nus;" the other attached without a seal to the same leathern envelope. Given on the 17th day before the Calends of May, in the third consulship of our lord Constantine Augustus [i.e. April 15, A.D. 313]. Saturninus, the ex-president of police, and his successor in the office, Calibius the younger, and Solon, an official belonging to Aptunga, he heard the testimony of these witnesses;' the result of which was, that whereas objection had been taken to Cæcilianus on the ground of his ordination 3. After this report had been sent to him, to the office of bishop by Felix, against whom the Emperor summoned the parties before a it seemed that the charge of surrendering and tribunal of bishops to be constituted at Rome. burning the sacred books had been made, the The ecclesiastical records show how the case innocence of Felix in this matter was clearly was there argued and decided, and Cæcilianus established. Moreover, when Maximus affirmed pronounced innocent. Surely now, after the that Ingentius, a decurion of the town of Ziqua, peacemaking decision of the tribunal of bishops, had forged a letter of the ex-magistrate Cæciliall the pertinacity of strife and bitterness should anus, we found, on examining the Acts which have given way. Your forefathers, however, were before us, that this same Ingentius had been appealed again to the Emperor, and complained put on the rack for that offence, and that the that the decision was not just, and that their infliction of torture on him was not, as alleged, case had not been fully heard. Accordingly, he on the ground of his affirming that he was a appointed a second tribunal of bishops to meet decurion of Ziqua. Wherefore we desire you to in Arles, a town of Gaul, where, after sentence send under a suitable guard to the court of had been pronounced against your worthless and Augustus Constantine the said Ingentius, that diabolical schism, many of your party returned in the presence and hearing of those who are to a good understanding with Cæcilianus; some, now pleading in this case, and who day after however, who were most obstinate and conten- day persist in their complaints, it may be made tious, appealed to the Emperor again. After- manifest and fully known that they labour in vain wards, when, yielding to their importunity, he to excite odium against the bishop Cæcilianus, personally interposed in this dispute, which be- and to clamour violently against him. This, we longed properly to the bishops to decide, having hope, will bring the people to desist, as they heard the case, he gave sentence against your should do, from such contentions, and to devote party, and was the first to pass a law that the themselves with becoming reverence to their reproperties of your congregations should be con- ligious duties, undistracted by dissension among fiscated; of all which things we could insert the themselves. documentary evidence here, if it were not for making the letter too long. We must, however, by no means omit the investigation and decision in open court of the case of Felix of Aptunga, whom, in the Council of Carthage, under Secundus of Tigisis, primate, your fathers affirmed to be the original cause of all these evils. For the Emperor aforesaid, in a letter of which we annex a copy, bears witness that in this trial your party were before him as accusers and most strenuous prosecutors: 4. The Emperors Flavius Constantinus, Maximus Cæsar, and Valerius Licinius Cæsar, to Probianus, proconsul of Africa: Your predecessor Ælianus, who acted as substitute for Verus, the superintendent of the prefects, when that most excellent magistrate was by severe illness laid aside in that part of Africa which is under our sway, considered it, and most justly, to be his duty, amongst other things, to bring again under his investigation and decision the matter of Cæcilianus, or rather the odium which seems to have been stirred up against that bishop of the Catholic Church. Wherefore, having ordered the compearance of Superius, centurion, Cæcilianus, magistrate of Aptunga, and 5. Since you see, therefore, that these things are so, why do you provoke odium against us on the ground of the imperial decrees which are in force against you, when you have yourselves done all this before we followed your example? If emperors ought not to use their authority in such cases, if care of these matters lies beyond the province of Christian emperors, who urged your forefathers to remit the case of Cæcilianus, by the proconsul, to the Emperor, and a second time to bring before the Emperor accusations against a bishop whom you had somehow condemned in absence, and on his acquittal to invent and bring before the same Emperor other calumnies against Felix, by whom the bishop aforesaid had been ordained? And now, what other law is in force against your party than that decision of the elder Constantine, to which your forefathers of their own choice appealed, which they extorted from him by their importunate The value of the evidence of these witnesses is apparent when we remember that they were all in a position to speak from personal knowledge of the persecution in A.D. 303 (under Diocletian and Maximian), and had in their public capacity some share in enforcing the demand made in that persecution for the surrender of the sacred books. These could tell whether Felix the Bishop of Aptunga was guilty or