St. Augustine and African church divisions

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER

I. The Beginnings of Donatism

II. The Donatists and the Emperor Constantine

Chapter I. The Beginnings Of Donatism

The Donatist Communion was a most serious division in the North African Church. The actual separation occurred in Constantine's reign ; but the circumstances causing it arose earlier out of Diocletian's persecution.

The first eighteen years of Diocletian's lengthy reign formed for the Church at large a period of comparative peace. Persecutions, indeed, occurred in the dominions of one or other of the four rulers under whose administration the Empire was divided. But these attacks were only local and intermittent. Whatever the predilections of the subordinate Caesars, the old Emperor himself was, for political reasons, of a tolerant disposition. Christianity was believed in his palace and even in his family. Prisca, his wife, Valeria, his daughter, were, more or less distinctly, of the Christian faith. Christian convictions also prevailed among his most trusted servants. And the religion, thus existing in close proximity to the imperial presence, developed also in wider circles among the leading officials of the Empire at large. All this could scarcely be unknown, and it was tolerated for eighteen years. Then came a sudden change.

What it was that suddenly filled the old and hitherto tolerant Emperor with unwonted persecuting zeal has never been quite satisfactorily explained. The version given by Lactantius is evidently not unbiased. Lactantius, court official in the Palace of Nicomedia, contemporary with the events described, had certainly unusual opportunities for ascertaining the truth.1 But Lactantius writes in the style of the impassioned apologist, able to see no good in the opposing side. According to Lactantius, the old, enfeebled Diocletian was terrorized by his own superstitions, and by the domineering insolence of his fierce and brutal son-in-law, the Caesar Galerius. Galerius played upon Diocletian's fears, filled him with suspicions of plots against his life, had the palace secretly set onv fire, ascribed the act to the Christians, and then abruptly left r Nicomedia protesting that he departed to escape being burnt alive.2 Whether this version is accurate or complete may well be open to question. What is certain is, that after tolerating Christianity for eighteen years, Diocletian now launched out into the horrors of persecution. He compelled his wife and daughter to offer sacrifice to the pagan divinities, he inflicted horrible tortures upon his confidential officials, and determined to expel Christianity from his household and from his palace. The spirit of persecution once roused passed out to wider circles and Diocletian attempted to suppress the faith in the whole Empire itself.

It was the month of March in the year 303. The commemoration of the Passion was near, when Diocletian launched his first and famous edict against the faith.3

He ordered : —

1. The demolition of churches.

2. The destruction of the Scriptures.

3. The degradation of Christian officials.

4. The servitude of ordinary believers.

This document was followed in rapid succession by three more : one enjoining torture as a method of coercion, and the last inflicting the penalty of death.

Diocletian's edict embraced the whole extent of the Empire. Its peculiar feature was the order for the destruction of the Sacred Books. It affected the whole course of North African Christianity. The Government search for the Scriptures was

1 " De Morte Persec." 2 Ch. xiv. 3 Eusebius, VIII, 11.

vigorously conducted. The official report of procedure in Cirta (afterwards called Constantine), the ancient capital of Numidia, still survives. It is an extremely graphic narrative, presenting a singularly clear picture of the state of the Church.

The recorder describes that the investigation began in Cirta on 19 May (303) under Munatius Felix, Curator of Cirta. The municipal officials came to a house where Christians were assembled. Felix said to the Bishop : " Bring out the copies of the Scripture and whatever else you have here, as the edict commands". Bishop Paul replied: "The Readers have the copies, but what we have here we will surrender ". They produced two golden chalices, six of silver, six silver vessels, etc. The officials then went to the library. It was empty. Only one large copy of Scripture was discovered. The Curator asked: "Why have you produced no more than one?" "We have no more," was the answer, " we are only subdeacons ; the Readers have the copies." "Point out to us the Readers," said the Curator. " We do not know where they are," was the evasive answer. "Then tell us their names." The subdeacons refused. "We are not betrayers. Here we are, you can have us killed." The Curator ordered them to be arrested.

The officials went on to another house. " Bring out what copies of the Scripture you have," said the Curator. Four copies were produced. At another house they secured five more, at another eight.

