Augustine (1972; reprint: Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 237–59.
decreed a union of the two churches and attached stiff penalties for noncompliance. While erratically enforced, it took its toll, and a number of Donatist clergy and whole congregations came over to the Catholic side. The climax took place in June 411 at the Conference of Carthage. The government summoned the two sides to meet for one final definitive judgment. It was a momentous affair, with exactly 284 bishops from each side, facing off against one another. The imperial commissioner, Flavius Marcellinus, presided over the sometimes raucous gathering with scrupulous procedural fairness. We have the raw, unedited stenographic minutes, and they offer a remarkable "group photo" of each side.8 We can listen in on noisy debates, glimpsing Augustine going toe-to-toe with Donatist spokesmen like Petilian of Constantine. We also glimpse rank-and-file bishops on both sides, and the Conference's roll call has enabled scholars to reconstruct the precise geographical spread and strength of each church. On June 26, 411, Marcellinus handed down the verdict that was all but a foregone conclusion from the outset: the Catholics were the one Church of North Africa. In its wake, two churches were forcibly united. There would be holdouts and flamboyant gestures of protest, like Gaudentius of Thamugadi, who threatened to gather his congregation into his basilica and burn it down in a mass suicide. But in the main, Donatist resistance collapsed, and Augustine and his colleagues had to grapple with the messy pastoral consequences of integrating the two congregations.
Over these years, Augustine sketched a theological justification for religious coercion. He openly admitted his own change of heart (see excerpts below), but came to see government coercion as legitimate and theologically defensible. Beneath this sudden volte face, there were deeper, long-simmering roots: reflections on suppressing paganism; intricate meditations on a wealth of Scripture texts; philosophic probings on free choice and its limits.9 Still, his expositions proved an ominous legacy to the medieval Church, leading some twentieth-century scholars to brand him "the first theorist of the Inquisition."10 Interpretations vary, but as Serge Lancel, a leading scholar of the Donatist controversy, has cautioned: "these texts must be read while keep-
8. See Lancel, Saint Augustine, 293–304. Lancel is the expert on this vast material, having edited the critical edition of the Gesta conlationis carthaginensis (CCL 149A) and translated it in its entirety, together with abundant notes: Actes de la Conférence de Carthage en 411, SC 194, 195, 224, and 373 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1972–1991). About half of the manuscript with the complete Gesta is unfortunately missing, preserving the minutes only from the first half; its surviving table of contents does offer a chapter-by-chapter précis of what is missing. Augustine himself took the unwieldy minutes and edited them down to a digestible (though biased) form in his Breviliculus conlationis cum Donatistis. In one of the Divjak letters, Augustine notes that some churches had the minutes publicly read aloud during Lent (ep. 28*.2–3).
9. Peter Brown, "St. Augustine's Attitude to Religious Coercion," in Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (1972; reprint: Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 237–59.
10. Markus, "Coge Intrare: The Church and Political Power," Saeculum, 133–53.