ABSTRACT
Saint Augustine had to face the issue of religious coercion throughout his episcopate, and especially in his dealings with the Donatist schism. Augustine's attitude to coercion is typical of the general quality of his thought. Thus, in Augustine's first public work against the Donatists—the Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, which appeared in late 400—half of his attitude to coercion is already fully formed. It is difficult for a historian who is accustomed to seeing the Later Roman Empire in terms of slow evolution, over a long period of time, to enter into the 'mirages' of one generation within it, the generation of Augustine. Augustine's reaction to the problem of the ficti reveals a distinctive feature of his attitude to coercion as a whole: his tendency to think in terms of processes rather than of isolated acts. For Augustine's Donatist readers, his extension of such disciplinary powers to the Emperor was the measure of his departure from the previous Christian tradition.
