ABSTRACT
The history of the schism may be swiftly sketched. It arose from different reac-tions among Christians in Roman Africa to the last and greatest persecution of the church, under the emperor Diocletian (303-5). A central feature of this persecution was the imperial demand that Christians hand over scriptures to the authorities. Some remained conspicuously loyal to a long-standing tradition of no compromise with pagan religion, which was seen as idolatrous, and provocatively made public their encouragement of those ready to die in defiance of imperial edicts which forbade Christian worship, confiscated bibles, and demanded ritual sacrifice to the gods of Rome. In particular, they refused to engage in traditio, ‘handing over’, of the scriptures. Others, meanwhile, advocated prudence, even at the risk of ostensible compromise, to the extent of becoming actual or apparent traditores of scriptures, as the best way for the church to survive this threat to its existence and emerge from the crisis with the least damage done. A vacancy in the see of Carthage, caused by the death of Mensurius (probably early in 307 ce) transformed those two groups into two rival parties, each with its own claimant to Africa’s primatial see. Donatus (from whom Donatism gets its name) represented the former, rigorous group, and Caecilian the latter. Constantine, the emperor before whom the case was brought on appeal in 316, ended a long legal wrangle by ruling in favour of Caecilian, thus confirming the earlier decisions of church councils at Rome (313) and Arles (314). However, failure to reconcile the dissidents, ably led by Caecilian’s rival Donatus, brought grudging toleration in 321 to the party-in-opposition. So the church in Roman Africa remained divided for over a century.