They passed on to the house of Victor the teacher. They demanded as before, " Bring out the Scriptures ". Victor produced two codices. " You have more than these," said the Curator. " If I had more I should have brought them," was the reply. They passed on to another house. The owner was out. His wife brought out six codices. . " See whether you have not more," said the Curator. The woman protested that these were all. The Curator turned to an attendant, " Go in and ascertain whether this is really all ".1 The attendant

1 St. Augustine, ix, 1107.

searched the house and returned to say that he could find no more. Felix the Curator contented himself with a general threat that if any persons had failed to do their duty in the matter they would be held responsible. And so the inquiry ended. In this way nearly forty copies of the Sacred Writings were confiscated.

This matter of fact official document enables us to realize with ease the temper and motives of all the parties concerned. The magistrate has evidently no personal interest or animosity against the Church. He observes the law to the letter, and takes precautions to guard himself against any possible suspicions of carelessness or indifference. But the representatives of the Church are all deplorably weak. No courage, no zeal is anywhere displayed. A very human self-interest, an extraordinary readiness to yield the Church's sacred vessels and Scriptures, is the prevailing temper in the clergy of Cirta. Personal security is obviously the main idea. No one, from the bishop downwards, has the least conception of any other duty. There is, however, one important exception. The Churchmen of Cirta made no scruples in yielding the Scriptures to the flames ; but they absolutely declined to betray their brethren.

In other places the demand for the Scriptures was met with heroic determination to endure the utmost rather than to yield.1 Felix, Bishop of Thibaris in the African Proconsulate, was summoned before Magnilian, the Curator of the City, and ordered to surrender any copies of the Sacred Writings in his possession. Felix refused, and was accordingly imprisoned. After an interval of three days he was again brought before Magnilian, and on his second refusal sent for trial before Anulinus the Proconsul. After sixteen days in prison he was interrogated by the Proconsul, and, persisting steadily in his refusal, was remanded to the higher authorities in Italy. The heroic Bishop was thrust down into the hold of a ship, among the cattle, where he remained in the discomfort and heat, without food, during four days while they sailed along the edge of Sicily. In Italy he was placed upon his trial for the last time, and met the sentence of execution by the sword with words of thanksgiving.

The pressure of Government inquiry created for African Churchmen practical problems demanding immediate solution. Could a Christian conscientiously yield the Scriptures at Diocletian's order ? Was surrender of Sacred Writings consistent with fidelity to Christ ? or was such conduct equivalent to apostasy ? Should the Christian adopt the line of discretion and reserve, or that of uncompromising publicity ? Should he wait until challenged, with the possibility that he might be overlooked ; or should he make escape impossible, advance unbidden, and boldly proclaim refusal at the heathen magistrate bar?

Such questions might meet with more than one reply. African religious thought was divided. There was a school of discretion and also a party of fanaticism. Some rushed impulsively to the courts, unsummoned, declared themselves possessors of Sacred Scriptures, and registered a defiant determination to retain these treasures, regardless of imperial commands.1 Thus they forced the magistrates to arrest and imprison them, and to proceed against them in accordance with the statutes. This anxiety to secure the honours of martyrdom, regardless of the dangers which such conduct entailed upon the Church at large, was, to the moderate and better balanced mind, exceedingly distressing and ill-advised.2 To none was it more distressing than to Mensurius, Bishop of Carthage. Mensurius was a serious, sober-minded man, disciplined by the responsibilities of office. He was more likely to err on the side of caution than on that of rashness. Like his great predecessor Cyprian, who expressly forbade all unprovoked defiance of the secular power, he refused to honour men who rashly went uncalled, and courted risks and sufferings

1 Noris, iv. 19. 2 Hefele.

which they might not be able to endure. He would not acknowledge as true martyrs men who brought death upon themselves. He prohibited the faithful from crowding round the prison doors, and from provoking further efforts against the Church by their well-meant but imprudent demonstrations. In short, he required of his flock the exercise of forbearance and self-repression.1 These labours to control the indiscreet were productive of great unpopularity and were easily afterwards misrepresented. Mensurius was pictured to the next generation as having thrown to the dogs the food brought to believers languishing in prison ; as withholding weeping parents from their dying children's last embrace ; and as driving away with scourges those who lingered near the prison doors.2 It is not difficult to see how fanaticism and dislike put these constructions on firm and possibly sometimes harsh endeavours to protect the Church from perilous sensationalism and from a zeal not according to knowledge. But Mensurius was not content with repressing fanaticism. He had no hesitation in going further still. Before the Government officials searched the Carthaginian churches he took the precaution of substituting heretical writings for the Sacred Books.3 Accordingly the searchers confiscated and destroyed the productions of heretics while the codices of the New Testament were saved.

