Later Documents Relating to the Conference of Carthage

The same Augusti to Julian, Proconsul of Africa. We have decreed that the Donatists and heretics, whom the patience of our clemency has preserved until now, be struck with fitting authority. 1° So that by evident precept they may acknowledge themselves to be intestable, and to have no power of entering into any agreement, but branded with perpetual infamy they are to be segregated from honorable assemblies and from public gathering. 2° Moreover, those places in which this dire superstition has been maintained until now shall be made known to the venerable Catholic Church: 3° So that bishops, presbyters, and all their overseers and ministers, stripped of all their property, shall be directed to each and every island and province for the purpose of exile. 4° Whoever, moreover, shall have received those who are fleeing the proposed punishment, for the purpose of concealing them, let him know both that his patrimony is to be added to the gains of our treasury, and that he himself shall undergo the penalty which has been proposed for those persons.

5° We also evidently impose losses of patrimony and monetary penalties upon men, women, individual persons, and ranks according to their quality, which ought to be inflicted. Therefore, whoever shall have been invested with the honor of proconsular, or vicarial, or comitivae of the first order, unless he shall have turned his mind and purpose to Catholic observance, shall be compelled to pay two hundred pounds of silver to be added to the profits of our treasury. And lest this alone be thought sufficient to cut off his intention, as often as he shall have been convicted of having approached such communion, so often shall the fine be exacted: and if it shall have been established that the same person has not been recalled from error even by losses five times over, then the matter shall be referred to our clemency, so that we may judge more harshly concerning his entire substance and his condition.

We bind the remaining Honorati also by conditions of this kind: namely, that a senator, who, fortified by no external privilege of rank, is found in the flock of the Donatists, shall pay one hundred pounds of silver: sacerdotales shall be compelled to pay the same sum: the ten chief curiales shall be condemned to fifty pounds of silver, the remaining decurions shall pay ten pounds of silver, whosoever shall have preferred to remain in heresy. 6° The conductors of our household, moreover, if they shall have permitted this to be practiced on the estates of our venerable substance, shall be compelled to pay by way of penalty a sum equal to what they are accustomed to pay in rent. The same authority of the sacred definition shall also bind emphyteuticarii.

7° The conductors of private persons, however, if they shall have permitted conventicles to be held on those same estates, or if the sacred mystery shall have been polluted through their sufferance, the matter shall be referred by the judges to the knowledge of the owners, whose interest it will be, if they wish to escape the penalty of the sacred command, either to correct those who are contending or to replace those who are persisting: and to provide such managers for their estates as keep the divine precepts. But if they shall have neglected to attend to this, these persons also shall be fined in the rents which they are accustomed to receive, by the authority of the promulgated precept, so that what could have come to their profit may be joined to the sacred treasury.

8° Officials, moreover, of various judges, if they shall have been found in this error, shall be held liable to the payment of thirty pounds of silver by way of penalty: so that if, having been condemned five times, they shall have been unwilling to abstain, they shall be coerced with stripes and consigned to exile. 9° Slaves and colonists, however, the most severe coercion shall vindicate from audacities of this kind. And if colonists, compelled by stripes, shall have persisted in their purpose, then they shall be fined a third part of their peculium. 10° And all things which can be collected from persons and places of this kind shall immediately be directed to the sacred largesses. Given on the tenth day before the Kalends of July, at Ravenna, in the consulship of Constantius and Constans.

By the inquiry and diligence of Marcellinus, a man of notable memory, those proceedings were conducted against the Donatists which, having been transferred into the public records, we wish to hold perpetual force: for the public faith ought not to perish by the death of the judge. Given the 3rd day before the Kalends of September, at Rome or Ravenna, in the consulship of Constantius and Constans.

The same Augusti to Heraclianus, Count of Africa. Let all know, who as enemies of the sacred law had crept into their own rites through the superstitions of heresy, that they are to be punished with the penalty both of proscription and of blood, if they shall henceforth attempt by their recklessness to assemble publicly for the exercise of their crime: lest any true and divine reverence be defiled by contagion. Given the 8th day before the Kalends of September, in the consulship of Honorius X and Theodosius VI, Augusti.

