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Let us begin by making clear what we mean by " The West." It is the
western half of the Roman Empire as Gratian reorganised it in 379, the
Pretorian Prefectures of Italy and the Gauls, the dioceses of Italy,
Rome, Africa, Gaul, Spain and Britain, all Europe west of the Rhine,
south of the Danube and west, roughly, of the meridian of 20 deg. E.
with, in Africa, the modern Morocco, Tunis and Tripoli. The West had
not been created a separate empire by Diocletian's far-reaching reforms
in the administration. It was, in his time, simply the sphere of
jurisdiction of the junior of the two partners who, henceforward, were
jointly to share the indivisible imperium?.
This new system was only more or less preserved in the next hundred
years. For thirteen years (324-337), under Constantine the Great, the
Empire had but a single emperor; and after a short interval it was
again united under his son Constantius II (351-361). Valentinian I
divided it once again in 364, and so it remained until the
assassination of Valentinian II nearly thirty years later. This emperor
left no heir, and his eastern colleague, mastering the usurper who had
murdered Valentinian, now became sole emperor of the Roman world. This
was Theodosius, called the Great, destined, though he could not know
it, to be the last man to rule effectively the vast heritage in which,
since the days of Augustus, the lands that encircle the Mediterranean
had been politically and culturally united. Theodosius died (January
28, 395) prematurely, only a few months after his final establishment,
and within ten years the forces, to ward off which the best efforts of
every great mind in the last hundred years had been directed, surged up
yet once again, this time to have their will. They were destined --
these forces which, carelessly and none too accurately, we have come to
lump together as the Barbarian Invasions -- so to transform the West
that, in the end, it became a new thing, politically and culturally. In
that long process political unity disappeared and the Western Emperor,
too, who was its symbol and its source. The Catholic Church survived.
To understand what this meant we need to recall how much of Catholicism
there was to survive; we must survey the Catholic achievement in the
West at the moment when the Barbarian Invasions began, describe the
history of the Church in the West between the act of Constantine which
definitely gave it legal security and the death of the last great
personality whom that new age of the Christian Empire produced, St.
Augustine. It is the story of Catholicism in Africa, perhaps the most
Catholic province of the West, slowly shaken to pieces by the terrible
experiences of the long Donatist schism; the story of Spain similarly
disturbed but in less degree by the friends and the enemies of
Priscillian; the story of the first attempts to evangelise what was the
least Catholic part of all -- the countrysides of Gaul -- and of the
Roman See's careful organisation of new means through which to develop
the exercise of its traditional primacy. It is the story, too, of a
great dogmatic conflict about the fundamentally important truth of the
nature of the divine activity in the soul’s progress towards God. It is
the story, finally, of the life work of St. Augustine, the greatest
mind as yet given to the Church.
The Donatist Schism, which, in the fourth century, wrought as much
damage to the Church in Africa as did the contemporary Arian trouble to
the Church in the East, was a legacy from the persecution of
Diocletian. Africa, on that emperor's partition of the State, fell
within the jurisdiction of Maximian and although with Maximian's
abdication (305) the persecution practically ceased, it had been, for
the two years it lasted, a very bitter reality indeed. The Church had
suffered particularly from a very stringent inquisition after the
sacred books and vessels; and a very great proportion of the numerous
nominal apostasies which occurred, had taken the form of surrendering
the sacred books and vessels for profanation and destruction.
Against such traditores, now more or less repentant, there was the same
indignant feeling that had shown itself fifty years before in the time
of St. Cyprian against the semi-apostates of the persecution of Decius.
In Egypt, too, and in Rome, the Church was experiencing a similar
period of strain. And, in Africa, as elsewhere, amongst those accused,
or suspected, of thus throwing the holy things to the Pagans were a
number of the bishops.
