Chapter 353
Against the Donatists
the wrath of God with greater force and persistence, and you complain of it!
(2.5) You see, you are suffering from your own evil deeds, not for Christ, when you stir up violence against the peace of Christ. What kind of madness is it to claim the glory of martyrdom when you are being justly punished for your evil life and your deeds of brigandage? If you, private citizens, so boldly and violently force men either to accept error or to remain in it, how much greater right and duty have we to resist your outrages by means of the lawfully constituted authority, which God has made subject to Christ, according to His prophecy, and so to rescue unfortunate souls from your tyranny, to free them from long-continued false teaching, and to let them breathe the clear air of truth!49
An Assassination Plot
The Circumcellions once tried to assassinate Augustine during one of his trips outside Hippo. From Possidius of Calama, Life of St. Augustine:
(12) These armed Circumcellions frequently blocked the roads even against the servant of God, Augustine, when, upon request, he chanced to visit the Catholics whom he frequently instructed and exhorted. It once happened that, although the heretics were out in full force, they still failed to capture him. Through his guide's mistake, but actually by the providence of God, the bishop happened to arrive at his destination by a different road. He later learned that, because of this error, he had escaped impious hands. Thereupon, together with his companions, he gave thanks to God, his Deliverer.50
Augustine himself refers to the incident on several occasions. Here is one example. From Enchiridion (On Faith, Hope, and Charity):
(5.17) Benefit, likewise, has come to some through mistaking the road— but in traveling, not in morals. For example, it once happened that I took a wrong turn at a crossroads and thus did not pass by a certain place where an armed band of Donatists lay in wait for me, expecting me to come. The result was that I reached my destination, but by a long detour. On learning of the plot, I congratulated myself on my mistake and gave thanks to God. Who would not choose to be a traveler who made a mistake like this rather than the highwayman who made none?51
49. Ep. 105.2.3–2.5 (CSEL 34.2:596–98); trans. Parsons, FOTC 18:197–99. See ep. 28*.7 (Divjak), which reports that a bishop named Rogatus had his hand chopped off and tongue cut out.
50. Vita 12 (Geerlings, 46); trans. Muller and Deferrari, FOTC 15:86. 51. Enchiridion 5.17 (CCL 46:57); trans. Peebles, FOTC 2:382 (modified). In one of the Dolbeau sermons,
Government Intervention: Augustine's Change of Heart
We saw one excerpt from the treatise-length letter to Vincent of Cartenna earlier. In the same letter, Augustine traces out his change of mind on government coercion, how he had opposed his Catholic colleagues who wanted to call in governmental authorities to enforce existing (but often ignored) legislation against the Donatists, but how in the aftermath of the Edict of Unity (405) he reversed his view and came to appreciate that government-imposed unity might actually lay the groundwork for genuine conversion. From Letter 93:
(5.16) You see now, I think, that the point to be considered is not whether anyone is being forced to do something, but what sort of thing he is being forced to do, whether it is good or bad. Not that anyone can be good against his will, but by fear of enduring what he does not want, he either gives up the hatred that stands in his way, or he is compelled to recognize the truth he did not know. So through fear he repudiates the false doctrine that he formerly defended, or he seeks the truth which he did not know, and he willingly holds now what he formerly denied. It would perhaps be useless to say this in any number of words if it were not shown by so many examples. We see that not only these or those people, but many cities which were formerly Donatist are now Catholic, now detest the diabolical separation, and now ardently love unity. These became Catholic by the effect of that fear which displeases you, through the laws of the emperors from Constantine, to whom yours first accused Caecilian without cause, to the present emperors. And these with perfect justice order that Constantine's sentence be enforced against you, since you took him for judge and preferred his decision to that of the court of bishops.
(5.17) I have, then, yielded to the facts suggested to me by my colleagues, although my first feeling about it was that no one was to be forced into the unity of Christ, but that we should act by speaking, fight by debating, and prevail by our reasoning, for fear of making fake Catholics out of those whom we knew as open heretics. But this opinion of mine has been set aside, not because of opposing arguments, but by reason of proven facts. First of all, the case of my own city was set before me, which had been wholly Donatist, but was converted to Catholic unity by the fear of imperial laws, and which now holds your ruinous hatred in such disdain that one could believe it had never existed there at all.52 Similarly, many other cities were recalled to me by
Augustine also mentions the incident, noting that the Donatists "hate us, and if they can get the chance, they try to kill us at the hands of the Circumcellions. But because the Lord was at hand to help us, we escaped and for this we give thanks for the Lord's mercy" (s. 198.45).
52. "My own city": Augustine acknowledges here that his hometown of Thagaste had once been a Donatist stronghold, but probably after the forced unity in the late 340s, it shifted to the Catholic camp; so that Augustine grew up in a Catholic enclave.
name, and by these examples I recognized how truly the word of Scripture could be applied to this case: "Give an occasion to a wise man, and he will be wiser" (Prv 9:9). How many there are—as we know for a fact—who have been for a long time wishing to be Catholics, drawn by such manifest truth, but who kept delaying from day to day through fear of offending their families! And how many are held by the heavy bond of inveterate custom rather than by truth—something on which you have never relied—and thus fulfill the divine saying: "A stubborn slave will not be corrected by words, for, even if he shall understand, he will not obey" (Prv 29:19)! How many thought that the sect of Donatus was the true church because security made them too slothful, contemptuous, and unconcerned to acknowledge Catholic truth! How many were debarred from entering the Church by the reports of the evil-minded who kept saying that we place some unnamed thing on the altar of God!53 How many believe that it makes no difference to what section of Christianity a man belongs, and remain in the Donatist sect because they were born there and no one forced them to leave it and come over to the Catholic faith!
(5.18) For all these, the fear of the law promulgated by temporal rulers who serve the Lord in fear has been so beneficial that some now say: "This is what we wanted all along, but thanks be to God54 who has given us an opportunity to act at once, and has cut off all our little delays and postponements!" Others say: "We have known long since that this is true, but we have been held back by some force of habit; thanks be to the Lord who has broken our bonds and brought us under the bond of peace!" Others say: "We did not know that truth was here, and we did not want to learn it; but fear has made us alert to recognize it, the fear of being struck with the possible loss of temporal goods without any gain of eternal goods; thanks be to the Lord who shook off our sloth with the goad of fear, and made us seek in our anxiety for what we should never have troubled to know if we had been secure." Others say: "We were held back from entering the Church by false rumors which we could not know as false without entering, nor would we enter without being forced; thanks be to the Lord who has removed our anxiety by this scourge, who has taught us by experience what vain and baseless stories lying rumor has circulated about His church; by this we now believe that those charges, too, are false which the originators of this heresy made, since their successors have invented falsehoods which are so much worse." Others say: "We thought
53. "Unnamed thing on the altar": This is not clear, but it seems to refer to something reported by Optatus of Milevis, De schismate Donatistarum 3.12: During the persecution under Macarius and Paul, a rumor spread that the two imperial officials used to place an image on the altar during the Eucharist; Donatists claimed that this turned the Eucharist of the Catholics into a pagan rite (and thus demonic).
54. "Thanks be to God" (Deo gratias). This was a favorite Catholic slogan, intended to counter the Donatist slogan, "May God be praised" (Deo laudes). Augustine may well be echoing this clash of slogans in his refrain of Gratias Domino ("Thanks be to the Lord") in this paragraph.