not of the unfaithfulness to his religion with which the faction of Majorinus reproached him. 2 Suspensum. complaints, and which they preferred to the to keep us in terror, and to persecute us to the decision of an episcopal tribunal? If you are dis- utmost of their power. satisfied with the decrees of emperors, who were 7. Our bishop, however, did not complain to the first to compel the emperors to set these the emperors of the wrongs and persecution in array against you? For you have no more which the Catholic Church in our district sufreason for crying out against the Catholic Church fered in those days. But when a Council had because of the decrees of emperors against you, been convened, it was agreed that you should than those men would have had for crying out be invited to meet our party peaceably, in order against Daniel, who, after his deliverance, were that, if it were possible, you [i.e. the bishops on thrown in to be devoured by the same lions by both sides, for the letter is written by the clergy which they first sought to have him destroyed; of Hippo] might have a conference, and the as it is written: "The king's wrath is as the roar-error being taken out of the way, brotherly love ing of a lion." I These slanderous enemies in- might rejoice in the bond of peace between us. sisted that Daniel should be thrown into the den You may learn from your own records the anof lions his innocence prevailed over their malice; he was taken from the den unharmed, and they, being cast into it, perished. In like manner, your forefathers cast Cæcilianus and his companions to be destroyed by the king's wrath; and when, by their innocence, they were delivered from this, you yourselves now suffer from these kings what your party wished them to suffer; as it is written: "Whoso diggeth a pit for his neighbour, shall himself fall therein." 2 swer which Proculeianus made at first on that occasion, that you would call a Council together, and would there see what you ought to answer; and how afterwards, when he was again publicly reminded of his promise, he stated, as the Acts bear witness, that he refused to have any conference with a view to peace. After this, when the notorious atrocities of your clergy and Circumcelliones continued, a case was brought to trial; 5 and Crispinus being condemned as a heretic, 6. You have therefore no ground for com- although he was through the forbearance of the plaint against us: nay more, the clemency of Catholics exempted from the fine which the imthe Catholic Church would have led us to desist perial edict imposed on heretics of ten pounds from even enforcing these decrees of the em- of gold, nevertheless thought himself warranted perors, had not your clergy and Circumcelliones, in appealing to the emperors. As to the answer disturbing our peace, and destroying us by their which was made to that appeal, was it not exmost monstrous crimes and furious deeds of vio-torted by the preceding wickedness of your party lence, compelled us to have these decrees re- and by his own appeal? And yet, even after vived and put in force again. For before these that answer was given, he was permitted to escape more recent edicts of which you complain had the infliction of that fine, through the intercession come into Africa, these desperadoes laid ambush of our bishops with the Emperor on his behalf. for our bishops on their journeys, abused our From that Council, however, our bishops sent clergy with savage blows, and assaulted our laity deputies to the court, who obtained a decree in the same most cruel manner, and set fire to that not all your bishops and clergy should be their habitations. A certain presbyter who had held liable to this fine of ten pounds of gold, of his own free choice preferred the unity of our which the decree had imposed on all heretics, Church, was for so doing dragged out of his own but only those in whose districts the Catholic house, cruelly beaten without form of law, rolled Church suffered violence at the hands of your over and over in a miry pond, covered with a party. But by the time that the deputation matting of rushes, and exhibited as an object of came to Rome, the wounds of the Catholic pity to some and of ridicule to others, while his bishop of Bage, who had just then been dreadpersecutors gloried in their crime; after which fully injured, had moved the Emperor to send they carried him away where they pleased, and such edicts as were actually sent. When these reluctantly set him at liberty after twelve days. edicts came to Africa, seeing especially that When Proculeianus 3 was challenged by our strong pressure had begun to be brought upon bishop concerning this outrage, at a meeting of you, not to any evil thing, but for your good, the municipal courts, he at first endeavoured to what should you have done but invited our evade inquiry into the matter by pretending that bishops to meet you, as they had invited yours he knew nothing of it; and when the demand to meet them, that by a conference the truth was immediately repeated, he publicly declared might be brought to light? that he would say nothing more on the subject. And the perpetrators of that outrage are at this day among your presbyters, continuing moreover 8. Not only, however, have you failed to do this, but your party go on inflicting yet greater 4 At Carthage, A.D. 403. 