No More Learning

With what intrepid delight it rose--this song of the Resurrection in
those clear African basilicas swimming in light, with all their brilliant
ornamentation of mosaics and marbles of a thousand colours! And what
artless and confident language those symbolic figures spoke which peopled
their walls--the lambs browsing among clusters of asphodels, the doves, the
green trees of Paradise. As in the Gospel parables, the birds of the field
and farmyard, the fruits of the earth, figured the Christian truths and
virtues. Their purified forms accompanied man in his ascension towards
God. Around the mystic chrisms, circled garlands of oranges and pears and
pomegranates. Cocks, ducks, partridges, flamingoes, sought their pasture in
the Paradisal fields painted upon the walls of churches and cemeteries.

Those young basilicas were truly the temples of the Resurrection, where
all the creatures of the Ark saved from the waters had found their refuge.
Never more in the centuries to follow shall humanity know this frank joy at
having triumphed over death--this youth of hope.




III

THE BISHOP'S BURTHEN


Augustin is not only the most human of all the saints, he is also one
of the most amiable in all the senses of that hackneyed word--amiable
according to the world, amiable according to Christ.

To be convinced of this, he should be observed in his dealings with his
hearers, with his correspondents, even with those he attacks--with the
bitterest enemies of the faith. Preaching, the administration of property,
and sitting in judgment were but a part of that episcopal burthen, _Sarcina
episcopatus_, under which he so often groaned. He had furthermore to
catechize, baptize, direct consciences, guard the faithful against error,
and dispute with all those who threatened Catholicism. Augustin was a light
of the Church. He knew it.

Doing his best, with admirable conscientiousness and charity he undertook
these tasks. God knows what it must have cost this Intellectual to fulfil
precisely all the duties of his ministry, down to the humblest. What
he would have liked, above all, was to pass his life in studying the
Scriptures and meditating on the dogmas--not from a love of trifling with
theories, but because he believed such knowledge necessary to whoever gave
forth the Word of God. Most of the priests of that age arrived at the
priesthood without any previous study. They had to improvise, as quick
as they could, a complete education in religious subjects. We are left
astounded before the huge labour which Augustin must have given to acquire
his. Before long he even dominated the whole exegetical and theological
knowledge of his time. In his zeal for divine letters, he knew sleep no
more.

And yet he did not neglect any of his tasks. Like the least of our
parish priests, he prepared the neophytes for the Sacraments. He was
an incomparable catechist, so clear-sighted and scrupulous that his
instructions may still be taken as models by the catechists of to-day.
Neither did he, as an aristocrat of the intelligence, only trouble himself
with persons of culture, and leave to his deacons the care of God's common
people. All had a right to his lessons, the simple peasants as well as the
rich and scholarly. One day, a farmer he was teaching walked off and left
him there in the middle of his discourse. The poor man, who had fasted, and
now listened to his bishop standing, was faint from hunger and felt his
legs tremble under him. He thought it better to run away than to fall down
exhausted at the feet of the learned preacher.

With his knowledge of men, Augustin carefully studied the kind of people
his catechumens were, and adapted his instructions to the character of
each. If they were city folk, Carthaginians, used to spending their time in
theatres and taverns, drunken and lazy, he took a different tone with them
from what he used with rustics who had never left their native _gourbi_.
If he were dealing with fashionable people who had a taste for literature,
he did not fail to exalt the beauties of the Scripture, although, he would
say, they had there a very trifling attraction compared to the truths
contained in it. Of all the catechumens, the hardest to deal with, the
most fearsome in his eyes, were the professors--the rhetoricians and the
grammarians. These men are bloated with vanity, puffed up with intellectual
pride. Augustin knew something about that. It will be necessary to rouse
them violently, and before anything else, to exhort them to humility of
mind.

The good saint goes further. Not only is he anxious about the souls, but
also about the bodies of his listeners. Are they comfortable for listening?
As soon as they feel tired they must not hesitate to sit down, as is the
usage in the basilicas beyond seas.

