DONAR
861
DONATISTS
"ollowed in the tram of a dishonest Bibliolatrj." S6 be was appointed one of the classical examin- the University of London. He died in London lO, 1861. Dr. Donaldson was a man of great in- ^, learning, and integrity, but bis critical facnlty iot equal to the tasks he ambitiously attempted. Ytia Jashar abounds in misapplied learning, un- ■1 criticism, and unsound exegesis, was amply a. on its appearance by Ewald and other German ars, and by Perowne and others in England. See utl of Sacred LUerature, July, 1855, article i, and L860, p. 206; CkrittUm Memembrancer^ Oct. 1855,
>iiar. See Thob.
>iiaria (avaBrjfiara, Lnke xxi, 5), gifts and of- ^ to adorn the Church. The term was also sp- in later times to gifts to the Church, which were on pillars, and set in public view as memorials me great mercy which men had received from — Bingham, Orig. Ecde$, bk. viii, ch. viii, § 1. ooation of Constantine, a forged imperial , published between A.D. 755 and 766, professing ntain a gift firom Constantino, in the year 824, of e and Italy to Sylvester, then Pope. The docu- : exists both in a Greek and Latin text, and was prodoced in a letter of Pope Adrian I to Charle- ne. Baronius defended its genuineness ; but its ioasness is now generally admitted. Its substance I follows : ** We give as a ftee gift to our most \eA father, Sylvester, the Pope, the dty of Bome, the cities of all Italy, as well as the cities of the r Western countries. To make room for him, we cate our sovereignty over all these provinces ; and withdraw from Bome, transferring the seat of our ire to Byzantium, since it is not just that a terres- empeior should retain any power where God has ed the head of religion." ** According to the le- i,'* says Gibbon, ''the first of the Christian emper- was healed of the leprosy, and purified in the wa- of baptism, by St. Sylvester, the Boman bishop ; never was physician more gloriously recompensed, royal proselyte withdrew from his seat and patri- ly of St. Peter; declared his resolution of founding )w capital in the East; and resigned to the popes the i cmdperpetual tooereignty of Bome, Italy, and the rinces of the West." The firaud was exposed by rentius Valla. For the "Donation*' and its liter- history, see Fabricins, BibUoth. Gnecfi, ed. Harles, S97 ; see also Gibbon, Decline and Fail, ch. xlix ; man, Latin Ckriitiamiy^ bk. i, ch. ii ; Elliott, Detin- on of Homamsm, bk. iH, ch. xiv ; Mttnch, Ueber die chute Schenkung Constantin dee Groteen (Freiburg I); Biener,Z>e CoUecHonibiu canonum eccUna Grce- [Berl. 1827).
>onatl8ts (Pars Vonati was the name they them- res assumed). During the last half of the third the first half of the fourth centuries there was a iblnation of elements at work in the bosom of the arch, which, in consequence of and in connection h peculiar forces operative on the outside, produced evere strain upon its stability and unity. During i period there were repeated and powerfhl centrif- il tendencies, which gave birth successively to the vatian, Meletian, and the Donatist schisms. The ward history of these schisms is long, and its re- te causes and outward details must be learned fh>m nrch histories.
C>f these movements, that of the Donatists in North rica was by Ikr the roost important and widest in influence. Substantially it had the same ground i character as the Kovatian. On this point Nean- r very clearly and judiciously says: "This schism le Donatist) may be compared, in many respects, th that of Novatian in the preceding period. In is, too, we see the conflict, for example, of Separa- m with Catholicism ; and it is therefore important,
in so Ikr as it tended to settle and establish the notion of the visible, outward unity of the Church, and of the objective element in things of religion and of the Church. That which distinguishes the present case is the reaction, proceeding out of the essence of the Christian Church, and called forth, in this instance, by a peculiar occasion, against the confounding of the ecclesiastical and political elements ; on which occa- sion, for the first time, the ideas which Christianity, as opposed to the papal religion of the state, had first made men distinctly conscious of, became an object of contentk>n withhi the Christian Church itself— the ideas concerning universal, inalienable human rights ; concerning liberty of conscience ; concerning the rights of tne conviction. The more immediate and local oc- ■ casion of these disputes lay in a certain spirit of fanati- cism, which, ever since the spread of Montanism, had prevaUed in I^orth Africa, and also in various circum- stances superinduced by the Diocletian persecution*' (Neander, Church Hitt. Bohn's ed. iii, 250). The sub- stance of what was at issue in this movement is given thus by Dr. Schaff : " The Donatist controversy was a conflict between Separatism and Catholicism; be- tween ecclesiastical purism and ecclesiastical eclecti- cism ; between the idea of the Church, as an exclu- sive community of regenerate saints, and the idea of the Church as the general Christendom of state and people. It revolved around the doctrine of the essence of the Christian Church, and in particular of the pred- icate of holiness [as in the Novatian controversy it revolved, ultimately at least, more round the predicate of unity]. It resulted in the completion by Augustine of the Catholic dogma of the Church, which had been partly developed bv Cyprian in his conflict with a sim< Uar schism" [the Novatian] (Schaff's Church Hid, ii, 865).