It is hardly possible that such a ruse should succeed without official connivence. And we are told that when it was afterwards hinted to the secular authorities, by some energetic opponent of the Church, that the officials had been deceived, the Proconsul Anulinus refused to permit any further investigations. The magistrate's personal convictions may often in this period have favoured the religion which his official orders directed him to suppress.

But it was quite natural that the conduct of Bishop Mensurius should not pass unchallenged. The austerer party in the Church were grievously offended. They were evidently

1 Noris, iv. 19. 2" Martyrdom of Dativus."

powerful in Carthage itself; and their versions of his proceedings were carried beyond the limits of his diocese. The Metropolitan thought it prudent to explain his conduct in a letter to Bishop Secundus, the Primate of Numidia. He admits that he had substituted heretical documents for the Sacred Scriptures, and that the Proconsul, on being informed, refused to reopen the inquiry. He acknowledges that he had repressed the fanatical who courted persecution, and forbade the faithful to give them honour.1 But he insists that these fanatics included a number of shady and questionable people ; criminals and debtors, and other undesirable individuals ; who posed as confessors : partly perhaps as atonement for unworthy life, but often, Mensurius believed, rather for the support and esteem thereby acquired from an indiscriminating piety.

That the Metropolitan should have thought it necessary to write this self-defence to the Numidian Primate shows, at any rate, the powerful influence of the opposition in Carthage. The charge against his own fidelity was one which he did not think it wise, nor perhaps even safe, to ignore.

To this apology the Numidian Primate returned a lofty but evasive reply. He expatiated on the fidelity of the Numidian confessors, their courageous behaviour under persecution. Then, with a light and rapid touch, he mentioned that his own reply to the magistrates was : M I am a Christian and a Bishop, and not a Betrayer " ; leaving the conclusion implied, but not asserted, that with this response the inquirers were somehow satisfied.

There were, however, critics among the Numidian bishops who considered their Primate's account an evasion rather than an answer ; and were ready to challenge him to a fuller explanation if the need arose.

Here for the moment, however, the matter dropped.

But in the year 305 the twelve Numidian bishops met at Cirta,2 for the purpose of electing and consecrating a successor

1 St. Aug. (Gaume), ix. 864 ; " Brevic. Coll.," in. 25.

2 St. Aug., " C. Crescon.," in. 30 ; Gaume, ix. 696 ; Optatus, I, xiv.

to Bishop Paulus, who behaved so poorly in the persecution, and had since apparently died.1 Secundus, the Primate, presided. He began by proposing to make the usual official inquiry into their own qualifications to act as consecrators ; in order to secure the consecration against subsequent disputes. Addressing one of the bishops, the Primate said : " It is reported that you were a traditor ". The Bishop replied : " You know how severely Florus incited me to offer incense ; and God did not betray me into his hand, my brother. Since God has spared me, do you also leave me to God." The answer was a virtual admission of failure. " What then," said the Primate, " are we to do for martyrs ? They are esteemed because they did not betray." The Bishop could only answer : " Leave me to give account to God " — the usual formula for declining to make a judicial investigation. The Primate did not venture to pursue the inquiry further. He accepted this lame account as a satisfactory explanation. So he passed to another. " It is reported," said the Primate, f that you also betrayed the Scriptures." " They were medical treatises," was the answer. The Primate accepted it. He turned to a third bishop : " It is said that you surrendered four Gospels ". The Bishop replied : " Valentinus the Curator forced me to throw them into the flames. But I knew that they were wornout copies. Forgive me this offence, and may God also forgive me." The Primate accepted this also. Every bishop hitherto had answered submissively. But when Purpurius, Bishop of Lima, was examined, he answered in a very different tone. " Do you think to terrify me," exclaimed Purpurius, " as you have terrified others ? What did you do yourself when the Magistrate questioned you, and ordered you to surrender the Scriptures ? How did you escape without yielding to their demands ? Assuredly, they never released you without submission ! As for me," continued Purpurius furiously, " I will kill anyone who opposes me. Do not provoke me to say

1 Morcelli, "Africa Christiana," n. 195.

more." The Primate was overawed. Another bishop interposed in the embarrassing silence, and addressing the Primate, pleaded : " You hear what he says against you. He is ready to make a schism. And not only he ; all the others are ready to go with him. They will give sentence against you, and you will remain the only heretic."