"Would not our arrogance be unbearable," he asked, "if we forbade men who
are our brothers to sit down in our presence, and, much more, men whom we
ought to try with all possible care to make our brothers? . . . "

If they are seen to yawn, "then things ought to be said to them to awaken
their attention, or to scatter the sad thoughts which may have come into
their minds. " The catechist should shew, now a serene joy--the joy of
certainty; now a gaiety which charms people into belief; "and always that
light-heartedness we should have in teaching. " Even if we ourselves are sad
from this reason or that, let us remember that Jesus Christ died for those
who are listening to us. Is not the thought of bringing Him disciples
enough to make us joyful?

Bishop Augustin set the example for his priests. It is not enough to
have prepared the conversion of his catechumens with the subtlety of the
psychologist, and such perfect Christian charity; but he accompanies them
to the very end, and charges them once more before the baptismal piscina.

How he is changed! One thinks of the boon-fellow of Romanianus and of
Manlius Theodorus, of the young man who followed the hunts at Thagaste,
and who held forth on literature and philosophy in a select company before
the beautiful horizons of the lake of Como. Here he is now with peasants,
slaves, sailors, and traders. And he takes pleasure in their society. It is
his flock. He ought to love it with all his soul in Jesus Christ. What an
effort and what a victory upon himself an attitude so strange reveals to
us! For really this liking for mean people was not natural to him. He must
have put an heroic will-power into it, helped by Grace.

A like sinking of his preferences is evident in the director of consciences
he became. Here he was obliged to give himself more thoroughly. He was
at the mercy of the souls who questioned him, who consulted him as
their physician. He spends his time in advising them, and exercises a
never-failing supervision of their morals. It is an almost discouraging
enterprise to bend these hardened pagans--above all, these Africans--to
Christian discipline. Augustin is continually reproaching their
drunkenness, gluttony, and lust. The populace were not the only ones to get
drunk and over-eat themselves. The rich at their feasts literally stuffed
till they choked. The Bishop of Hippo never lets a chance go by to recall
them to sobriety.

Oftener still, he recalls them to chastity. He writes long letters on this
subject which are actual treatises. The morals of the age and country are
fully disclosed in them. Husbands are found loudly claiming a right to free
love for themselves, while they force their wives to conjugal fidelity. The
adultery they allow themselves, they punish with death in their wives. They
make an abusive practice of divorce. Upon the most futile reasons, they
send the wife the _libellus repudii_--the bill repudiating the marriage--as
the various peoples of Islam do still. This society in a state of
transition was always creating cases of conscience for strict Christians.
For example: If a man cast off his wife under pretext of adultery, might
he marry again? Augustin held that no marriage can be dissolved as long as
both parties are living. But may not this prohibition provoke husbands to
kill their adulterous wives, so as to be free to take a new wife? Another
problem: A catechumen divorced under the pagan law and since remarried,
presents himself for baptism. Is he not an adulterer in the eyes of the
Church? A man who lives with a woman and does not hide it, who even
declares his firm intention of continuing to live with his concubine--can
he be admitted to baptism? Augustin has to answer all these questions, and
go into the very smallest details of casuistry.

Is it forbidden to eat the meats consecrated to idols, even when a man
or woman is dying of hunger? May one enter into agreements with native
camel-drivers and carriers who swear by their gods to keep the bargain?
May a lie be told in certain conditions? --say, so as to get among heretics
in pretending to be one of themselves, and thus be able to spy on them
and denounce them? May adultery be practised with a woman who promises in
exchange to point out heretics? . . . The Bishop of Hippo severely condemns
all these devious or shameful ways, all these compromises which are
contrary to the pure moral teaching of the Gospel. But he does this without
affecting intolerance and rigidity, and with a reminder that the evil of
sin lies altogether in the intention, and in the consent of the will. In a
word, one must tolerate and put up with what one is powerless to hinder.

