Patristics Series 33 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006).
Against the Donatists 237 ing in mind the strict demands that dictated them, but, in their time, never caused, either directly or indirectly, any physical attack, still less any death. Augustine was not the father of [medieval] Augustinianism, nor was he responsible for Torquemada."11
Since the late nineteenth century, scholars have sought to understand the tenacity of the Donatist movement, the loyalty and violence it inspired. Some have suggested that religion was simply a veneer for what was, in reality, a sort of African nationalism, a native resistance movement to Roman colonialism. Others have applied economic and sociological analyses to Donatism, highlighting reports of clashes between rich and poor, town and country, Latin-speaking and Punic-speaking.12 These interpretations have faced withering criticism, at least as global explanations.13 The current consensus acknowledges social, economic, and political factors in the mix, but insists on the centrality of the religious. The Donatists tenaciously clung to an oldfashioned view of Church, famously articulated by the great hero of North African Christianity, Cyprian, the bishop-martyr of Carthage (d. 258), who drew strict lines between Church and world, famously insisting: "there is no salvation outside the Church."14 It is no accident that Augustine felt compelled to address not only Donatists, but also the venerated grandfather of North African theology. On the far side of Constantine, the Church had grown large and messy, and Cyprian's old-fashioned view of a Church "without wrinkle or spot" did not match reality. The reality was a discomfiting mix of good and bad, of fervent and lukewarm. This corpus permixtum Church was one Augustine came to defend. It is not without irony that Augustine took some exegetical cues on this from a maverick Donatist theologian, Tyconius, whose own views on this very point led his Donatist bishop, Parmenian, to excommunicate him.
11. Lancel, Saint Augustine, 304. 12. See W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); Jean-Paul Brisson, Autonomisme et christianisme dans l'Afrique romaine de Septime Sévère à l'invasion vandale (Paris: Boccard, 1958). For a survey, see Congar, BA 28:25–48.
13. Brown, "Religious Dissent in the Later Roman Empire: The Case of North Africa," in Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine, 237–59; R. A. Markus, "Christianity and Dissent in Roman Africa: Changing Perspectives in Recent Works," Studies in Church History 9 (1972): 21–36.
14. Cyprian, ep. 73.21.2. See Brent Allen, trans., St. Cyprian of Carthage: On the Church: Select Letters, Popular Patristics Series 33 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006).
The Legacy of Cyprian
Both Donatists and Catholics lionized the memory of Cyprian, the heroic third-century bishop of Carthage. Both also owed deep debts to his theology. In the wake of the ferocious but short-lived persecution of the Emperor Decius in 250, Cyprian organized North African bishops via councils to deal as a united front with Christians who had lapsed during the persecution. The initial debate was over what to do with the lapsed: reconciliation by public penance? or lifelong excommunication? Cyprian led the bishops to agree on reconciliation and hammered out guidelines for bringing the lapsed back into communion. But he faced hardliners, known as Novatianists, who severed communion with Cyprian and his colleagues. Cyprian responded with one of the most influential treatises in the history of Christianity, On the Unity of the Church (De unitate ecclesiae). He argued that only those in communion with the unified Church, as led by the college of bishops, could be saved; neither schismatics nor anyone they baptized could claim to be within the one Church. Cyprian noted that there were no survivors outside Noah's ark. From Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Church:
(4) The beginning proceeds from unity, that the Church of Christ may be shown to be one. This one Church, the Holy Spirit in the Canticle of Canticles designates in the person of the Lord and says: "One is my dove, the chosen one of her that bore her" (Sg 6:8). Does he who does not hold this unity think that he holds the faith? Does he who strives against the Church and resists her think that he is in the Church, when too the blessed Apostle Paul teaches this same thing and sets forth the sacrament of unity saying: "One body and one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God" (Eph 4:4–6).
(5) This unity we ought to hold to firmly and defend, especially we bishops who watch over the Church, that we may also prove that the episcopate itself is one and undivided. . . . The Church [is] bathed in the light of the Lord . . . which is diffused everywhere, and the unity of the body is not separated. She extends her branches over the whole earth in fruitful abundance; she extends her richly flowing streams far and wide; yet her Head is one and her source is one, and she is the one mother copious in the results of her fruitfulness. By her womb we are born; by her milk we are nourished; by her spirit we are animated.
(6) The spouse of Christ cannot be defiled; she is uncorrupted and chaste. She knows one home; with chaste modesty she guards the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God; she assigns the children whom she has created to the Kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress is separated from the promises of the Church, nor will he who has abandoned the Church arrive at the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He who does not have the Church as mother cannot have God as Father. If whoever was outside the ark of Noah was able to escape, he too who is outside the Church escapes. The