People Argued While the Roman World Burned

The clashes of the Donatists and Catholics show the dangers of partisanship

“St. Augustine arguing with donatists” painting by Charles-André van Loo. From Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

A Roman at the start of the 4th century CE would be a tired person. People in the empire had faced disease (the Cyprian Plague circa 250 to 270), internal violence against certain religious groups (the Decian and Valerianic persecutions), a crisis of leadership (the Imperial Crisis from 235 to 284), and various conflicts against external enemies. Christianity turned into a source of comfort for an increasing number of people in a grim world. North Africa, a relative oasis of calm in all of this, would split into two camps, not because of outside factors, but from a rift between neighbors who grew to despise each other.

Opinions change hands

During the Diocletianic Persecution (302–305 CE), the Roman emperor Diocletian passed various edicts to limit Christianity’s influence by destroying places of worship and executing recalcitrant believers. Clergy also had to hand over their sacred texts or face punishment, and several complied with this demand.

A Jan Luyken illustration imagines Diocletian’s persecutions. From Martyrs Mirror (1685). From Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

In 311 CE, a select group of clergy elected Caecilianus as the Bishop of Carthage. The Numidian bishops, who had not received an invitation to the meeting, had problems with this appointment. They alleged he was a traditor, a person who had collaborated with the Diocletian government. Others made their displeasure with the appointment clear in various ways. During Caecilianus’ communion service, an influential woman called Lucilla kissed a martyr’s bone instead of taking the wine or bread — a sign that she, like many of her fellow dissenters, rejected his authority.

To respond, the dissenters elected Majorinus as the Bishop of Carthage, all while Caecilianus was also still at his post. A schism had split North African Christianity in two. Majorinus died not long after, seemingly from natural causes, and Donatus Magnus stepped up to fill the role of the breakaways’ Bishop of Carthage. Donatus’ energetic support of the cause made him synonymous with the movement, to such a degree that it would become known as Donatism.

The Diocese of Africa within the larger Roman context in circa 300 CE. Carthage is located in the green section. By Mandrak from Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

The Numidian bishops appealed to Emperor Constantine to intervene in the matter. After several investigations, the Roman state designated Caecilianus as the legitimate bishop and declared him innocent of any wrongdoing. His opponents were not so sure, though.

Angles slide away

The Donatists resembled the Catholic Church in various ways. Their views on the Trinity aligned with the mainstream one. They also venerated saints. Their church buildings were often similar to other churches. Donatists even referred to themselves as Catholics, too.

The ruins of the Basilica of Vegesela, a Donatist church in the region formerly known as Numidia (photos from 1933). By Pierre Courcelle from Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

What set the Donatists apart is that they did not believe the Catholic Church had the prerogative to be the unquestioned arbiter of Christianity. This clashed with the contemporary Catholic view that, as the only institution that could claim descent through Saint Peter’s keys, it had authority to be the global church. Donatists argued that a person’s personal conduct determined whether they were holy and, from their standpoint, the way the traditores ingratiated themselves with their former persecutors, the Roman state, disqualified them.

To get a better idea of their beliefs, we need to look no further than what texts Donatists often cited to buttress their arguments. Matthew 24.11–14, in which Jesus talks to his disciples, comes up often:

And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.

The Donatists pointed to the Catholics’ conduct as those whose love had waned in those years. Because they are Jesus’ reported words, the Donatists put great stock in this prediction. Catholic writers, like Augustine, countered that the Donatists hadn’t yet disseminated their specific variant of the gospel all across the world, so those times were not yet upon them. Nonetheless, many Donatists still believed the judgement time had arrived or was close at hand because the Christian faith had spread across the Roman world.

People in the fields disperse

North Africa’s economic situation also played a role. Africa was a prosperous Roman province, with its agricultural producers being a vital source of sustenance for Rome’s massive population. Lamp oil was so bountiful and cheap that Africa produced various influential Christian thinkers — Tertullian (c. 160–225 CE), Cyprian (c. 200–258 CE), Augustine (354–430 CE) — because they could read and write deep into the night. In fact, Augustine lamented how expensive lamp oil had become in Italy compared with his home during the latter part of the 4th century CE.

A mosaic from Carthage that depicts the region’s fertility (circa 4th century CE). In the British Museum’s collection. By Carole Raddato from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Many people didn’t have a share in Africa’s wealth either, though. While the late Roman Empire faced pressures, the province’s wealthy individuals decreased their civic benefactions, which meant the local communities received less support. The estates of the wealthy became closed islands of prosperity in a sea of struggles.

When people worked at an estate, they often faced abuse and harsh working conditions. The centralized capitatio-iugatio tax, which was Diocletian’s attempt to create a more constant revenue stream for the empire, also tied workers to the land because the tax rate took into account the number of cultivators. The changes created a serf system in which there was little social mobility.

The Roman cup-bearers of Dougga mosaic. In the Bardo museum in Tunisia. By Jerzystrzelecki from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

A section of the Donatists took the law into their own hands to change the situation. Known as the Circumcellions by their enemies, they went to estates to free enslaved people, to creditors to rip up financial agreements, and attacked wealthy travelers and Catholic priests. Not all Donatists agreed with the violence, but Catholic writers, including Augustine, often framed the incidents as evidence of the depravity of the entire schismatic group’s character.

Bonds fray further

In 340s, the Circumcellions rose in revolt, which Count Taurinus and his Romans soldiers crushed during violent confrontations. The Circumcellions also likely aided Firmus, an Amazigh prince, in his ultimately unsuccessful revolt against the Roman authorities in circa 372 CE. Around two decades later, the Donatists might also have supported Gildo, an Amazigh general, after he promised agrarian reforms would be one of his priorities, but the Roman state also quashed this rebellion.

In 411 CE, the Roman emperor Honorius convened a council in Carthage to decide the Donatist issue once and for all. Flavius Marcellinus, a friend of Augustine, would be the arbitrator of the Council of Carthage. With this appointment, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and the Donatists aired their frustrations during the sessions. Despite this, the council’s ruling called for the suppression of the Donatists.

An early portrait of Augustine (6th century CE) in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. From Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

One episode of suppression occurred when a Roman tribune, Dulcitius, arrived in Thamugadi in 419 CE to enforce the surrender of its Donatist basilica. Bishop Gaudentius barricaded himself and his congregation inside of the building, determined to burn the building or take their own lives. Excavations at Thamugadi have uncovered no evidence of a great fire, so there is a possibility that the standoff had a peaceful resolution.

A factor that enjoyed little attention in contemporary sources was the Roman state’s violence against the Donatists. Some prominent Catholic clergy responded to criticism by stating the violence against the Donatists was justified because it was motivated by love, whereas the Circumcellions’ violence was unjust because it sprang from base desires.

Regardless of the alleged motivations, people on both sides did lose their lives during the rivalry between the Donatists and the Catholic Church. An inscription from the Roman settlement Ala Miliaria, in present-day Algeria, states how Catholics had killed a Donatist consecrated virgin with the name of Robba in 434 CE. She was well connected, since her brother was the Donatist bishop of Aquae Sirenses. It’s also another clue that suggests women were prominent in the Donatist church.

A seat at a council

By the time Robba died, North Africa was a very different place. In 429 CE, a Germanic tribe, the Vandals, had taken their belongings and families across the straits of Gibraltar, into Africa. Augustine, the great opponent of the Donatists, would lie in a sickbed in Hippo while the Vandals besieged the city. He passed away before his beloved home fell to the invaders.

The migration of the Vandal tribes. By O.Mustafin from Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

The intense religious divide in North Africa had opened a path for the Vandals. They used this to reach Carthage and capture it by 439 CE. With the loss of Africa, Rome lost its last breadbasket, seeing as Egypt was by then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. In 455 CE, the Vandals used their new territory as a staging ground for an attack on Rome itself, which led to another infamous sack of the city — the second one within half a century.

Rome’s desperation to retrieve Africa was clear when it prepared to attack the Vandals from Spain in 460 CE. Traitors, bankrolled by the Vandals, wrecked much of the invasion fleet before it could set sail again, though. Around 8 years later, a massive joint invasion fleet, comprising of Western Roman and Eastern Roman contingents, tried again to attack North Africa. The Vandals’ use of fire ships near Cape Bon prevented a landing near Carthage. These costly failures sucked Rome deeper into a quagmire, until the last emperor abdicated in 476 CE, when the Germanic tribes took over once and for all.

“Goths cross a river” painting by Évariste Vital Luminais (19th century CE). From Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

The clashes between the Catholics and Donatists had ramifications that reached far beyond Africa. To defuse the situation, the Catholic Church and Roman state did not listen to the concerns of the schismatics, and instead sought to bring them back into the fold with stereotyping and violence.

The Donatists used religion as a vehicle to air their concerns about inequality and corruption within the Roman state and in the ranks of the clergy, but the violence was difficult to control once out in the open. Divided into their respective corners by harsh rhetoric, it became harder for Donatists and Catholics to reach across the divide to find common ground. It is an explosive dynamic: the privileged characterize all those who want change as dangerous, and idealists measure people’s total worth according to stringent purity tests. In the end, humans transform into cyphers for each side to hate.

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