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Against the Donatists

St Optatus of Milevis, tr. Vassall-Phillips, 1917

Appendix 12: Letter of the Proconsul Anulinus to Constantine

Report of Anulinus to the Emperor

My duty¹ has caused me, amongst the acts of my insignificance,² to send your Majesty’s heavenly letter,³ after I had received and venerated it,⁴ to Caecilian and his subordinate clerics⁵; at the same time I exhorted them that----now that Unity has been effected with general consent, since through the condescension of your Majesty their liberty was seen to be in every respect completely secure, and the Catholic Church was protected----they should apply themselves to the service of their holy Law and to the things of God, with due reverence. But a few days afterwards I was approached by certain persons, followed by a great throng of the populace, who held that Caecilian must be opposed, and presented me in my official capacity⁶ with two documents, one bound in leather and sealed, the other a libellus unsealed, and demanded with insistence that I should send them to the sacred and venerable Court of your Highness. This my littleness has been careful to do (preserving Caecilian in his position), and I have forwarded their Acts, that your Majesty may be in a position to determine everything. I have sent the two libelli, of which the one bound in leather has been endorsed Libellus Ecclesiae Catholicae criminum Caeciliani traditus a parte Maiorini.⁷ Also the one without a seal together with that in leather. Given on the fifteenth of April at Carthage when Constantine Augustus was for the third time Consul.

Notes

devotio mea.
parvitatis meae.
scripta caelestia. This letter has been preserved by Eusebius (x, 7). I subjoin a translation (Appendix xvi).
accepta atque adorata.
his qui sub eodem agunt, quique clerici appellantur. This is taken from Constantine’s own ‘heavenly letter.’
obtuleruni dicationi meae. Cf. Edictum Marcellini (Migne, P.L. ix. 819, 820): ‘epistulis ad meam dicationem currentibus,’ and ‘qui dicationi meae de publicis praestolantur officiis.’
Cf. p. 43, n. 3.