One such episcopal suspect was the Bishop of Carthage, the Primate of
Africa himself, Mensurius. Whatever the degree of his apostasy, [ ]
Mensurius had had to face from a number of those whose loyalty won them
imprisonment -- the confessors -- the same kind of trouble that had
marked the beginning of St. Cyprian's episcopate. History was repeating
itself; the confessors, once again, were endeavouring to subordinate
episcopal authority to their own personal prestige. The bishop had to
take disciplinary action. He made careful distinction between the real
victims of the persecution and those who, in danger of the law for
other, less avowable, reasons, now used their faith to win alms and
help from the charity of the faithful, or who were in prison as the
inevitable result of their own acts of bravado. Whereupon the
self-created and self- glorified " confessors" declared him cut off
from communion with them and therefore from the Church.
Mensurius died in 311. In his place the Church elected the deacon
Cecilian who had been his chief ally in the recent troubles, and to
whom there had fallen the unpleasant task of carrying out the details
of the late bishop's policy in respect of the rebellious " confessors."
Immediately all the latent hatreds fused. There were the " confessors,"
now long freed from prison, and their cliques; there were Cecilian's
rivals, embittered since his election; there were his predecessor's
trustees whom Cecilian had, at the eleventh hour, just been able to
foil in a scheme of embezzlement; there was a pious and wealthy woman
-- Lucilla -- mortally offended by Cecilian's refusal to enthuse over
her private cult of her own privately canonised " confessor"; there
were the bishops of Numidia, already embittered with Mensurius and very
willing to embarrass his successor. Finally, there was Donatus, Bishop
of Casae Nigrae in Numidia, but living now in Carthage, a born leader
of men with a genius for organisation and propaganda. He it was who
organised the party, and from him it has its name.
The discontented appealed, then, against Cecilian's election; and the
Primate of Numidia, whom it in no way concerned, came into Carthage
with seventy bishops to try the case. Cecilian ignored the " council’s
" summons; he was declared to be an intruder. As " successor " to
Mensurius the assembled bishops, and their motley of cranks and
fanatics, elected one of Lucilla's clerics, half-chaplain,
half-secretary, the lector Maiorinus. But the most serious feature of
the affair was not the mere fact that a second Bishop of Carthage had
been intruded, but the theological basis by which the intrusion was
justified and Cecilian condemned.
Cecilian’s consecrator had been the Bishop of Aptonga, Felix; and Felix
of Aptonga, it was alleged, had in the recent persecution been among
the traditores. Such apostasy, declared the electors of Maiorinus, a
fall from grace, entailed necessarily the loss of all spiritual power
in the apostate. Felix could no longer be a means of grace: he could no
longer baptise, no longer ordain, nor consecrate. It was the old theory
of St. Cyprian which Rome had condemned so vigorously, which he had
died without retracting, and which had survived him as a peculiar
tradition of the African Church, to be used now against his own
legitimately elected successor. Cecilian was, then, no bishop,
according to this theory; the priests he ordained were no priests; the
sacrifices they offered a mere parade, their baptisms a ceremony only.
Whoever depended on Cecilian ceased by the fact, necessarily
inevitably, to be in the Church at all. Whence from the very beginning
of the schism a terrible aggressive bitterness on the part of the
schismatics; and within a very short time the quarrel within the Church
had become a problem of public order. The civil authority could not but
intervene.
Cecilian was elected in 311, Maiorinus in 312 -- in the October of
which year, Africa, by the battle of the Milvian Bridge, came under the
control of Constantine. It was the very moment of the emperor's
conversion, and to arrange the religious troubles of the province was
one of his first concerns. He decided in favour of Cecilian, and the
letter to the imperial Vicar of Africa, notifying this decision, is
interesting witness to the emperor's high conception of his new role as
the Church's protector. " I must admit," he wrote, " that I do not feel
free to tolerate or to ignore these scandals, which may provoke the
Divinity not only against the human race but against myself. For it is
an act of the divine good pleasure which has chosen me to rule the
world. Should I provoke Him, He may choose another. True and lasting
peace I can never achieve, nor can I indeed ever promise myself the
perfect happiness which comes from the good will of God Almighty, until
all men, united in brotherly love, offer to the most holy God the
worship of the Catholic faith."
Constantine, thirty years of age, had marched from victory to victory
ever since, on his father's death, he had forced himself on the other
emperors as his successor. He was now, thanks to the unfamiliar nature
of the problem, to meet a decisive check. His dual role of head of the
State and protector of the Faith, his double anxiety for public order
and the unity of the Church, were to be his undoing.
