raising inconvenient questions and pretending to a sanctity beyond his colleagues. Eventually, another nephew of Secundus threatened that they would all withdraw from his communion and make a schism (recedere et schisma facere), unless he let the matter drop. “What business is it of yours what each has done?” asked the outspoken nephew. “It is to God that each must tender his account.” The president thereupon drew in his horns, pronounced the acquittal of the accused, and with a general murmur of “Deo gratias,” they proceeded to the election of a bishop. Their choice fell upon Sylvanus, himself a traditor, much, it is said, to the indignation of the people of Cirta, who raised cries of, “He is a traditor: let another be elected. We want our bishop to be pure and upright.” Sylvanus had surrendered, without even a show of compulsion, one of the sacred silver lamps from the altar of his church. It is more than possible that the report of the proceedings at this synod, which is found only in works written specifically—but by episcopal hands—against the Donatists, is highly exaggerated. Among the bishops present at Cirta were those who, a few years later, were the principal leaders of the Donatist schism. But, even when all allowances are made for party colouring, the picture it gives of the Numidian Church is far from flattering.

During the life of Mensurius overt schism was avoided, though the Church of Carthage was by no means untroubled. For even before the persecution broke out, a certain lady named Lucilla had fallen under the censure of the ecclesiastical authorities, and had left the fold in high dudgeon. She became the lady patroness of the malcontent Christians of Carthage and the prime mover in any ecclesiastical intrigue that was afoot. She had been wont, before taking the Eucharist, to kiss the doubtful relic of a martyr, and she had set greater store on the efficacy of this unregistered bone than on the virtues of the sacred chalice. It was not, of course, for relic worship that Cæcilianus, the Archdeacon, rebuked her, for the early Church everywhere acknowledged its intercessional value, and it was the usual practice for an officiating priest, before celebrating, to kiss the relics that were placed on the high altar. Lucilla was reproved because her relic was not recognised by the Church.[[79]] It was doubtful whether it had belonged to a martyr at all, and, in any case, its identity had not been duly authenticated. But before Mensurius could deal with this revolted daughter the tempest of persecution broke over Africa. The angry and insulting epithets with which the Catholic historians have loaded Lucilla are perhaps the best testimony to her ability and influence. She was very rich and a born intriguante (pecuniosissima et factiosissima), and as she had what she considered to be a personal insult to avenge, she was as willing as she was competent to cause trouble and mischief.

Shortly before the overthrow of Maxentius, one of Mensurius’s deacons issued a defamatory libel against the Emperor and then took sanctuary at Carthage. The Bishop refused to surrender him and was peremptorily summoned to Rome. Evidently expecting that the Emperor would condemn him and order the confiscation of the holy vessels of his church, Mensurius secretly handed them over to the custody of certain elders in whose honesty he thought he could place implicit reliance. But he took the precaution—a wise one, as it subsequently proved—to make an inventory, which he gave to an old woman, with instructions that if he did not return she was to hand it to his lawfully appointed successor. Mensurius then went to Rome, succeeded in convincing Maxentius of his innocence, but died on the way home, in 311 A.D. As soon as the news of his death reached Carthage, the round of intrigue began. According to Optatus, two deacons named Botrus and Celestius, each hoping to secure his own elevation, hurried on the election, in which the Numidian bishops were not invited to take part. The passage is obscure, for Optatus goes on to say that the choice fell upon Cæcilianus, who was elected “by the suffrages of the whole people,” and was consecrated in due form by Felix, Bishop of Aptunga. When Cæcilianus called upon the elders to restore the Church ornaments, they quitted the Church—the suggestion of the Catholic historian is that they had hoped to steal them—and attached themselves to the faction of Lucilla, together with Botrus and Celestius, whom St. Augustine roundly denounces as “impious and sacrilegious thieves.” The schism was now complete. It had its origin, says Optatus,[[80]] in the fury of a headstrong woman; it was nurtured by intrigue and drew its strength from jealous greed.

Cæcilianus’ position was speedily challenged. The malcontents appealed to the Numidian bishops, urging them to declare in synod whether the election was valid. Accordingly, the Numidian Primate, Secundus of Tigisis, came with seventy other bishops to the capital, where they were received with open arms by the opposition party. Cæcilianus seated himself on his throne in the cathedral and waited for the bishops to appear. When they did not come he sent a message saying, “If any one has any accusation to bring against me, let him come to make good the charge.”, But the Numidian bishops preferred to meet elsewhere within closed doors and finally declared the election of Cæcilianus invalid on the ground that he had been consecrated by a traditor. To this Cæcilianus replied that, if they thought Felix of Aptunga had been a traditor, they had better consecrate him themselves, as though he were still a simple deacon—a sarcasm which roused the violent Purpurius to exclaim: “Let him come here to receive the laying on of hands, and we will strike off his head by way of penance.” They then elected Majorinus, who had been one of Cæcilianus’ readers and was now a member of Lucilla’s household. There were thus two rival bishops of Carthage. Those who supported Cæcilianus called themselves the Catholic party; their rivals, until the death of Majorinus in 315, were known as the party of Majorinus, though their moving spirit seems to have been, first, Donatus, the Bishop of Casæ Nigræ, and, afterwards, Donatus, surnamed Magnus, who gave his name to the schism.

Though Africa was thus split into two camps, there is no evidence that Majorinus was recognised by any of the churches of Europe, Egypt, or Asia. These all looked to Cæcilianus as the rightful bishop, and so, when Constantine, fresh from his victory over Maxentius, wrote to the African churches in 312 to announce his intention of making a handsome present of money to their clergy, it was to Cæcilianus that the letter was addressed, and the schismatics were rebuked in the sharpest terms. The letter ran as follows: