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Updated: May 16, 2025
It is possible that Patricius interfered this time in a more decided way. Just at this period Catholicism was in an unfavourable situation. The short reign of Julian had started a violent pagan reaction. Everywhere the temples were reopening, the sacrifices beginning again. Moreover, the Donatists secretly aided the pagans.
He knew that Numidia and a good part of Africa were in the hands of the Donatists; that they had a rival primate to the Catholic primate at Carthage; that they had even sent a Pope of their community to Rome. In a word, they were in the majority. Everywhere a dissenting Church rose above the orthodox Church, when it did not succeed in stifling it altogether.
They belonged to an estate, or a quarter of a town, where no other faith than theirs had ever been professed. They were Donatists like their employers, like their neighbours, like the other people of the cof to which they had belonged from father to son. The theological side of the question left them absolutely indifferent.
Augustine was for a time a Donatist, but his truth-loving spirit soon discovered the real character of Donatus, and then he became his active and uncompromising opponent. It was probably as a protest against the arrogance of the Donatists, and in deference to Augustine's wish, that the clause was inserted.
Donatus, Bishop of Casa Nigra, was the foremost of these Numidian malcontents, and from him the sect of Donatists took its name; they denied the orders of those ordained by Cæcilianus, and hence the validity of the Sacraments administered by them.
This article appears to have first found place in the Creed as a protest against the tenets of a sect called the Donatists, from Donatus their leader. Circumstances put powers of excommunication and persecution at his disposal, which he directed against those who refused to become his followers.
He adds, "Now I am only contending for the fact, that the communion of Rome constitutes the main body of the Church Catholic, and that we are split off from it, and in the condition of the Donatists." The other replies by denying the fact that the present Roman communion is like St. Augustine's Catholic Church, inasmuch as there must be taken into account the large Anglican and Greek communions.
Augustine in controversy with the Donatists to the same effect; viz. that, as being separated from the body of the Church, they were ipso facto cut off from the heritage of Christ. And he quotes St. Cyril's argument drawn from the very title Catholic, which no body or communion of men has ever dared or been able to appropriate, besides one.
After a good deal of skirmishing and hesitation on the side of the schismatics, the Conference met at Carthage in June of the year 411, under the presidency of an Imperial commissioner, the tribune Marcellinus. Once again, the Donatists saw themselves condemned. Upon the report of the commissioner, a decree of Honorius classed them definitely among heretics.
Moreover, the Council of Arles declared that the character of him who confers the Sacraments has no influence whatever on their validity. Thus, baptism and ordination, even conferred by a traditor, were canonically sound. This decision was regarded as an abominable heresy by the Donatists. As a matter of fact, there was an old African tradition, accepted by St.
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