Other questions, which it is quite impossible to repeat here, give us a
strange idea of the corruption of pagan morals. Augustin had all he
could do to maintain the Christian rule in such surroundings, where the
Christians themselves were more or less tainted with paganism. But if this
troop of sinners and backsliders was hard to drive, the devout were perhaps
harder. There were the _continents_--the widowers and widows who had made a
vow of chastity and found this vow heavy; the consecrated virgins who lived
in too worldly a fashion; the nuns who rebelled against their spiritual
director or their superior; the monks, either former slaves who did not
want to do another stroke of work, or charlatans who played upon public
credulity in selling talismans and miraculous ointments. Then, the married
women who refused themselves to their husbands; and those who gave away
their goods to the poor without their husbands' consent; and also the proud
virgins and widows who despised and condemned marriage.

Then came the crowd of pious souls who questioned Augustin on points of
dogma, who wanted to know all, to clear up everything; those who thought
they should be able here below to see God face to face, to know how we
shall arise, and who asked if the angels had bodies. . . . Augustin complains
that they are annoying, when he has so many other things to trouble him,
and that they take him from his studies. But he tries charitably to satisfy
them all.

Besides all this, he was obliged to keep up a correspondence with a great
number of people. In addition to his friends and fellow-bishops, he wrote
to unknown people and foreigners; to men in high place and to lowly people;
to the proconsuls, the counts and the vicars of Africa; to the very mighty
Olympius, Master of the Household to the Emperor Honorius; or again, "to
the Right Honourable Lady Maxima," "to the Illustrious Ladies Proba and
Juliana," "to the Very Holy Lady Albina"--women who belonged either to the
provincial nobility, or to the highest aristocracy of Rome. To whom did he
not write? . . .

And what is admirable in these letters is that he does not answer
negligently to get rid of a tiresome duty. Almost all of them are full
of substantial teaching, long thought over. Many were intended to be
published--they are practically charges. And yet, however grave the tone
of them may be, the cultivated man of the world he had been may be traced.
His correspondents, after the fashion of the time, overwhelm the bishop
with the most fulsome praises. These he accepts, with much ceremony
indeed, but he does accept them as evidence of the charity of his
brethren. Ingenuously, he does his best to return them. Let us not grow
over-scandalized because our men of letters of to-day have debased the
value of complimentary language by squandering and exaggerating it. The
most austere cotemporaries of Augustin, and Augustin himself, outdid them
by a long way in the art and in the abuse of compliments.

Paulinus of Nola, always beflowered and elegant, wrote to Augustin:
"Your letters are a luminous collyrium spread over the eyes of my mind. "
Augustin, who remonstrated with him upon the scarcity of his own letters,
replies in language which our own _Précieuses_ would not have disowned:
"What! You allow me to pass two summers--and two African summers! --in such
thirst? . . . Would to God that you would allow enter to the opulent banquet
of your book, the long fast from your writings which you have put me
upon during all a year! If this banquet be not ready, I shall not give
over my complaints, unless, indeed, that in the time between, you send me
something to keep up my strength. " A certain Audax, who begged the honour
of a special letter from the great man, calls him "the oracle of the Law";
protests that the whole world celebrates and admires him; and finally, at
the end of his arguments, conjures him in verse to "Let fall upon me the
dew of thy divine word. " Augustin, with modesty and benignity, returns his
compliments, but not without slipping into his reply a touch of banter:
"Allow me to point out to you that your fifth line has seven feet. Has
your ear betrayed you, or did you want to find out if I was still capable
of judging these things? ". . . Truly, he is always capable of judging these
things, nor is he sorry to have it known. A young Greek named Dioscorus,
who is passing through Carthage, questions him upon the philosophy of
Cicero. Augustin exclaims at any one daring to interrupt a bishop about
such trifles. Then, little by little, he grows milder, and carried away by
his old passion, he ends by sending the young man quite a dissertation on
this good subject.

Those are among his innocent whimsicalities. Then, alongside of letters
either too literary, or erudite, or profound, there are others which are
simply exquisite, such as the one he wrote to a young Carthage girl called
Sapida. She had embroidered a tunic for her brother. He was dead, and she
asked Augustin kindly to wear this tunic, telling him that if he would
do this, it would be a great comfort for her in her grief. The bishop
consented very willingly. "I accept this garment," he said to her, "and I
have begun to wear it before writing to you. . . . " Then gently he pities her
sorrow, and persuades her to resignation and hope.