1° The madness of heretics is to be so restrained that, before all else, they should have no doubt that whatever churches they hold seized from the Orthodox, wherever these may be, must immediately be handed over to the Catholic Church: for it cannot be tolerated that those who ought not even to have had churches of their own should continue to hold those possessed or founded by the Orthodox and invaded by their own recklessness. 2° Next, that if they join other clerics to themselves, or, as they themselves reckon, priests, a fine of ten pounds of gold, for each individual, shall be extorted from him who did it and from him who permitted it to be done, and paid into our treasury: or if they plead poverty, from the common body of clerics of that same superstition, or even from their own offerings.

3° After this, since not all are to be punished with the same severity: to the Arians indeed, the Macedonians, and the Apollinarians, whose crime it is that, deceived by harmful deliberation, they believe lies from the fountain of truth, let it not be lawful to have a church within any city. But from the Novatians and Sabbatians let all license of innovation be taken away, if perchance they shall have attempted any. The Eunomians, however, the Valentinians, the Montanists, or Priscillianists, the Phrygians, the Marcionists, the Borborians, the Messalians, the Euchites, or Enthusiasts, the Donatists, the Audians, the Hydroparastatae, the Ascodrogitae, the Photinians, the Paulians, the Marcelians, and those who have descended to the very lowest depth of wickedness, the Manichaeans, shall nowhere within Roman soil have the faculty of assembling or praying, with the Manichaeans also to be expelled from the cities: since there is no place to be left to any of these in which injury is done even to the elements themselves.

No military service whatsoever is to be granted to these, except the cohortine service in the provinces and the camp service. No right whatsoever of making donations among themselves, no right of testament or of any last will is conceded to them.

And all laws which have been enacted against these and others who resist our faith, promulgated at various times, ever to be valid with fresh observance—whether concerning donations made to the churches of heretics, or concerning property left in any manner by last will, or concerning private buildings into which, with the Lord permitting or restraining, they have assembled—are to be vindicated for the venerable Catholic Church: whether concerning a steward who has done this without the knowledge of his master, who, if freeborn, shall undergo a fine of ten pounds of gold or exile, but if of servile condition, the mines after flogging: so that they may neither assemble in a public place, nor build churches for themselves, nor devise anything to circumvent the laws: all civil and military assistance, including that of the Curiae, of the defensors, and of the judges, being forbidden to them under the threat of twenty pounds of gold.

Those things also remaining firm in all respects which have been promulgated concerning military service and the right of making donations and of executing a testament, either wholly denied or scarcely conceded to certain persons, and with various penalties, against various heretics: so that not even a special benefit obtained contrary to the laws shall avail. No license is to be given to any of the heretics to lead back to their own baptism either freeborn persons or their own slaves who have been initiated into the mysteries of the Orthodox: nor indeed to prohibit those whom they have purchased or held in any manner, not yet joined to their superstition, from following the Catholic religion of the Church. Whoever shall do this, or, being freeborn, shall have permitted it to be done to himself, or shall not have reported what was done, shall be condemned to exile and a fine of ten pounds of gold, the license of making a testament and a donation being denied to both.

All these things we decree to be so observed that no judge may be permitted to commit a crime brought before him to a lesser or to no punishment, unless he himself wishes to suffer what he has conceded to others by overlooking it. Given the 3rd day before the Kalends of June, at Constantinople, in the consulship of Felix and Taurus.

Maximus also, who was reprehensibly ordained from the laity, yet if he is no longer a Donatist and is estranged from the spirit of schismatic depravity, we do not repel from the episcopal dignity which he has obtained in whatever manner: provided that he himself, by a written declaration submitted to us, make manifest that he is Catholic.

With the Donatists also preaching that the good are polluted by communion with the wicked. And afterwards. For Donatist vanity does not attend to the fact that the benefit of baptism was conferred upon men for this purpose: that those who are burdened from their origin by the errors of others, relieved by the aid of healing grace, should thenceforth bear only their own burdens, and that not the communion of the sacrament but the consent of sin should condemn each person.

The devil betrays himself by his own counsels. Cast yourself down. He seeks a fall, he commands a precipice, and by such counsel makes martyrs throughout Africa, saying without outcry: If you wish to be a martyr, cast yourself down, so that he may drive them from on high to death, not lift them up from a lowly place and raise them to a crown.