The Primate quailed. He offered no reply, but consulted with other bishops, who strongly advised that the whole matter of past unfaithfulness should be left to the judgment of God. Accordingly he terminated the inquiry at once ; leaving the integrity of the other bishops undetermined. All he observed was : '* You know, and God knows ; be seated ". With expressions of relief the bishops resumed their places, and proceeded to elect a new bishop for the city. The selection was apparently in the hands of the bishops. They selected Silvanus, subdeacon of the former Bishop Paulus, and implicated, like his bishop, in yielding the Scriptures to the flames. It is said that remonstrances were made by leading Churchmen of Cirta. He is a traditor, they complained ; let another be chosen. We desire a man of integrity. But their objections were overruled. A group of bishops with such antecedents would have no scruple in selecting a person like themselves. Silvanus was accordingly consecrated Bishop of the Numidian capital.

This was in 305. Very little is known of the course of events for the next six years. It seems clear, however, that in this period the condition of the Church of Carthage was one of strong party spirit. Opposition to the Metropolitan found sympathizers in the Numidian Primate, and his suffragans, partly through official jealousy. And if no serious conflict arose while Mensurius lived, this was greatly due to his strength and caution. Probably the Numidian bishops dared not venture upon any public attack on one who knew too much about their own antecedents. But the troubles which he successfully averted from the Church of his day developed instantly at the time of his decease.1

Mensurius the cautious was destined to suffer through other men's imprudence. Felix, his deacon, wrote a letter,1 in an hour of zealous indiscretion, against no less a personage than the Consul Maxentius, who thereupon summoned him to give an account of himself at Rome. Mensurius, however, protected his deacon. But the protection involved the bishop in making the journey to Rome himself. If he surrendered documents, he protected men. Before leaving Carthage he entrusted, for greater security, the golden vessels of the sanctuary to the keeping of certain laymen. And, for further precaution, gave privately an inventory of the church's treasures to an aged woman, with injunction to deliver it to his successor, in case he did not return. Mensurius made his peace with the Consul, but died on the journey home.2

The death of Mensurius brought on a crisis in the African Church.

Contemporary African Churchmen appear quite unconscious of the critical nature of the election now to be made. Numerous conflicting interests are seen at work. Party spirit ran extremely high. But no one appears to understand that the whole course of African Church life would be permanently affected by their conduct at this hour. Nor, on the face of it, does it seem that there were grounds for the gravest anxieties. The circumstances did not present so menacing an aspect as many another episcopal election. The incident was no more than an election to the chief bishopric in Africa. Yet the result was a division of the whole African Church for more than a hundred years. The explanation seems inadequate. What was it that gave this disputed election a consequence immeasurably more disastrous than many another ?

i. In the first place there were certain leading Carthaginian clergy, the two priests, Botrus and Celestius, who, not without some reasonable prospect of success, aspired to the vacant See. Prompted by self-interest, they managed to secure that a synod

1 Optatus, I, xvm. 2a.d. 311, Hefele, 1. 173.

THE BEGINNINGS OF DONATISM n

of neighbouring bishops should be immediately assembled, and the election proceeded with at once, in the absence of the bishops of the province of Numidia. However, the expectations of the ambitious were incorrect. They had miscalculated their own popularity. The laity of Carthage overlooked both Botrus and Celestius, and elected Caecilian the Archdeacon. Accordingly Caecilian was consecrated, by Felix, Bishop of Aptunga, as Bishop of Carthage, Primate and Metropolitan. But their disappointment converted these two influential clerics into resolute opponents of the new bishop.

2. A second discordant element was shortly created.1 The woman whom Mensurius entrusted with the inventory of Church treasures faithfully discharged her duty by putting Caecilian in possession of the facts. The new bishop thereupon requested the various elders to deliver up the golden vessels into his keeping. This they did, it is said reluctantly, having intended to appropriate them to their own uses. At any rate they forthwith abandoned the communion of Caecilian and ranked themselves among the opposition.