"We should not rebuke people for weeping over the dead who are dear to
them. . . . When we think of them, and through habit we look for them still
around us, then the heart breaks, and the tears fall like the blood of our
broken heart. . . . "

At the end, in magnificent words, he chants the hymn of the Resurrection:

"My daughter, your brother lives in his soul, if in his body he sleeps.
Does not the sleeper wake? God, who has received his soul, will put it
again in the body He has taken from him, not to destroy it--oh, no, but
some day to give it to him back. "

* * * * *

This correspondence, voluminous as it is, is nothing beside his numberless
treatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it is
by these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended by
hiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. And
this is a mistake. He himself would not have allowed for a moment that his
_Confessions_ should be preferred to his treatises on Grace. To study, to
comment the Scriptures, to draw more exact definitions from the dogmas--he
saw no higher employment for his mind, or obligation more important for
a bishop. To believe so as to understand, to understand the better to
believe--it is a ceaseless movement of the intelligence which goes from
faith to God and from God to faith. He throws himself into this great
labour without a shade of any attempt to make literature, with a complete
sinking of his tastes and his personal opinions, and in it he entirely
forgets himself.

One single time he has thought of himself, and it is precisely in the
_Confessions_, the spirit of which modern people understand so ill, and
where they try to find something quite different from what the author
intended. He composed them just after he was raised to the bishopric, to
defend himself against the calumnies spread about his conduct. It seems as
if he wanted to say to his detractors: "You believe me guilty. Well, I am
so, and more perhaps than you think, but not in the way you think. " A great
religious idea alters this personal defence. It is less a confession, or an
excuse for his faults, in the present sense of the word, than a continual
glorification of the divine mercy. It is less the shame of his sins he
confesses, than the glory of God.

After that, he never thought again of anything but Truth and the Church,
and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, the
Pelagians--the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by without
refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. He
might well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fighting
journalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderful
vigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have the
last word. He brought eloquence to it, yet more charity--sometimes even
wit. And lastly, he had a patience which nothing could dishearten. He
repeats the same things a hundred times over. These tiresome repetitions,
into which he was driven by the obstinacy of his opponents, caused him
real pain. Every time it became necessary, he took up again the endless
demonstration without letting himself grow tired. The moment it became a
question of the Truth, Augustin could not see that he had any right to keep
quiet.

In Africa and elsewhere they made fun of what they called his craze for
scribbling. He himself, in his _Retractations_, is startled by the number
of his works. He turns over the Scripture saying which the Donatists
amusingly opposed to him: _Væ mullum loquentibus_--"Woe unto them of many
words. " But calling God to witness, he says to Him: _Væ tacentibus de
te_--"Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee. " In the eyes of Augustin,
the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. And
elsewhere he adds: "They may believe me or not as they will, but I like
much better to read than to write books. . . . "

In any case, his modesty was evident. "I am myself," he acknowledges,
"almost always dissatisfied with what I say.
" To the heretics he declares,
with a glance back at his own errors, "I know by experience how easy it
is to be wrong. " When there is some doubt in questions of dogma, he does
not force his explanations, but suggests them to his readers. How much
intellectual humility is in that prayer which ends his great work on the
Trinity: "Lord my God, one Trinity, if in these books I have said anything
which comes from Thee, may Thou and Thy chosen receive it. But if it is
from me it comes, may Thou and Thine forgive me. "

And again, how much tolerance and charity in those counsels to the faithful
of his diocese who, having been formerly persecuted by the Donatists, now
burned to get their revenge:

"It is the voice of your bishop, my brothers, sounding in your ears. He
implores you, all of you who are in this church, to keep yourselves from
insulting those who are outside, but rather to pray that they may enter
with you into communion. "

Elsewhere, he reminds his priests that they must preach at the Jews in a
spirit of friendliness and loving-kindness, without troubling to know if
they listen with gratitude or indignation. "We ought not," said he, "to
bear ourselves proudly against these broken branches of Christ's tree. ". . .