He began (313) by recognising Cecilian and ordering the local
authorities to effectuate the dispossession of the Donatists where
these were in power. The Donatists appealed against the decision,
alleging the invalidity of Cecilian's ordination and asking for judges
from among the bishops of Gaul; and Constantine agreed that the
question should be reopened. He chose three Gallic bishops, ordered
others, Italians, to be added to them and with the pope at the head of
the tribunal the affair was solemnly judged at Rome (October, 313).
This episcopal court, sitting in the Lateran (the first appearance in
ecclesiastical history of that famous palace), heard both sides and
declared that Donatus had not proved his case. Cecilian was,
undoubtedly, the lawfully elected Bishop of Carthage.
The Donatists appealed once more. The affair was spreading rapidly, and
already, in most of the African sees, the Catholic bishop had a
Donatist competitor. Constantine ordered a new enquiry. Its subject
this time was not Cecilian but his consecrator, the alleged traditor
Felix of Aptonga, and the enquiry was an affair of State, conducted by
the imperial officials in the courts. The police books of the time of
the persecution were produced; the magistrate who had ordered the
search and the arrest of Felix appeared to give evidence. It was proved
that Felix was innocent, that he had in fact never even been arrested
during the persecution, and also it transpired that the Donatists had
been busy forging an official certificate of Felix's guilt. This
evidence the emperor sent to Gaul where, at Aries, a great council from
all the West had been convoked to adjudicate on the matter once more.
The council (August, 314) examined the whole affair and, noting the
Donatists as " crazy fanatics, a danger to Christianity," it declared
for Cecilian.
The Donatists appealed yet again, and for a third time Constantine
listened to them. He summoned both Cecilian and Donatus [ ] to Brescia,
and while he kept them there, sent to Carthage a commission to see if,
with both of the leaders away, the rival factions could not be
reconciled. Only when this was found impossible and the commission had
reported that a decision must be given, did he judge. And once more,
after another examination, he decided for Cecilian (November, 316).
This decision Constantine followed up by an order that the churches
which the Donatists held were to be restored to the Catholics, and that
the Donatists were to be forbidden to meet.
Constantine's unwillingness to enforce the judgements of the different
judges to whom he had referred the matter and his readiness, time and
again, to reopen it, are to be put down to. his anxiety for the
preservation of public order. He knew his Africa, and knew that this
was no mere question of a theologians' quarrel. It was, then, with the
greatest reluctance that he issued the orders which were the logical
consequence of the judgement, and the reception which met them must
have seemed to justify his hesitation. Everywhere there were riots,
destruction and bloodshed; and nowhere more of it all than in Numidia
where, in the five years of the agitation, the Donatists had gained the
upper hand and had driven the Catholics under.
The movement, like Monophysitism a century later in Egypt, was
beginning to draw to itself all that survived of the native tradition
below the veneer of Roman civilisation, all that life so long exploited
for the benefit of the cosmopolitan capitalist and adventurer, ancient
social hatreds which would find in this religious crusade a long
awaited opportunity, and which would turn it very soon into a peasants'
war of rapine and murder. Wherever the Donatists gained ground, indeed,
there soon appeared, as the militant auxiliaries of their bishop, the
organised bands of the Circumcellions.