3. A third element of division was created by a wealthy and influential Spanish lady, then residing in Carthage, named Lucilla, whom Caecilian, when Archdeacon, had the misfortune to offend. Lucilla brought with her to church the relics, real or imaginary,2 of some martyr, upon which she lavished much veneration before receiving the Holy Eucharist. Caecilian, in his capacity as Archdeacon, had rebuked this practice, as resting on no authority. The probability is, not that Caecilian felt any repugnance to the veneration of relics, but that Lucilla was bestowing this public veneration upon one whom the Church had not recognized in the roll of martyrs.3 The Church had refused to acknowledge as martyrs those whose imprudence or fanaticism brought persecution upon themselves. And it is quite probable that Lucilla was here attempting to canonize one whose claim to the honour of martyrdom the less fanatical

1 Migne, "Optatus," p. 919. 2Optatus, 1. 16.

3 " Nonditm Vindicati," Optatus.

were not prepared to admit. At any rate Lucilla withdrew from his communion, and took her place among the discontents.

These three discordant elements, clerical, lay, feminine, disappointed ambition, frustrated covetousness, and spiteful feelings, coalesced in an unholy alliance, for the purpose of retaliation upon the new Bishop of Carthage.1 And these three, from the time of the historian Optatus, have been commonly adduced as chief causes of the trouble which ensued.

4. These adverse elements, however, could scarcely by themselves affect the African Church at large, had not other and more extensive motives prevailed. There can be little doubt that the election of Caecilian appeared a party question. For Cascilian had been completely identified with his predecessor's policy. As Archdeacon, he had been Mensurius's right-hand. The repression of fanaticism during the persecution had been carried out through his instrumentality. His election, therefore, meant the continuance of lenient views, the rejection of austerer ideals. Chilian's election showed, indeed, that the majority of the Carthaginian Church shared his opinions, and approved his behaviour ; but the discontented, if in the minority, were not on this account less active, nor perhaps less formidable. What Caecilian termed prudence they considered laxity ; what they called firmness he would call fanaticism. Thus the choice of Csecilian was a burning question of party strife. And the locally discontented knew well that if the School of Severity was in the minority within the Carthaginian Church, it possessed vast masses of adherents beyond the limits of the great city. The Numidian bishops enjoyed a reputation for austerity. At the time of the election they were, it is true, left out ; but they could be now, at any rate, invited to pass adverse judgment on Csecilian's consecration. Accordingly an appeal was made to their impartiality. It is difficult not to see the activities of Botrus and Celestius in this — the malice of disappointed ambi-

1 Optatus.

tion. The Numidian bishops accepted the appeal with alacrity. No less than seventy of their number assembled in Carthage. They acted the part of vigorous advocates of an austere ideal. They recoiled with abhorrence from lax and easygoing ways. Nevertheless, their reputation for austerity was wholly undeserved. The severer school at Carthage were apparently deceived by Numidian professions, with which Numidian practice did not correspond. It has been already seen, on the authority of official reports, that these same Numidians had themselves, during the persecution, surrendered the Scriptures to the imperial decree, or escaped by evasive methods which would not bear more rigorous scrutiny than the conduct of the other school. Here was Secundus of Tigisis, now Primate of Numidia, whose reforming zeal at the Synod of Cirta collapsed altogether before the menaces of undeniable traditors, and whose own integrity was more than open to suspicion. With him was Silvanus, now Bishop of Cirta, the same who as subdeacon had yielded the chalices to the pagan authorities in the Diocletian trial. Here was Purpurius, the wild, ferocious, and defiant, whose record was among the worst in that cruel time. It was certainly, to say the least, incongruous that these ill-assorted elements, none of whom was really fit to be a bishop, should appear as champions of an austerer view. But it was not incongruous that they should be welcomed by the disappointed, and supported by the wealth of the vindictive Lucilla. Her house became the central office for schismatic agencies, and apparently the place where the Numidian Synod met.

5. A question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction now arose, which has never been quite clearly solved to the present day. The Numidian bishops professed themselves indignant that the consecration to the See of Carthage had taken place before they came. They regarded Caecilian as a mere intruder, and the See as vacant still.1 But it is difficult to define pre-