This charity and moderation took nothing from the firmness of his
character. This he proved in a startling way in the discussion he had with
St. Jerome over a passage In the Epistle to the Galatians, and upon the
new translation, of the Bible which Jerome had undertaken. The solitary of
Bethlehem saw a "feint" on the part of St. Paul in the disputed passage:
Augustin said, a "lie. " What, then, would become of evangelic truth if
in such a place the Apostle had lied? And would not this be a means of
authorizing all the exegetical fantasies of heresiarchs, who already
rejected as altered or forged all verses of the holy books which conflicted
with their own doctrines? . . .

As to the new translation of the Bible, it would bring about trouble in the
African churches, where they were accustomed to the ancient version of the
Septuagint. The mistranslations, pointed out by Jerome in the old version,
would upset the faithful and lead them to suspect that the entire Scripture
was false. In this double matter, Augustin defended at once orthodoxy and
tradition from very praiseworthy reasons of prudence.

Jerome retorted in a most aggressive and offensive tone. He flatly accused
the Bishop of Hippo of being jealous of him and of wishing to cut out a
reputation for learning at his expense. In front of his younger and more
supple adversary, he took on the air of an old wrestler who was still
capable of knocking out any one who had the audacity to attack him. He
hurled at Augustin this phrase heavy with menaces: "The tired ox stands
firmer than ever on his four legs. "

For all that, Augustin stuck to his opinion, and he confined himself
to replying gently: "In anything I say, I am not only always ready to
receive your observations upon what you find wounding and contrary to your
feelings, but I even ask your advice as earnestly as I can. ". . .




IV

AGAINST "THE ROARING LIONS"


One day (this was soon after he became bishop) Augustin went to visit a
Catholic farmer in the suburbs of Hippo, whose daughter had been lessoned
by the Donatists, and had just enrolled herself among their consecrated
virgins. The father at first had shouted at the deserter, and flogged her
unmercifully by way of improving her state of mind. Augustin, when he heard
of the affair, condemned the farmer's brutality and declared that he would
never receive the girl back into the community unless she came of her own
free will. He then went out to the place to try and settle the matter. On
the way, as he was crossing an estate which belonged to a Catholic matron,
he fell in with a priest of the Donatist Church at Hippo. The priest at
once began to insult him and his companions, and yelled:

"Down with the traitors! Down with the persecutors! "

And he vomited out abominations against the matron herself who owned the
land. As much from prudence as from Christian charity, Augustin did not
answer. He even prevented those with him from falling upon the insulter.

Incidents of this kind happened almost every day. About the same time,
the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of another
apostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loafer
who beat his old mother, and the bishop severely rebuked his monstrous
conduct.

"Well, as you talk in that tone of voice," said the loafer, "I'm going to
be a Donatist. "

Through bravado, he continued to ill-treat the poor old woman, and to make
the worst kind of threats. He roared in savage fury:

"Yes, I'll become a Donatist, and I'll have your blood. "

And the young ruffian did really go over to the Donatist party. In
accordance with the custom among the heretics, he was solemnly rebaptized
in their basilica, and he exhibited himself on the platform clad in the
white robe of the purified. People in Hippo were much shocked. Augustin,
full of indignation, addressed his protests to Proculeianus, the Donatist
bishop. "What! is this man, all bloody with a murder in his conscience,
to walk about for eight days in white robes as a model of innocence and
purity? " But Proculeianus did not condescend to reply.

