NOVATIAN, NOVATIANISM.
I. The Sources of Knowledge. The Works of Novatian (§ 1). Contemporary and Later Notices (§ 2). II. Novatian and the Schism.
Events Leading to the Schism (§ 1). Novatian's Person and Position (§ 2). Cornelius and Novatian as Rival Bishops (§ 3). Success of the Catholic Party (§4).
III. The Theoretical Basis of the Schism. Catholic Position as to the Lapsed (§ 1). The Novatian Position (§ 2). Criticism of These Positions (§ 3).
IV. Later History.
The most notable ecclesiastical formation of the third century, apart from Manicheism, which rests on a non-Christian basis, is that of Novatianism. Unlike the later Donatism, it is connected with the development of the Catholic theology not only by its primary doctrinal assumptions but also through its ecumenical diffusion from Spain to Syria in the centuries from the third to the fifth. The name " Novatian sect " thus insufficiently designates it from the name of one of its principal leaders — founder he can scarcely be called — without connoting its principles, its expansion, and its importance. Its history is that of a schism in the territory of Catholicism, turning upon the question
Novatian
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
of the authority, extent, and result of the Church's power of the keys. So far as is known, it never developed any peculiar heretical system, but remained distinguished from the recognized Christianity on this one point alone, thus affording a phenomenon almost unique in the history of Western Christendom, although the Jansenist Church offers a parallel to a certain extent.
I. Sources of Knowledge: Jerome {De vir. ill., lxx.) enumerates seven works of Novatian: De pascha, De sabbato, De circumcisione, De sacerdote, De oratione (not ordinatione, as sometimes read), De cibis judaicis, De instantia, DeAttalo, " and many others, besides a large work on the Trinity, a i. The sort of epitome of the work of Tertul- Works of lian, attributed by many ignorant Novatian. people to Cyprian." Of these works none are extant except De cibis judaicis, written in the form of a letter and preserved under the name of Tertullian, and De trinitate. Novatian's authorship of the last-named was denied in the fourth century, by those who were unwilling to give the credit to a heretic, while for analogous reasons the Macedonians of Constantinople, who appealed to a passage in it, ascribed it to Cyprian. Rufinus thought it was written by Tertullian; but Jerome is probably right. It is evidently the production of a Roman Christian, formed in the school of Irenaeus and Tertullian, at a time when the Marcionites were still dangerous, when Monarchian views had been fully developed, and when Sabellius had already been cast out. Its authenticity is still further demonstrated by a comparison with his letters discussed below. The De cibis judaicis (and therefore also the De sabbato and De circumcisione) must have been written after the schism; but no allusion to it is to be found in the De trinitate, to which Novatian probably owed the reputation as a theologian which he enjoyed before he adopted a schismatic attitude. In it, with clear logic and in excellent style, he develops a popular philosophy on the nature of God and confesses the true Godhead and manhood of Christ in opposition to the Marcionites and Monarchians. His Christology is that of Tertullian, though coming a stage nearer to the Nicene by the assertion that the Father is always the Father. The work has no little historical importance; the security of its precise dogmatic formulae allowed the Latins to meet the Greeks on equal terms in the Christological controversy. The two letters of Novatian which he addressed to the Church of Carthage, during the vacancy of the see, at the request of the Roman clergy (preserved among Cyprian's letters, xxx. and xxxvi.), short as they are, give testimony both to his ability as a writer and to his theological position. Jerome speaks of a collection of his letters, which may have included all the small treatises named above, as well as the epistles addressed by him to the bishops of various churches after his own elevation to the episcopate. In recent times critical study has assigned to Novatian with great probability the pseudo-Cyprianic treatises De spectaculis, De bono pudicitioz, Quod idola dii non sint, De laude martyrii, and Adversus Judmos. The two first named were written after the schism; the author is at the time separated from bis flock, as Novatian was when he
wrote De cibis judaicis; he is a bishop; his flock is no clearly distinguished local community but a special association which considers itself marked by unusual sanctity. De laude martyrii, on the other hand, was written before the schism, at the beginning of the Decian persecution. The date of the Adversus Judwos can not be determined. An attempt has been made, though with doubtful success, to enroll among Novatian's writings the twenty pseudo-Origenistic treatises discovered by Batiffol and published Paris, 1900; the most that can safely be said is that their author made frequent use of Novatian's work, as he did also of that of Tertullian and Origen.
The most valuable source for the origin of the schism is the collection of Cyprian's letters, especially those of Cyprian himself and Cor- 2. Con- nelius (Epist., xliv., xlv., xlix., lii.-lv., temporary lix., lx., lxviii., lxix., lxxiii.), together and Later with the Roman collection of letters, Notices, dating from the middle of the third century, used by Eusebius, and another of which he made some use, the Epistolw Dionysii Alexandrini. Another important contemporary authority is the pseudo-Cyprianic Ad Novatianum, which probably belongs to Pope Sixtus II. and dates from 257-258. In the use of these early documents it must be borne in mind that scarcely anything has come down from the opposite camp, and that the official correspondence of ecclesiastics had already begun to assume the diplomatic adroitness of statement and the ornate rhetoric of the contemporaneous secular diplomacy. The wide spread of the Novatian community in the East stirred the orthodox bishops from the beginning of the fourth century to a vigorous polemic. Eusebius of Emesa wrote a special treatise against them, now lost, and Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Jerome, and Chrysostom took notice of them. Eusebius (Hist, eccl., VI., xlii.-VIL, viii.) is of value. Socrates paid so much attention to the spread of their churches in the East that he was suspected of a secret sympathy with their views, and he undoubtedly had personal relations with some of them. Sozomen adds little, but Isidore of Pelusium deals with them in two letters (cccxxxviii.-ix.). Even as late as the close of the sixth century, Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria, the friend of Gregory the Great, found it necessary to combat their views in an extended treatise. The sect is mentioned in a number of imperial decrees of the fourth and fifth centuries. In the West the schism decayed sooner than in the East, and there is little original polemical material. The author of the pseudo-Augustinian treatise Contra Novatianum, a contemporary of Damasus, is evidence for a temporary though short progress of the sect in Rome. Some personal knowledge is shown by Pacianus of Barcelona in his letters directed against the Novatian Sympronianus, author of an exposition of the schismatic doctrine. There are a few scattered notices in Hilary, Ambrose, Rufinus, the Catalogue Liberianus, the letters of Innocent I., Celestine I., and Leo I., and in Vincent of Lerins; and Augustine has several noteworthy references to the sect. But a glance over the whole Western literature shows that from the middle of the fourth century there