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Against the Donatists

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

Book 1, The Letter of the Donatist Bishops to the Emperor Constantine, in Which They Ask…

I hear that some of your party, in their love of disputation, produce documents. But we have to ask which of these are worthy of trust, which are in accordance with reason, which agree with the truth¹? It may be that your documents----if indeed you have any----will be found to be stained with falsehoods. Our documents are proved to be true by the rival arguments and pleadings of the parties, by the final judgements, and by the letters of Constantine.

With regard to that which you ask of us:
‘What have Christians to do with kings, or Bishops with the palace?’

If it be a crime² to be acquainted with kings, the whole of the odium falls upon you, for your fathers Lucianus, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius and the rest, when the Emperor Constantine was still without any knowledge of these affairs, addressed a petition to him, of which I will transcribe a copy³:
‘O Constantine, most excellent Emperor, since thou dost come of a just stock, and thy father (unlike other Emperors) did not persecute Christians,⁴ and Gaul is free from this wickedness, we beseech thee that thy piety may command that we be granted judges from Gaul; for between us and other Bishops in Africa disputes have arisen; Given by Lucianus, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius and the rest of the Bishops who adhere to Donatus.’⁵

Notes

confibulent. RBG have confabulent, vb confabulentur. Casaubon conjectures confibulentur. Confibulare is a Low Latin word for to buckle to (from Fibula)----literally here, ‘buckle on to the truth.’
si nota est.
precibus rogaverunt, quarum exemplum infrascriptum est. Cf. S. Aug. Ep. lii, 5; lxxvi, 2.
Constantine Chlorus had the command of Gaul as Caesar, and, being almost a Christian, did not put the decrees of persecution in force.
et ceteris Episcopis partis Donati. Mgr. Duchesne (Le Dossier du Donatisme, p. 25) (who takes for granted the existence of Donatus, Bishop of Black Huts, see note 3, p. 45) thinks that either these words did not belong to the original document and were added by Optatus as a resume of the signatures, or that Optatus deliberately (‘se soit cru permis d’y substituer’) changed the word Maiorini to Donati, since by the time when Optatus wrote, pars Donati had become the usual and recognised designation of the Donatist party. Du Pin had already made the same suggestion (‘ipse Optatus nomen notius substituit in locum antiqui ‘). But neither Du Pin nor Duchesne can have adverted to the fact that Optatus later on (iii, 3) founds an argument in two separate passages upon the use which he supposed the Donatist clerics to have made of the expression partis Donati in this petition. The difficulty concerning the employment of these words at this period is twofold. (1) The party could hardly have been yet termed pars Donati. We do not hear of any Donatus as in any sense their leader until the Synod under Miltiades. (2) We read in the Gesta Coll. Carthag. (diei iii, ccxxx) that two libelli were sent to Constantine, the first of which was endorsed ‘Libellus Ecclesiae Catholicae criminum Caeciliani traditus a parte Maiorini’ (cf. also S. Aug. Ep. lxxxviii). For those who believe that Majorinus was dead and Donatus was Bishop of Carthage before the Synod under Miltiades commenced (see note 3, p. 45) the objection raised against the words Partis Donati would at once vanish, were it not for the second difficulty----the difficulty arising from the fact that the Gesta Collationis Carthagiensis and the testimony of St. Augustine prove beyond dispute that this document was presented ex parte Maiorini. ‘Quinto loco haec acta sunt. Recitatae sunt duae relationes . . . una quae ostendit Maiores Donatistarum id est de parte Maiorini’ (Brev. coll. diei tert. xii). Balduinus falls back on the ingenious hypothesis that the first document was endorsed de parte Maiorini, the second de parte Donati. But unfortunately for this view St. Augustine (id.) gives a brief summary of this second document, which shows that it was by no means identical with that set out by St. Optatus. After everything has been weighed, we can only suppose either that (as seems to me most probable) the copy (exemplum) seen by Optatus really contained the words partis Donati, or that he wrote from memory and through a slip (not unnatural under the circumstances of his time and place) wrote Donati when, if his memory had not played him tricks, or rather if he had scrutinised his original more carefully, he would have written Maiorini. We know that on several occasions he made similar slips when quoting from Holy Scripture.
Dom John Chapman writes as follows: (Donatus the Great and Donatus of Casae Nigrae, Rev. Bénédictine, Janvier 1909): ‘The Bishops who appealed to Constantine were Lucian, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius and others. There is no Donatus and no Majorinus among the five whose names are preserved. St. Optatus calls them proleptically the Pars Donati, but the Proconsul in his letter to the Emperor called them the Pars Maiorini [see Appendix, p. 421]. As the name of Majorinus does not occur in the first place, he may have just died, and Donatus will have taken his place before the ten accusers started for Rome. The Council was in that case a trial of the two claimants Donatus and Caecilian. The one was acquitted, the other condemned, This is a natural sequence.’