These cynical proceedings were trifling compared to the vexations which the
Donatists daily inflicted on their opponents. Not only did they tamper with
Augustin's people, but the country dwellers of the Catholic Church were
continually interfered with on their lands, pillaged, ravaged, and burned
out by mobs of fanatical brigands who organized a rule of terror from one
end of Numidia to the other. Supported in secret by the Donatists, they
called themselves "the Athletes of Christ. " The Catholics had given them
the contemptuous name of "Circoncelliones," or prowlers around cellars,
because they generally plundered cellars and grain-houses. Troops of
fanaticized and hysterical women rambled round with them, scouring the
country like your true bacchantes, clawing the unfortunate wretches who
fell into their hands, burning farms and harvests, broaching barrels of
wine and oil, and crowning these exploits by orgies with "the Athletes of
Christ. " When they saw a haystack blazing in the fields, the country-folk
were panic-stricken--the "Circoncelliones" were not far off. Soon they
appeared, brandishing their clubs and bellowing their war cry: _Deo
laudes! _--"Praise be to God. " "Your shout," said Augustin to them, "is more
dreaded by our people than the roaring of lions. "

Something had to be done to quell these furious monsters, and to resist
the encroachments and forcible acts of the heretics. These, by way of
frightening the Catholic bishops, told them roundly:

"We don't want any of your disputes, and we are going to rebaptize just as
it suits us. We are going to lay snares for your sheep and to rend them
like wolves. As for you, if you are good shepherds, keep quiet! "

Augustin was not a man to keep quiet, nor yet to spend his strength in
small local quarrels. He saw big; he did not imprison himself within the
limits of his diocese. He knew that Numidia and a good part of Africa
were in the hands of the Donatists; that they had a rival primate to the
Catholic primate at Carthage; that they had even sent a Pope of their
community to Rome. In a word, they were in the majority. Everywhere a
dissenting Church rose above the orthodox Church, when it did not succeed
in stifling it altogether. At all costs the progress of this sect must be
stopped. In Augustin's eyes there was no more urgent work. For him and his
flock it was a question of insuring their lives, since they were attacked
even in their fields and houses. From the moment he first came to Hippo,
as a simple priest, he had thrown himself intrepidly into this struggle.
He never ceased till Donatism was conquered and trampled underfoot. To
establish peace and Catholic unity everywhere was the great labour of his
episcopate.

Who, then, were these terrible Donatists whom we have been continually
striking against since the beginning of this history?

It would soon be a century since they had been disturbing and desolating
Africa. Just after the great persecution of Diocletian, the sect was born,
and it increased with amazing rapidity. During this persecution, evidence
had not been wanting of the moral slackness in the African Church. A large
number of lay people apostatized, and a good number of bishops and priests
handed over to the pagan authorities, besides the devotional objects,
the Scriptures and the muniments of their communities. In Numidia, and
especially at Constantine, scandalous scenes took place. The cowardice
of the clergy was lamentable. Public opinion branded with the names of
_traditors_, or traitors, those who had weakened and given over the sacred
books to the pagans.

The danger once over, the Numidians, whose behaviour had been so little
brilliant, determined to redeem themselves by audacity, and to prove
with superb impudence that they had been braver than the others. So they
set themselves to shout _traditor_ against whoever displeased them, and
particularly against those of Carthage and the Proconsulate. At bottom it
was the old rivalry between the two Africas, East and West.

Under the reign of Constantine a peace had been patched up, when it fell
out that a new Bishop of Carthage had to be elected, and the Archdeacon
Cæcilianus, whose name was put forward, was accused of preventing the
faithful from visiting the martyrs in their prisons. The zealots contended
that in collusion with his bishop, Mensurius, he had given up the Holy
Scriptures to the Roman authorities to be burned. The election promised to
be stormy. The supporters of the Archdeacon, who feared the hostility of
the Numidian bishops, did not wait for their arrival. They hurried things
over. Cæcilianus was elected and consecrated by three bishops of the
district, of whom one was a certain Felix of Abthugni.

