Against the Donatists

Notes

1. Cunctos nos Christianos, clarissimi fratres, Omnipotenti Deo fides una commendat. With these striking words St. Optatus opens his work against the Donatists. Fides una----the One Faith, untainted by any specific heresy. St. Optatus insists more than once, with emphasis, that he does not charge those against whom he writes with heresy (sin against faith), but with schism (sin against unity) (cf. i, 9; i, 12; iii, 9; v, i), and complains (i, 10) that Parmenian paid no attention to this essential distinction. St. Augustine, however, in his second Book against Cresconius explains the reasons why the Donatists of his time deserved to be called heretics, and in his Book on Heresies he hardly ever gives them any other name, explaining at length that their schism had now become a heresy. In this it did but follow a usual law. ‘Haeresis scisma inveteratum.’ These are the words of St. Augustine, and St. Jerome writes to the same effect: (Ep. ad Tit. iii) ‘An erroneous doctrine constitutes heresy; schism is separation from, the Church, through the departure of a Bishop (or of Bishops). But there is no schism which fails to frame for itself some heresy, that it may form a pretext for having departed from the Church.’ St. Augustine tells us further that Donatus the Great was heretical about the Trinity, though the fact was generally unknown to his followers. He also writes (Ep. clxiii) that he had heard that the Arians had endeavoured to make common cause with Donatists in Africa.
2. fratres. St. Optatus will proceed immediately to justify himself at considerable length for terming the Donatists his brethren, notwithstanding the fact that they were schismatics, and therefore his ‘separated brethren’ (i, 3; cf. iv, 1; iv, 2). So also St. Augustine: ‘Quotidie enim quibusdam non nobiscum in una Ecclesia, nec in iisdem Sacramentis constitutis, dicimus, Frater. Sodomitis etiam dixit Loth, Fratres (Gen. xix, 7), utique ad leniendum eorum animositatem, non ad cognitam fraternitatem, quasi unius haereditate consortium.’ (Gesta Collationis Carthag. diei iii, ccxlii). Cf. Aug. cont. Parm. iii, 2.
3. commendat. Ziwsa says that commendat here = tutelae Dei mandat (cf. the prayer of the Church, e.g. in Fest. S. Antonii, ‘Intercessio nos, quaesumus Domine, beati Antonii Abbatis commendet’). Casaubon thinks that it means either: ‘One Faith approves us all, who are Christians, to Almighty God’ (i.e. makes us pleasing to Him); or ‘One Faith proves that, in the sight of Almighty God, we all are Christians.’ (Cf. S. August. Brev. Coll. iii, 10: ‘Donatistae Scripturarum testimonio unam Ecclesiam commendaverant.’ The Donatists had proved by the witness of the Scriptures that the Church is One.) It must, however, be admitted that it is not possible to produce a passage, at least from the works of St. Augustine, in which commendare is used in this sense with the Dative, as above Omnipotenti Deo.)
4. Ziwsa following G reads Filium Dei Dominum. PRBvb have Filium Dei Deum.
5. G reads ex. All the other MSS. have per.
6. Cf. John iii, 13.
7. Itoriam P. Storiam RB. Victricem G. This last reading is evidently a desperate, though brilliant guess (‘He bequeathed victorious peace’). It is, however, adopted by Du Pin, who observes that it seems impossible to translate storiam. Ziwsa reads storiam, and tells us that it here means not as usually, a carpet, but a breastplate (Schutzwehr) (‘ He left peace as a breastplate’). Du Pin (not knowing P) did not see Itoriam. Evidently Ziwsa put it aside as a hopeless corruption. Yet without doubt it is the true reading, for, as Dom John Chapman O.S.B. has pointed out to me, this word has been discovered with its explanation by the learned Dom Germain Morin O.S.B. in an unpublished sermon of St. Augustine (see Revue Bénéd. 1895 xii, p. 388). ‘Loquebatur cum Apostolis suis ascensurus. Videamus qualia illis reliquit, sicut dici solet ITORIA. Humanae conditionis est quod dico, ut quando ab amicis amici deducuntur (are conducted a little way on their departure), quando ille qui deducitur discedere caeperit, quia necesse est ut relinquat in animo diligentium se nonnullam tristitiam, dat eis aliquid pecuniae, unde illis eadem dies, sicut dicitur, bene sit, id est, unde convivant, simul laetentur et iucundentur. Et haec quantulacunque pecunia quae datur, hilari nomine ITORIA nuncupatur (This small sum of money is jokingly called ‘Journey Money’). Quid dimisit Dominus Ihesus discipulis suis? Exultate, adtentite, quia ITORIA illa non solum illos inebriavit, sed ad nos usque manebit . . . (and further on) Eritis Mihi testes in Ierusalem. Primo ibi, ubi sum occisus, ibi ero gloriosus. In Ierusalem et in totam Iudaeam et Samariam. Et adhuc parum est. Et usque in totam terram. O! ITORIA! ‘ Thus we have two forms of Itoria (1) neuter plural with qualia and by itself, (2) feminine singular itoria illa . . . inebriavit. Evidently it is an adjectival form, in popular use (sicut dici solet, itoria), and doubtful number (1) as a substantive = neuter plural, (2) in feminine illa itoria, (sc. pecunia). St. Augustine makes Our Lord’s itoria (parting gift) to His disciples and to His Church (ad nos usque manebit) the right of preaching throughout the world; St. Optatus (in accordance with the purpose of his treatise) makes it Peace. ‘He left us Peace as His parting gift----to all of us, in the person of His Apostles.’
8. St. Optatus throughout his work continually uses the word Pax, to express the visible unity and communion of the Faithful in the Catholic Church; of course it also denotes their invisible union with God through grace.
9. Mark xiii, 37.
10. John xiv, 27.