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Reflections on Religious Dissent in North Africa in the Byzantine Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

R. A. Markus
R. A. Markus*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

There are good reasons for historians’ preferring to write history proceeding from the earlier in time to the later. Why, after all, should they ignore time’s one-way arrow? On occasion, however, it is useful to reverse the normal procedure.

The history of North African Christianity, and especially the history of the tradition of dissent in it, is a case in point. The literature of the Donatist schism of the fourth and fifth centuries is comparatively rich. It is tempting, having crystallized an image of Donatism on the strength of it, to find the same image displayed again during the Vandal or the Byzantine period, periods for which our information is very much more fragmentary. The assumption that there is such a continuity may work in either or both of two ways. It may distort the real bearings of scanty material by the concern to fit it into the pattern; also, or alternatively, it may prevent the historian from noticing affinities with movements which seem at first sight to lack the features singled out as a qualification for entry into the pattern.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 3: Papers read at the third winter and summer meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society , 1966 , pp. 140 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1966

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References

Page 140 of note 1 ‘Donatism: the last phase,’ Studies in Church History, I (1964).

Page 141 of note 1 ‘Zur Kirchenpolitik Justinians,’ SB. Bay. Akad. Wiss., phil.-hist. Abt., (1940), 32-81; reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin 1960, IV, 276-328.

Page 141 of note 2 Geschichte des Papsttums, Tübingen 1933, II, 234-305.

Page 141 of note 3 W. Pewesin, ‘Imperium, ecclesia universalis, Rom: der Kampf der afrikanischen Kirche um die Mitte des 6. Jahrhunderts,’ Geistige Grundlagen römischer Kirchenpolitik (Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte, XI), Stuttgart 1937. More briefly also discussed by A. Grillmeier, ‘Vorbereitung des Mittelalters,’ Das Konzil von Cbalkedon, ed. A. Grillmeier & H. Bacht, Würzburg 1953, II, 791-839; on Africa, 807-814.

Page 142 of note 1 For an account of the whole episode, cf. Caspar, op. cit., Duchesne, L., L’Église au sixième siècle, Paris 1925, 156–218 Google Scholar, and for the African Church, Diehl, C., L’Afrique byzantine, Paris 1896, II, 434-49Google Scholar.

Page 142 of note 2 Compare Justinian’s όμολογία πίστεως (Mansi IX, 537-82; also edited by Schwartz, E., Abb. Bay. Akad. Wiss., Pbil.-hist. KL, NF, XVIII(1939), 72–111 Google Scholar) at 576-7 (Mansi; = 106-8 in Schwartz) with Facundus,Pro def.VII. Cf. Pewesin, op. cit., 140.

Page 142 of note 3 Cf. the quotation from Augustine’s Ep. 185 and from the African canons at IX, 577D (Mansi; = 108, lines 26-34 in Schwartz).

Page 143 of note 1 C.Moc., Pl, LXVII, 857 B.

Page 143 of note 2 Chron., s.a. 550-556 (MGH, AA, XI, Chronica minora, cd. T. Mommsen, II).

Page 143 of note 3 C.Moc., 855 C.

Page 143 of note 4 Brev. 24, Pl, LXVIII, 1049.

Page 143 of note 5 Victor Tonn., Chron., s.a. 552; cf. the letter of the Italian clerics in MGH, Epp, III, 440.

Page 144 of note 1 Victor Tonn., Chron., s.a. 552.2.

Page 144 of note 2 I owe this reminder to the Rev. Professor S. L. Greenslade.

Page 145 of note 1 In my paper referred to in note 1 above, I considered the papal formularies which speak of rebaptism, and I argued that they cannot be used as evidence for the survival of Donatism. At that time I agreed with Dr Frend’s view that the rebaptizati referred to in these formula: must mean Donatists. This, however, is mistaken. Since the formula occurs for the first time during the pontificate of Gelasius I in the 490’s (cf. JK 675, PL LIX, 137-8), it is much more natural to read it in relation to the provisions made at the Roman Synod of 487 for the treatment of African rebaptizati (cf. JK 609, among the letters of Felix III, PL LVIII, 924). The rebaptizati here referred to are, of course, those who apostatized to Arianism during the persecution of 484 by Huneric. Victor of Vita gives plenty of examples of this rebaptism. I conclude that not only the survival, but the origin of the formula has nothing to do with Donatism. In general, the whole of the evidence for the survival of Donatism in the Vandal period and later requires reassessment.

Page 145 of note 2 C.Moc., 855 C.

Page 146 of note 1 Ibid., 858 B.

Page 146 of note 2 Cf. e.g. Pro def. X, 3; C.Moc., 864 B-C; Ep. fid. cath., 875.

Page 146 of note 3 Pro def. XII, 3.

Page 147 of note 1 C.Moc., 867.

Page 147 of note 2 Ep. fid. cath., 868 C.

Page 147 of note 3 Ibid., 871 C.

Page 147 of note 4 Ibid., 876 C. Cf. Donatu’s famous Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?, in Opt., De schism. III. 3.

Page 148 of note 1 Ep. 6.2, PL, LXVII, 922.

Page 148 of note 2 Ep. 6.7, and 6.9, Ibid., cols. 926 B and 927.

Page 148 of note 3 Cf. Pro def. XII, 2, etc. On this theme, see the excellent discussion by Pewesin, op. cit., especially 23-38 and 84-5.

Page 148 of note 4 Pro def. IX, 5, PL, LXVII, 766 B.

Page 148 of note 5 Cf. especially Ep. fid. cath., 877-8 for a fine example.

Page 148 of note 6 I have scrutinized the evidence for this alleged revival in my paper referred to in note 1 above, and concluded that it will not bear the customary interpretation.