5 For a more detailed reference to this case, see Letter CV. sec. 4. Crispinus was charged with an attempt to kill Possidius the bishop of Calama. See also Aug. Cont. Crescon. b. ii. c. 46, n. 50, and C. 47, n. 51. 2 injuries upon us. Not contented with beating were as deserters), but to accept that faith, and us with bludgeons and killing some with the love of the Holy Spirit, and union to the body sword, they even, with incredible ingenuity in of Christ, which formerly they had not. For it crime, throw lime mixed with acid [? vitriol] is written, "Purifying their hearts by faith;" into our people's eyes to blind them. For pil- and again, Charity covereth a multitude of laging our houses, moreover, they have fashioned sins." 3 If, however, either through too great huge and formidable implements, armed with obduracy, or through shame making them unable which they wander here and there, breathing out to bear the taunts of those with whom they were threats of slaughter, rapine, burning of houses, accustomed to join so frequently in falsely reand blinding of our eyes; by which things we proaching us and contriving evil against us, or have been constrained in the first instance to perhaps more through fear lest they should come complain to you, venerable sir, begging you to to share along with us such injuries as they were consider how, under these so-called terrible laws formerly wont to inflict on us, — if, I say, from of Catholic emperors, many, nay all of you, who any of these causes, they refuse to be reconciled say that you are the victims of persecution, are to the unity of Christ, they are allowed to desettled in peace in the possessions which were part, as they were detained, without suffering any your own, or which you have taken from others, harm. We also exhort our laity as far as we can while we suffer such unheard-of wrongs at the to detain them without doing them any harm, hands of your party. You say that you are and bring them to us for admonition and instrucpersecuted, while we are killed with clubs and tion. Some of them obey us and do this, if it swords by your armed men. You say that you is in their power: others deal with them as they are persecuted, while our houses are pillaged by your armed robbers. You say that you are persecuted, while many of us have our eyesight destroyed by the lime and acid with which your men are armed for the purpose. Moreover, if their course of crime brings some of them to death, they make out that these deaths are justly the occasion of odium against us, and of glory to them. They take no blame to themselves for the harm which they do to us, and they lay upon us the blame of the harm which they bring upon themselves. They live as robbers, they die as Circumcelliones, they are honoured as martyrs! Nay, I do injustice to robbers in this comparison, for we have never heard of robbers destroying the eyesight of those whom they have plundered they indeed take away those whom they kill from the light, but they do not take away the light from those whom they leave in life. would with robbers, because they actually suffer from them such things as robbers are wont to do. Some of them strike their assailants in protecting their own bodies from their blows: while others apprehend them and bring them to the magistrates; and though we intercede on their behalf, they do not let them off, because they are very much afraid of their savage outrages. Yet all the while, these men, though persisting in the practices of robbers, claim to be honoured as martyrs when they receive the due reward of their deeds! In 10. Accordingly our desire, which we lay before you, venerable sir, by this letter and by the brethren whom we have sent, is as follows. the first place, if it be possible, let a peaceable conference be held with our bishops, so that an end may be put to the error itself, not to the men who embrace it, and men corrected rather than punished; and as you formerly despised 9. On the other hand, if at any time we get their proposals for agreement, let them now promen of your party into our power, we keep them ceed from your side. How much better for you unharmed, showing great love towards them; to have such a conference between your bishops and we tell them everything by which the error and ours, the proceedings of which may be which has severed brother from brother is re-written down and sent with signature of the parfuted. We do as the Lord Himself commanded ties to the Emperor, than to confer with the civil us, in the words of the prophet Isaiah: "Hear magistrates, who cannot do otherwise than adthe word of the Lord, ye that tremble at His minister the laws which have been passed against word; say, Ye are our brethren, to those who you! For your colleagues who sailed from this hate you, and who cast you out, that the name country said that they had come to have their of the Lord may be glorified, and that He may case heard by the prefects. They also named appear to them with joy; but let them be put our holy father the Catholic bishop Valentinus, to shame." And thus some of them we persuade, through their considering the evidences of the truth and the beauty of peace, not to be baptized anew for this sign of allegiance to our king they have already received (though they I Isa. lxvi. 5, as given by Augustin. who was then at court, saying that they wished to be heard along with him. This the judge could not concede, as he was guided in his judicial functions by the laws which were passed against you: the bishop, moreover, had not 2 Acts xv. 9. 