It is not easy to find, in later history, a parallel which would serve
to explain them. They were nominally Christian, fanatically attached to
their own interpretation of the Gospel’s social teaching,
self-appointed judges and avengers of social inequality, rigorist in
matters of morality in the narrow sense, and wholly unconcerned with
its obligations where these stood in the way of their customary
procedure. Armed with bludgeons they roamed the countrysides, ravaging
the estates of the wealthy, compelling assent by outrage and terror,
with forever on their lips the incongruous war cry of Deo Laudes. Their
dearest aspiration was to die for the Faith, and if, since there were
no longer any persecutors, this was now a matter of some difficulty,
then to die at any rate and to seek death at the hands of the chance
passer-by. So the tragicomic spectacle, at times, of the peaceful
citizen bidden to murder the fanatic under the menace of the like fate
for himself. Donatism did not invent the Circumcellions. Their
extravagance was a local product of the spirituality of the century,
akin to the extravagances of the undisciplined pioneers of monasticism
in the deserts further to the East. But Donatism, with its insistence
that the Catholics were laxists, the descendants of traditores, and
with its profession of a higher and more rigorous sanctity, rallied
these bands to the schism. As long as the schism lasted they were the
picked agents of its propaganda, terrorists who came to hold whole
provinces in their grip. Wherever they gained the upper hand the
Catholics who held firm were massacred, those who yielded, re-baptised,
and, if clerics, re-ordained. The churches which escaped destruction
were washed and re-washed to purify them from the effects of the rites
of the traditores, the Blessed Sacrament consecrated by Catholics
thrown to the dogs. In the days of the Donatist power whole provinces
laboured under this tyranny.
Under these circumstances the policy of repression speedily developed
into a local civil war, which another war of propaganda kept active and
alive for years; and at last when, in 321, the Donatists made an appeal
for toleration, Constantine granted it. He did so in letters which make
no secret of his disgust and contempt for the sect. They are not to
enjoy the privileges which the Catholics have; nevertheless they may
live, and live as Donatists; the Catholics he exhorts to remember the
Gospel and the duty of pardoning, and even of loving, those who hate
them; the Donatist bishops were freed from prison: and the movement
proceeded to consolidate what it had gained.
The regime of tolerance inaugurated by Constantine lasted for just over
twenty-five years until his son, Cons tans, in 347, felt himself strong
enough to pick up the long-standing challenge. For that quarter of a
century had been for the Donatists- especially in Numidia -- a period
of licence, in which their violence had had full play. Now at last the
Government proposed to come to the aid of the oppressed Catholics. It
needed an army to execute the edict. Once more there were riots and
massacres, but finally the Donatist bishops were rounded up and exiled,
their churches handed over to the Catholics, and for fifteen uneasy
years there was peace.
That peace endured until Julian the Apostate, in the acknowledged hope
of embarrassing Catholicism, recalled the exiles. Their return was the
signal for a renewed reign of terror, and although Julian died the next
year (363), his successor, Valentinian I, did not reverse this part of
his policy. Valentinian was indeed a Catholic, but his religious belief
was most carefully kept out of his public policy. Religious disputes,
he held, were the bishops' affair, and he declined to take official
notice of them. With his accession there set in for the African Church
the worst period of its history so far. From the State it no longer
received the protection of a privileged party. Donatist and Catholic
were alike in the State's regard.
The Church was dependent entirely on its own resources and unhappily
these, at the moment, were not great. Notably it suffered from a lack
of leaders, and from a hierarchy in which the proportion of nullities
was unduly high. Restitutus, the Catholic primate, had even played a
prominent part in that Council of Rimini which a few years earlier
(359) had capitulated to the Arian Constantius II, while the Donatist
primate -- Parmenian -- was a man of real ability, an organiser, a
scholar and a good controversialist. His one competent Catholic
opponent was the Bishop of Milevis, Optatus. But despite the logic of
Optatus, and despite the jealousy that tore the Donatists into rival
factions, and despite the differences which led to the expulsion of
their greatest writer Tyconius, the schism maintained its gains. In 372
there was a great native rising against the Roman power. Many of the
Donatists were implicated, and henceforward the government of
Valentinian was a little less neutral; but for all that, and especially
in Numidia, the Donatist supremacy was far from destroyed.
Then, as the century came to an end, three things happened which
promised to reverse the history of the thirty years since Julian. In
390 Parmenian died, after ruling his church for thirty-five years, and
the Donatists were never again able to produce a leader of his ability.
Two years later, by the death of Valentinian II, Africa came under the
rule of Theodosius the Great, a convinced and enthusiastic Catholic, a
stern Spaniard for whom compromise and half measures had no meaning.
But more important, by far, than either of these events was the entry
into Catholic life of St. Augustine, ordained priest in 391, Bishop of
Hippo from 396.
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