Let the Donatists hear the Church crying out from the ends of the earth, and let them straightway cease to call her local. Who can be heard against the voice of the world? It is most shameless to speak against the testimony of three, and they are not ashamed to arm themselves impudently against a universal judgment. Why do they weary souls with new inventions? Let them at least receive what they may believe, not what they may pervert by their own iniquity. The faithful people pray from the ends of the earth because the Lord has been made their hope, and thereafter they rejoice that they have been heard with hymn-singing exultation: because they shall appear continually in the sight of the Lord: what could now give satisfaction, if this does not satisfy? We see daily come to pass what He promised: we see the world coming together under the rules of the Christian faith: And alas! Falsehood strives to conceal what truth has decreed to make known.

Gregory to Gennadius, patrician and exarch of Africa. Just as the Lord has caused your excellency to shine in this life with the light of victories in hostile wars, so it is fitting also to oppose the enemies of His Church with all alertness of mind and body: so that your renown may shine more and more by both kinds of triumph: since you both vigorously resist in external wars the adversaries of the Catholic Church, and fight bravely in ecclesiastical battles as warriors of the Lord. For it is well known that men of heretical religion, if the license to do harm is available to them—which God forbid—rise up vehemently against the Catholic faith, so that they may be able to pour the poisons of their heresy into the members of the Christian body to corrupt them. For we have learned that they lift up their necks against the Catholic Church, the Lord opposing them, and wish to bend the faith of the Christian name.

But let your eminence suppress their attempts, and press down their proud necks under the yoke of righteousness.

Gregory to all the bishops of Numidia. For you petitioned through Hilary our chartulary from our predecessor of blessed memory that all the customs of past times be preserved for you, which long antiquity has kept until now from the beginnings of the ordinations of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles. And we indeed, according to the tenor of your report, grant that the custom—which is recognized as usurping nothing against the Catholic faith—remain undisturbed, whether concerning the appointment of primates and the other chapters, excepting those who come from the Donatists to the episcopate, whom we prohibit by every means from being advanced to the dignity of the primacy, even when the order of the clergy brings them to that same place. Let it suffice for them only to exercise the care of the people committed to them, but not also to go before those bishops whom the Catholic faith has both taught and brought forth in the bosom of the Church in obtaining the height of the primacy.

Gregory to Columbo, bishop of Numidia. It is known, dearest brother in Christ, that the ancient enemy who by cunning persuasion cast the first man from the delights of Paradise into this toilsome life, and even then inflicted upon him the punishment of mortality for the whole human race, now with that same cunning attempts to infect the shepherds of the Lord's flock with poured-in poisons, so that he may more easily seize the flock, and by right claim it for his own power. But we, who, though unworthy, have received the apostolic see to be governed in the place of Peter the prince of the apostles, are compelled by the very office of the pontificate to oppose the common enemy with whatever efforts we can muster.

Therefore, the bearers of this letter, Constantius and Mustellus, having presented a petition, have made known to us, and assert, that the deacons of the Church of Pudentiana, situated in the province of Numidia, have found that Maximianus, the bishop of that same church, in the place where he dwells, corrupted by a bribe from the Donatists, permitted a bishop to be made there by a new license; whereas even if earlier custom had permitted this, the catholic faith would forbid it to remain and persist. For this reason, therefore, we have judged it necessary to exhort your fraternity by the present letter, that when our chartulary Hilarius comes to you, a universal council of bishops having been assembled, with the terror of the coming judgment kept before your eyes, the same matter ought to be investigated by subtle and careful inquiry.

And if this charge shall have been proved against the aforesaid bishop by the bearers of this letter with suitable documents, let him be degraded in every way from the dignity and office which he holds: so that he may return to the gains of penitence through acknowledgment of his fault, and others may not presume to attempt such things. For it is just that he who, as is reported, sold Jesus Christ our Lord to a heretic for money received, should be removed from the handling of the mysteries of His most sacred body and blood. But if there is between them, apart from this crime, any dispute concerning certain damages or private affairs, as the petition of the deacons themselves contains, let your fraternity examine this matter in private cognizance together with our aforesaid chartulary, and with justice proceeding between both parties, bring it to a decision.