12. If, however, you will neither instruct us nor listen to us, come yourselves, or send into the district of Hippo some of your party, with some of us as their guides, that they may see your army equipped with their weapons; nay, more fully equipped than ever army was before, for no soldier when fighting against barbarians come on this footing, or with any such instruc-buildings were persons by schism separated from tions from his colleagues. How much better you. Nevertheless, you who have by schism qualified therefore will the Emperor himself be severed yourselves from the seed of Abraham, to decide regarding your case, when the report in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed,3 of that conference has been read before him, refuse to be expelled from our ecclesiastical seeing that he is not bound by these laws, and buildings, when the decree to this effect prohas power to enact other laws instead of them; ceeds not from judges such as you employed in although it may be said to be a case upon which dealing with schismatics from your sect, but final decision was pronounced long ago! Yet, from the kings of the earth themselves, who in wishing this conference with you, we seek not worship Christ as the prophecy had foretold, to have a second final decision, but to have it and from whose bar you retired vanquished when made known as already settled to those who you brought accusation against Cæcilianus. meanwhile are not aware that it is so. If your bishops be willing to do this, what do you thereby lose? Do you not rather gain, inasmuch as your willingness for such conference will become known, and the reproach, hitherto deserved, that you distrust your own cause will be taken away? Do you, perchance, suppose that such conference would be unlawful? Surely you are aware was ever known to add to his other weapons that Christ our Lord spoke even to the devil lime and acid to destroy the eyes of his enemies. concerning the law, and that by the Apostle If you refuse this also, we beg you at least to Paul debates were held not only with Jews, but write to them to desist now from these things, even with heathen philosophers of the sect of the and refrain from murdering, plundering, and Stoics and of the Epicureans. Is it, perchance, blinding our people. We will not say, condemn that the laws of the Emperor do not permit you them; for it is for yourselves to see how no conto meet our bishops? If so, assemble together tamination is brought to you by the toleration in the meantime your bishops in the region of Hippo, in which we are suffering such wrongs from men of your party. For how much more legitimate and open is the way of access to us for the writings which you might send to us, than for the arms with which they assail us ! within your communion of those whom we prove to be robbers, while contamination is brought to us by our having members against whom you have never been able to prove that they were traditors. If, however, you treat all our remonstrances with contempt, we shall never regret that we desired to act in a peaceful and orderly way. The Lord will so plead for His Church, that you, on the other hand, shall regret that you despised our humble attempt at conciliation. LETTER LXXXIX. OURABLE AND WORTHY OF ESTEEM, AUGUSTIN 11. Finally, we beg you to send back such writings by our brethren whom we have sent to you. If, however, you will not do this, at least hear us as well as those of your own party, at whose hands we suffer such wrongs. Show us the truth for which you allege that you suffer persecution, at the time when we are suffering so great cruelties from your side. For if you convict us of being in error, perhaps you will concede to us an exemption from being rebaptized TO FESTUS, MY LORD WELL BELOVED, MY SON HONby you, because we were baptized by persons whom you have not condemned; and you granted this exemption to those whom Felicianus of Musti, and Prætextatus of Assuri, had baptized during the long period in which you were attempting to cast them out of their churches by legal interdicts, because they were in communion with Maximianus, along with whom they were condemned explicitly and by name in the Council of Bagæ. All which things we can prove by the judicial and municipal transactions, in which you brought forward the decisions of this same Council of yours, when you wished to show the judges that the persons whom you were expelling from your ecclesiastical 1 Matt. iv. 4. 