At once the opposite clan, backed up by the Numidians, objected. At their
head was a wealthy Spanish woman named Lucilla, an unbalanced devotee,
who, it seemed, always carried about her person a bone of a martyr, and
a doubtful one at that. She would ostentatiously kiss her relic before
receiving the Eucharist. The Archdeacon Cæcilianus forbade this devotion as
superstitious, and thus made a relentless enemy of the fanatical Spaniard.
All the former accusations were renewed against him, and it was added
that Felix of Abthugni, who had consecrated him, was a _traditor_. Hence
the election was void, by the single fact of the unworthiness of the
consecrating bishops. Lucilla, having bribed a section of the bishops
assembled in council, Cæcilianus was deposed, and the deacon Majorinus
elected in his room. He himself was soon after succeeded by Donatus, an
active, clever, and energetic man, who organized resistance so ably, and
who represented so well the spirit of the sect, that he left it his name.
Henceforth, Donatism enters into history.

But Cæcilianus had on his side the bishops overseas and the Imperial
Government. The Pope of Rome and the Emperor recognized him as legitimately
elected. Besides that, he cleared himself of all the grievances urged
against him. Finally, an inquiry, conducted by laymen, proved that Felix of
Abthugni was not a _traditor_. The Donatists appealed to Constantine, then
to two Councils convoked successively at Rome and Arles. Everywhere they
were condemned. Moreover, the Council of Arles declared that the character
of him who confers the Sacraments has no influence whatever on their
validity. Thus, baptism and ordination, even conferred by a _traditor_,
were canonically sound.

This decision was regarded as an abominable heresy by the Donatists. As a
matter of fact, there was an old African tradition, accepted by St. Cyprian
himself, that an unworthy priest could not administer the Sacraments. The
local prejudice would not yield: all were rebaptized who had been baptized
by the Catholics--that is to say, by the supporters of the _traditors_.

The theological question was complicated with a question of property which
was all but insoluble. Since the Donatist bishops were resolved to separate
from the Catholic communion, did they mean to give up, with their title,
their basilicas and the property belonging to their churches? Supposing
that they themselves were disinterested, they had behind them the crowd of
clients and land-tillers who got their living out of the Church, and dwelt
on Church property. Never would these people allow a rival party to alter
the direction of the charities, to plant themselves in their fields and
their _gourbis_, to expel them from their cemeteries and basilicas. Other
reasons, still deeper perhaps, induced the Donatists to persevere in the
schism. These religious dissensions were agreeable to that old spirit
of division which at all times has been the evil genius of Africa. The
Africans have always felt the need of segregating themselves from one
another in hostile _cofs_. They hate each other from one village to
another--for nothing, just, for the pleasure of hating and felling each
other to the ground.

At bottom, here is what Donatism really was: It was an extra sharp attack
of African individualism. These rebels brought in nothing new in dogma.
They would not even have been heretics without their claim to rebaptize.
They limited themselves to retain a position gained long ago; to keep
their churches and properties, or to seize those of the Catholics upon the
pretence that they were themselves the legitimate owners. With that, they
affected a respect for tradition, an austerity in morals and discipline,
which made them perfect puritans. Yes, they were the pure, the
irreconcilables, who alone had not bent before the Roman officials. All
this was very pleasing to the discontented and quarrelsome, and caressed
the popular instinct in its tendency to particularism.

That is why the sect became, little by little, mistress of almost the
whole country. Then it subdivided, crumbled up into little churches which
excommunicated each other. In Southern Numidia, the citadels of orthodox
Donatism, so to speak, were Thimgad and Bagai. Carthage, with its primate,
was the official centre. But in the Byzacena and Tripolitana Regio,
there were the Maximianists, and the Rogatists in Mauretania, who had
cut themselves off from the Great Church. These divisions of the schism
corresponded closely enough to the natural compartments of North Africa.
There must be some incompatibility of temper between these various regions.
To this day, Algiers prides itself on not thinking like Constantine, which
does not think like Bona or like Tunis.

Are we to see in Donatism a nationalist or separatist movement directed
against the Roman occupation? That would be to transport quite modern ideas
into antiquity. No more in Augustin's time than in our own was there such a
thing as African nationality. But if the sectaries had no least thought of
separating from Rome, it is none the less true that they were in rebellion
against her representatives, temporal as well as spiritual. Supposing that
Rome had yielded to them--an impossible event, of course--that would have
meant a surrender to the claims of Africans who wished to be masters of
their property as well as of their religious beliefs in their own country.
What more could they have wanted? It little mattered to them who was the
nominal master, provided that they had the realities of government in their
hands. Altogether, Donatism is a regionalist revindication, very strongly
characterized. It is a remarkable fact that it was among the indigenous
population, ignorant of Latin, that the most of its adherents were
recruited.

