Western North Africa

Donatism

Donatists

The Donatists were a schismatic sect of especially rigorous Christians in North Africa from the fourth to the seventh centuries. Donatism was essentially a response to alternating periods of persecution followed by toleration, culminating in the beginning of the fourth century by the formal legalization of Christianity by Constantine. The Donatists held that Christians who had caved in to persecution were no longer fit to occupy positions of leadership in the Church, and, perhaps more importantly, had lost the grace of the Holy Spirit to effectively administer sacraments.

The story is rooted in the North African veneration of martyrs on the one hand and on the other in the social tensions between the rural peasant Numidians and the cultured urban Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy in the city. Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, co-operated with the Roman authorities during the Diocletian persecutions of the early fourth century. The Roman authorities were friendly and allowed him to give them heretical books to be burned rather than copies of Scriptural books. He, in turn agreed to suspend public worship services, hoping to lie low until the persecution died away. More radical Christians, called "confessors," who found themselves in prison for refusing any measure of co-operation with the authorities, denounced Mensurius as a "traditore" or betrayer for his cowardice. MensuriusÕ archdeacon Caecilian was so offended by their attacks that in AD 304 he picketed the local prison to prevent food being taken to the confessors.

When Mensurius died in 311, Caecilian was quickly consecrated bishop by the urban Carthaginian bishops without waiting for the provincial bishops to arrive. Felix of Apthungi, one of the three urban bishops who performed the ceremony was widely believed to have been a traditore , surrendering actual books of scripture to be burned by the authorities during the persecutions.

The story is complicated by the presence of Lucilla, a devout, wealthy, and difficult lady who treasured a martyrÕs bone as a relic. Caecilian had rebuked for lavishing kisses on her relic during a communion service commemorating the faithful departed. Lucilla Ôwent off in a huffÕ we are told, and when Caecilian was consecrated bishop, she had her chaplain, Majorinus, appointed as a rival, with the support of the main body of Numidian bishops, on the grounds that CaecilianÕs ordination had been invalid, because it had been performed by a traditore.

The split showed that the North African Church had developed two quite distinct religious cultures. The Carthaginian, urban upper clergy took their cues from the bishop of Rome and saw themselves as part of an international church within the wider Roman Empire. The provincial church on the other hand, had become passionate, convervative, and African rather than Roman. They treasured the memories of their martyrs, as Cyprian and Tertullian had before them.

Theologically, the Donatists, named after their bishop Donatus, who succeeded Majorinus and was their most articulate spokesman, parted company from wider Roman Catholicism in their theology of the Church. They disagreed with Cyprian (and subsequently with Augustine), who taught that the grace of the Holy Spirit was a function of the clerical office, not of the priests as people. The Donatists, on the other hand, believed that the presence of the Holy Spirit in a priest depended on his being in a state of grace himself. Clergy who were not virtuous Ñ the traditores were the most obvious examples of those who had lost GodÕs grace Ñ could not properly baptise babies, turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of Holy Communion, or ordain other clergy. Since everyoneÕs salvation depended on receiving GodÕs grace through baptism and Holy Communion, Donatists had to make very sure that each of their priests were in a state of grace themselves, and had been properly ordained by bishops who were also in a state of grace. Neither unworthy priests, nor priests whose ordination had failed because it had been performed by an unworthy bishop could give the people the sacraments on which their salvation depended.

Politically the Donatists repudiated the link between Church and State Constantine had forged. For them the government was a part of the worldly structures that were inherently opposed to ChristÕs Church.

This fierce opposition between the church and the wicked world led the Donatists to espouse an optimistic view of the church. As time went on the Donatists extended their conviction that the clergy needed to be holy and in a state of grace, to a view in which the entire church needed to be similarly holy and in a state of grace. They came to believe that the church was a church of saints, and that each member had to remain holy or face expulsion from the church.

The Donatists also became characterized by a cult of martyrdom. They longed for the final and greatest outpouring of GodÕs grace, the death of the martyr, and greeted one another with the wish "may you gain your crown." [McManners ed., Oxford History of Christianity p. 43) They celebrated the anniversaries (called birthdays) of the death of martyrs. These became the earliest church calendars we know of.

During DonatusÕ lifetime Donatism became the dominant Christian church in North Africa, but its fortunes declined by the third generation. Late in fourth century and early in the fifth Catholic Christianity found formidable leadership in St Augustine, who spent a good bit of his episcopate addressing the problem of Donatism. At AugustineÕs death both Catholic Christians and Donatist Christians suffered under the rule of the Vandal invaders, probably encouraging them to accept one another more easily. Though Donatism did flourish again in the sixth century, the entire North African Church was weakened and compromised by the internecine fighting, and proved unable to withstand the attractions of Islam in the seventh century, when the Christian church disappeared entirely from western North Africa.

This page was based on the following sources, which you can consult for more detailed information:

Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967. p 123

The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity edited by John McManners. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. p. 44 (p. 49 in the paperback History of Christianity)

WHC Frend, The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. esp pp 488-92 & Ch 19

David F. Wright "The Donatists in North Africa" in The Eerdmans Handbook to the The History of Christianity, edited by Tim Dowley. Berkhamsted, Herts, England: Lion Publishing, 1977. pp 202-203.

Further links:

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7626/Donatist.html http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/05121a.htm

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Donatism