Gildo was terrorizing Africa, 401-402 A.D. Cf. Augustine, Contra Litteras (continued)
152 ST. AUGUSTINE are not Augustine's; and if you do not know but think that I delight in the possession of country houses, God knows, he understands what I feel about those country houses, what I suffer over them. He knows my moanings over the fact that he has deigned to impart to me something of the dove.
(2) Look, there are country houses. By what right do you claim the country houses? By divine or by human right? Let them answer that we have divine right in the Scriptures, human right in the laws of kings. By which does each man possess what he possesses? Is it not by human right? For by divine right "the Lord's are the earth and its fullness."'^ The poor and the rich God made from one and the same slime; and one and the same earth supports the poor and the rich. And yet by human right he says, "This country house is mine, this city house is mine, this slave is mine." By human right, then, by the right of emperors. Why? Because God has distributed these very human rights to the human race through the kings and emperors of the world.
(3) Do you want us to read the laws of the emperors and to act according to them in regard to the country houses? If you wish to possess by human right, let us recite the laws of the emperors; let us see if they wish anything to be possessed by heretics. "But what has the Emperor to do with me?"^' It is according to his right that you possess the earth. Or take away the rights of emperors and who dares to say, "That country house is mine or that slave is mine or this city house is mine?"
(4) But if the men have received the rights of kings in order that these possessions might be kept, do you wish us to recite the laws that you might delight that you have even one garden
75. Ps 23.1. 76. The Conference of Carthage, held in 411 A.D., at the order of the Emperor Honorius and under the presidency of his Comes, Marcellinus, among its provisions suppressing Donatism, confiscated all Donatist property to the Catholics. This gave rise to numerous disputes such as that mentioned here. Cf. Frend, Donatist Church, 275-289. But see Introduction, paragraphs (40) and (41).
77. This was the famous (or infamous) response made by Donatus himself in 347 A.D. to the legates of the Emperor Constans, Paul and Macarius. Cf. Optatus of Milevis, 3.3 (CSEL 26.73); Frend, Donatist Church, 177-178; and Berrouard, Homelies I-XVI, 882-883.