302 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311 590.
emperor Constaatine — tlie first instance of such appeal, and a Btep wliich they afterward bad to repent. The emperor, who was at that time in Ganl, referred the matter to the Roman bishop Melchiades (Miltiades) and five Galilean bishops, before whom the accused Csecilian and ten African bishops from each side were directed to appear. The decision went in favor of CseciKan, and he was now, except in Africa, universally regarded as the legitimate bishop of Carthage. The Donatista remonstrated. A second investigation, which Constuntine intrusted to the council of Aries (Ai'clate) in 314, led to the same result. When the Donatists hereupon appealed from this ecclesiastical tribunal to the judgment of the emperor himself, he likewise declared against them at Milan in 316, and soon afterward issued penal laws against them, threatening them with the banishment of their bishops and the confiscation of their churches.
Persecution made them enemies of the state whose help they had invoked, and fed the flame of their fanaticism. They made violent resistance to the Imperial commissioner, Ursacins, and declared that no power on earth could induce them to hold church fellowship with the "rascal" {nebulo) Cnecilian. Constantine perceived tlie fruitlessness of the forcible restriction of religion, and, by an edict in 321, granted the Donatists full liberty of faith and worship. He remained faithful to this policy of toleration, and exhorted the Catholics to patience and indulgence. At a council in 330 the Donatists numbered two hundred and seventy bishops.
Constans, the successor of Constantine, resorted again to violent measures ; but neither threats nor promises made any impression on the party. It came to blood. The Circumcellions, a sort of Donatist mendicant monks, who wandered about the country among the cottages of the peasantry,* carried on plunder, arson, and murder, in conjunction with mutinous peasants and slaves, and in crazy zeal for the martyr's crown, as genuine soldiers of Christ, rushed into fire and water, and
' "Cellaa circumientea rusticorum." Ilence the name Circiimcellion<;s, But they called themselves MilUes Chrisii A(/onisH<n. Their date and origin are uncw tain. According to Optatus of Mileve, they first appeared under Constans jd 347.
§ 70. AUGUSTINE AND THE D0NATI8TS. 363
threw themselves down from rocks. Yet there were Donatists wlio disapproved this revolutionary frenzy. The insurrection was suppressed by military force ; several leaders of the Dona tists were executed, others were banished, and their churchea were closed or confiscated. Donatus the Great died in exile. He was succeeded by one Parmenianus.
Under Julian the Apostate the Donatists again obtained with all other heretics and schismatics, freedom of religion, and returned to the possession of their churches, which they painted anew, to redeem them from their profanation by the Catholics. But under the subsequent emperors their condition grew worse, both from persecutions without and dissensions within. The quarrel between the two parties extended into all the affairs of daily life ; the Donatist bishop Faustinus of Hippo, for example, allowing none of the members of his church to bake bread for the Catholic inhabitants.
§ 70. Augustine and the Donatists. Their Perseoution and Extinction.
At the end of the fourth century, and in the beginning of the fifth, the great Augustine, of Hippo, where there was also a strong congregation of the schismatics, made a powerful effort, by instruction and persuasion, to reconcile the Donatists with the Catholic church. He wrote several works on the subject, and set the whole African church in motion against them. They feared his superior dialectics, and avoided him wherever they could. The matter, however, was brought, by order of the emperor in 411, to a three days' ai'bitration at Carthage, attended by two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops and two hundred and seventy-nine Donatist.'
Augustine, who, in two beautiful sermons before the beginning of the disputation, exhorted to love, forbearance, and meekness, was the chief speaker on the part of the Catholics ; Petilian, on the part of the schismatics. Marcellinus, the im
' Augustine gives an account of the debate in his Breviculus Co.latif tiis cua Donatistia (Opera, torn. ix. p. 545-580).