Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
Against the Donatists 233
Others submitted. These came to be branded by fellow Christians as traditores. The word literally means "handers-over"; it is also the origin of the word "traitor." To hand over the Scriptures was, as they saw it, a deed worthy of Judas, a betrayal of one's very Christianity. When Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, received orders to turn over his Bible, he sent local officials books by Christian heretics. This clever but less-than-heroic gesture earned him scorn later.
Things came to a head when some Christians from Abitina, a small town near Carthage, were arrested; one of Mensurius's deacons, Caecilian (d. before 343), set up a security detail that blocked food and support for the jailed Christian confessors. The reason is not clear, but when friends and relatives arrived to comfort the jailed, a violent scuffle broke out. The confessors, prior to their execution, sent out a letter with dire threats: "If anyone communicates with the traitors, that person will not have a share with us in the heavenly kingdom."3 This separatist ideology would define Donatist selfunderstanding. Donatists saw themselves as descendants of the martyrs, untouched by the contaminating sin of traditio.
It is not uncommon, once persecution ends, for a besieged community to turn in on itself and against itself, with angry finger-pointing and bitter recriminations. In-fighting of this sort plagued North African Christianity once Diocletian's persecution died down around 307. The controversial Caecilian was elected the new bishop of Carthage in 313 and was ordained by the three neighboring bishops. His enemies were outraged and set out to undo the election. They argued that one of the ordaining bishops, Felix of Abthungi, had been a traditor, invalidating Caecilian's ordination. The primate of Numidia, Secundus of Tigisis, arrived in Carthage and summoned a council of seventy bishops, who declared Caecilian's ordination null and void and chose a man named Majorinus as the new bishop of Carthage. Majorinus died not long after. His very able successor was Donatus (d. 355), the one for whom the schism was named.
This local squabble surfaced at one of the great turning points in Christian history. In 313, Constantine, the first Christian emperor, issued his edict of toleration, formally ending the persecution and allowing Christians freedom of worship. The two Carthaginian factions soon appealed to Constantine, who passed the case on to Miltiades, bishop of Rome (d. 314). Miltiades settled in Caecilian's favor and officially recognized him as the legitimate bishop of Carthage. The opposition pursued appeals, first to some Gallic
3. Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs 20. For a translation, see Maureen A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in Conflict in Roman North Africa, Translated Texts for Historians (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), 25–49.