1. If, on behalf of error and inexcusable dissension, and falsehoods which have been in every way possible disproved, men are so presumptuous as to persevere in boldly assailing and threatening the Catholic Church, which seeks their salvation, how much more is it reasonable and right for those who maintain the truth of Christian peace and unity, truth which commends itself even to those who profess to deny it or attempt to resist it, to labour constantly and with energy, not only in the defence of those who are already Catholics, but also for the correction of those who are not yet within the 3 Gen. xxii. 18. Church! For if obstinacy aims at the possession and exercise of indomitable strength, how great should be the strength of constancy which devotes persevering and unwearied labours to a cause which it knows to be both pleasing to God, and beyond all question necessarily approved by the judgment of wise men ! sons who had been defeated in the civil courts), they would then have published as worthy of all praise the Emperor's wise measures and anxious care for the good of the Church. But now, because they have themselves lost their case, being wholly unable to prove the charges which they advanced, if they suffer anything for their iniq2. Could there, moreover, be anything more uity, they call it persecution; and not only set lamentable as an instance of perversity, than for no bounds to their wicked violence, but also men not only to refuse to be humbled by the claim to be honoured as martyrs: as if the Cathcorrection of their wickedness, but even to claim olic Christian emperors were following in their commendation for their conduct, as is done by measures against their most obstinate wickedthe Donatists, when they boast that they are the ness any other precedent than the decision of victims of persecution; either through incredi- Constantine, to whom they of their own accord ble blindness not knowing, or through inexcus- appealed as the accusers of Cæcilianus, and able passion pretending not to know, that men whose authority they so esteemed above that of are made martyrs not by the amount of their all the bishops beyond the sea, that to him rather suffering, but by the cause in which they suffer? than to them they referred this ecclesiastical disThis I would say even were I opposing men pute. To him, again, they protested against the who were only involved in the darkness of error, first judgment given against them by the bishops and suffering penalties on that account most truly merited, and who had not dared to assault any one with insane violence. But what shall I say against those whose fatal obstinacy is such that it is checked only by fear of losses, and is taught only by exile how universal (as had been foretold) is the diffusion of the Church, which they prefer to attack rather then to acknowledge? And if the things which they suffer under this most gentle discipline be compared with those things which they in reckless fury 4. It may be said, however, that these are perpetrate, who does not see to which party the human tribunals, and that they might have been name of persecutors more truly belongs? Nay, cajoled, misguided, or bribed. Why, then, is even though wicked sons abstain from violence, the Christian world libelled and branded with the they do, by their abandoned way of life, inflict crime laid to the charge of some who are said upon their affectionate parents a much more to have surrendered to persecutors the sacred serious wrong than their father and mother books? For surely it was neither possible for inflict upon them, when, with a sternness pro- the Christian world, nor incumbent upon it, to portioned to the strength of their love, they do otherwise than believe the judges whom the endeavour without dissimulation to compel them plaintiffs had chosen, rather than the plaintiffs to live uprightly. whom he had appointed to examine the case in Rome, and to him also they appealed against the second judgment given by the bishops at Arles: yet when at last they were defeated by his own decision, they remained unchanged in their perversity. I think that even the devil himself would not have had the assurance to persist in such a cause, if he had been so often overthrown by the authority of the judge to whom he had of his own will chosen to appeal. against whom these judges pronounced judg3. There exist the strongest evidences in ments. These judges are responsible to God for public documents, which you can read if you their opinion, whether just or unjust; but what please, or rather, which I beseech and exhort has the Church, diffused throughout the world, you to read, by which it is proved that their done that it should be deemed necessary for her predecessors, who originally separated them to be rebaptized by the Donatists upon no other selves from the peace of the Church, did of ground than because, in a case in which she was their own accord dare to bring accusation not able to decide as to the truth, she has thought against Cæcilianus before the Emperor by herself called upon to believe those who were in means of Anulinus, who was proconsul at that a position to judge it rightly, rather than those time. Had they gained the day in that trial, who, though defeated in the civil courts, refused what else would Cæcilianus have suffered at the to yield? O weighty indictment against all the hands of the Emperor than that which, when nations to which God promised that they should they were defeated, he awarded to them? But be blessed in the seed of Abraham, and has now truly, if they having accused him had prevailed, made His promise good! When they with one and Cæcilianus and his colleagues had been ex-voice demand, Why do you wish to rebaptize us? pelled from their sees, or, through persisting in the answer given is, Because you do not know their conspiracy, had exposed themselves to severer punishments (for the imperial censure could not pass unpunished the resistance of per what men in Africa were guilty of surrendering the sacred books; and being thus ignorant, accepted the testimony of the judges who decided |