* * * * *

Such was the position of the Church in Africa when Augustin was named
Bishop of Hippo. He judged it at once, with his clear-sightedness, his
strong good sense, his broad outlook of a Roman citizen freed from the
smallnesses of a local spirit, his Christian idealism which took no heed
of the accidents or considerations of worldly prosperity. What! was
Catholicism to become an African religion, a restricted sect, wretchedly
tied to the letter of tradition, to the exterior practices of worship? To
reign in a little corner of the world--did Christ die for that? Never!
Christ died for the wide world. The only limits of His Church are the
limits of the universe. And besides, in this resolution to exclude, what
becomes of the great principle of Charity? It is by charity, above all,
that we are Christians. Faith without love is a faith stagnant and dead. . . .

Augustin also foresaw the consequences of spiritual separation; he had them
already under his eyes. The Church is the great spring, not only of love,
but of intelligence. Once cut away from this reviving spring, Donatism
would become dry and stunted like a branch stripped from a tree. The
deep sense of its dogmas would become impoverished as its works emptied
themselves of the spirit of charity. Obstinacy, narrowness, lack of
understanding, fanaticism, and cruelty--there you had the inevitable fruits
of schism. Augustin knew the rudeness and ignorance of his opponents, even
of the most cultivated among them: he might well ask himself in anguish
what would become of the African Church deprived of the benefit of Roman
culture, isolated from the great intellectual current which united all the
churches beyond seas. Finally, he knew his fellow-countrymen; he knew that
the Donatists, even victorious, even sole masters of the land, would turn
against themselves the fury they now satisfied against the Catholics, and
never stop tearing each other in pieces. Here was now nearly a hundred
years that they had kept Africa in fire and blood. This meant before very
long a return to barbarism. Separated from Catholicism, they would really
separate from the Empire and even from civilization. And so it was that
in fighting for Catholic unity, Augustin fought for the Empire and for
civilization.

Confronted with these barbarians and sectaries, his attitude could not be
doubtful for a single moment. He must do his best to bring them back to the
Church. It was only a matter of hitting upon the most effectual means.

Preaching, for an orator such as he was, should be an excellent weapon.
His eloquence, his dialectic, his profane and sacred learning, gave him an
immense superiority over the defenders of the opposite side. He certainly
kept in the Church many Catholics who were ready to apostatize. But before
the crowd of schismatics, all these high gifts were as good as lost.
The people were in no wise anxious to know upon which side truth was to
be found. They were Donatists, as they were Numidians or Carthaginians,
without knowing why--because everybody about them was. Many might have
answered like that grammarian of Constantine, who told the Inquisitors with
astute simplicity:

"I am a professor of Roman literature, a teacher of Latin grammar. My
father was a decurion at Constantine; my grandfather was a soldier and
had served in the guard. Our family is of Moorish blood. . . . As for me, I
am quite ignorant about the origin of the schism: I am just one of the
ordinary faithful of the people called Christians. When I was at Carthage,
Bishop Secundus came there one day. I heard tell that they found out that
Bishop Cæcilianus had been ordained irregularly by I don't know who, and
they elected another bishop against him. That's how the schism began at
Carthage. I have no means of knowing much about the origin of the schism,
because there has never been more than one church in our city. If there has
been a schism here, we know nothing about it. "

When a grammarian talked thus, what could have been the thoughts of
agricultural labourers, city workmen, and slaves? They belonged to an
estate, or a quarter of a town, where no other faith than theirs had ever
been professed. They were Donatists like their employers, like their
neighbours, like the other people of the _cof_ to which they had belonged
from father to son. The theological side of the question left them
absolutely indifferent. If Augustin tried to debate with them, they refused
to listen and referred him to their bishops. That was the word of command.