1 Hefele.

cisely upon what ground they based a claim to share in an election at Carthage.1 If they had no right, why were they indignant ? If they had a right, upon what ground did it rest ? The Bishops of Numidia had a primate of their own. What right could they have in electing a primate for another (the proconsular) province ? It has been suggested that, since the Numidian bishops were subject to the Bishop of Carthage as Metropolitan, their assent was necessary to his selection.2 In this case, Caecilian's consecration, in the absence of their approval, would be irregular.3 But of this asserted necessity for the consent of the Numidian Episcopate there is no documentary evidence. The Mauritanian bishops made no such claim. Nor does it seem that the Numidians could have had any more right to share in electing the Metropolitan of Carthage than was possessed by the Bishops of Mauritania. The objection to Caecilian's consecration, as formulated by the Donatists a hundred years later at the Carthaginian Conference, was that a primate should be consecrated by a primate 4 {princeps a principe ordmaretur) and not by inferior bishops. The Catholic answer to this was that it was not the custom of the Catholic Church. The Bishop of Carthage was traditionally consecrated, not by the Numidians, but by the bishops of the churches round Carthage ; just as the Bishop of the Roman Church is not consecrated by some metropolitan, but by the neighbouring Bishop of Ostia. What authority the Donatists had for their asserted custom, Augustine says he did not know, nor when it was supposed to have originated. Had the custom been ancient their ancestors would have urged it against Caecilian when they rejected him in his absence.

Probably the dispute was complicated by differences between the secular and religious divisions of North Africa. The chief secular divisions were three : the Proconsular, the Numidian, the Mauritanian. The Proconsular was Africa proper, with

1 Noris. 2 Volter.

Carthage as the capital ; the Mauritanian extended to the West towards Spain ; while between them lay Numidia, with its capital, Cirta.

But the frontiers between the Proconsular and the Numidian provinces underwent alterations from time to time. Now it seems that the ecclesiastical divisions followed the secular, but failed to keep pace with the alterations. A district might belong secularly to one province, ecclesiastically to another. Even in St. Augustine's time his bishopric was secularly in the Proconsulate, but ecclesiastically in the Province of Numidia. Such Numidian bishops as were in the secular Proconsulate might not unnaturally consider themselves privileged to vote in its ecclesiastical concerns.

It is also clear that the ecclesiastical organization of the African Church was at the time of the Diocletian persecution incomplete. When Numidia became an ecclesiastical province is not exactly known. Probably not much before 300. The Numidian Primacy was thus a youthful institution. It could not be compared for influence with the Primacy of the Proconsulate, which already possessed a long and eventful history. The Proconsular Primacy at Carthage, by its immemorial association with one city, and that city the African capital, had gradually grown to great but undefined authority over the entire African Church. The Bishop of Carthage was in reality a Metropolitan. But this increasing power was evidently viewed with jealousy in the Numidian division. The bishops of that province were not reluctant to seize an occasion for restricting the power of the Carthaginian See. This motive, in all probability, contributes to explain the alacrity with which they gathered and intervened.1

6. There was yet another element which tended to lift this local disputed succession into a universal conflict for the entire North African Church. It gathered up into itself the rivalries

1 Cf. Theodor Mommsen, " Provinces of the Roman Empire," n. 303-45. Rauscher, " Augustinus," 521. Monceaux, "Hist. Lit. de l'Afrique Chretienne," 111. 85.

of race. North Africa of the period was a region of many nationalities and tongues. To name no more, there were the Latin and the Phoenician, and underlying these, the Berber or native, destined to survive them both. The Phoenician had conquered the African, and the Roman the Phoenician. B^t the Roman antipathy to the Phoenician had never been c«rcome. The conqueror stood aloof from the conqueredf and never intermixed. Whatever the proportions between the two it is certain that the Phoenician language pervaded the whole Province of Numidia. Phoenician towns had become Italian colonies, and the official language of North Africa was that of Rome. But yet in the social life, more especially of course in places which stood aloof from intercourse,1 or away from Roman centres, the Phoenician language was habitually spoken. These racial and linguistic difficulties necessarily affected the course of the life of the Church. The cultured Latin churches of the Roman population were intruded upon, or out of touch with, or alien to, a stock of a different kind. The student will remember numerous instances. Valerius, Augustine's predecessor in the See of Hippo, ordains Augustine precisely to remedy his own inability to make himself intelligible to the surrounding population. The city of Fussala, forty miles from Hippo, still needs a bishop in Augustine's day who can speak the Punic language. Punic words occur in the sermons of Augustine. The strongest opponents of the Metropolitan in the old Numidian capital of Cirta are of Moorish origin.2 The gangs of wild defenders of the schism are evidently of Punic race. They cannot understand their bishop's sermons without an interpreter. The dearth of African clergy is partly due to the difficulty of finding men qualified to teach in the Punic language. The materials were consequently ready for a serious severance between churches of the national types. We are tempted to ask whether the obvious Numidian and Carthaginian jealousy was partly due to diversity of race. It is