Furthermore, we have learned from the report of the bearers of this letter that the heresy of the Donatists is daily spreading, for our sins, and that very many, license having been granted through venality, are being rebaptized by the Donatists after catholic baptism. How grave this is, Brother, it behooves us to weigh with the full attention of our mind. Behold, the wolf tears the Lord's flock not now secretly in the night but in the open light of day, and we see him raging in the slaughter of the sheep, and we oppose him with no solicitude, with no darts of words. What fruits of a multiplied flock shall we then show to the Lord, if with idle mind we see even that flock which we have undertaken to feed being devoured by the beast?

Let us therefore watch lest anything perish, and if perchance anything has been seized, let us lead it back to the Lord's flock by the voices of the divine scriptures, so that He who is the shepherd of shepherds may mercifully deign to approve in His judgment that we have kept watch over His flock. This also it is necessary for you to attend to diligently: that if any just petition of that same bishop against the bearers of this letter shall have been brought forward, it ought to be examined by careful inquiry; and if perchance they themselves are justly to be struck on account of their own fault, we by no means consider that they should be spared.

How urgently the law pursues the most abominable wickedness of heretics is not unknown to your excellency. Those, therefore, whom both the integrity of our faith and the strictness of secular laws condemns, it is no light sin if they find license to creep back in your times. In those regions, as we have learned, the audacity of the Donatists has so grown that they not only drive out the priests of the catholic faith from their churches by pestilential authority, but do not fear to rebaptize those whom the water of regeneration had cleansed by true confession; and we greatly wonder, if indeed it is so, that while you are stationed there such wicked men are permitted to commit excesses of this kind. First, therefore, consider what judgment you leave among men concerning yourselves: if those who in the times of others were justly restrained find, while you are administering, a way for their transgression.

Then know that our God will require the souls of the lost from your hand, if you neglect to correct so great an evil to the extent that possibility demands.

We have learned that the provocations of the Donatists have so disturbed the Lord's flock in those regions, as if it were governed by the guidance of no shepherd, and it has been reported to us—which we cannot say without deep grief—that very many of them have already been torn by poisoned teeth. For they are said to have driven out canonical priests from their churches with most wicked rashness, and moreover, by rebaptizing many to whom the water of regeneration had given salvation, to have slain them with most abominable wickedness. These things greatly sadden our hearts, that while you are stationed there so great a crime was permitted to be perpetrated by damnable presumption. Wherefore we exhort your fraternity by the present letter, that having held discussion and entered into council, you ought to resist this disease, still in its birth, eagerly and with all your strength, provided that it neither gains force through neglect, nor strikes the flock committed to you with the harm of pestilence.

Moreover, a matter altogether harsh and hostile to the right faith has come to our attention: that—which is unspeakable—Catholic and religious men, and what is worse, consent to have their children, slaves, or others under their authority baptized in the Donatist heresy. And therefore, if this is true, let your fraternity take the greatest care to correct it, so that the sincerity of your faith may stand firm with undefiled solicitude, and that innocent souls who could have been saved by Catholic baptism may not perish through the infection of heretics. Whoever, therefore, among those persons whom we mentioned above has permitted any of his own to be baptized among the Donatists, let him strive with all strength and all urgency to recall them to the Catholic faith. But if any such person hereafter allows this to be done among his own under any excuse whatsoever, let him be in every way excluded from the clergy.

Amid the cares of arms and the innumerable anxieties which you sustain with tireless zeal for the governance of the Christian commonwealth, there is for me, together with the whole world, a great cause of joy: that your piety watches with especial solicitude over the keeping of the faith by which the empire of our lords shines. Wherefore I am altogether confident that, just as you protect the cause of God with the love of a religious mind, so God protects and aids your majesty by His grace. How greatly the serenity of your piety has been moved against the most wicked depravity of the Donatists by consideration of justice and by the zeal of most sincere religion, the tenor of the directives sent makes most clearly known.

But the most reverend bishops coming from the African province assert that matters have been set aside with such heedless negligence that neither was the judgment of God held in fear there, nor had the imperial commands hitherto obtained their effect; adding also that in the aforesaid province, with the rewards of the Donatists prevailing, the Catholic faith is publicly sold. On the other hand, the glorious man Gennadius lodged with me similar complaints about one of those who were making such complaints, to whom also two other reliable persons bore witness in the same matter. But since the matter itself concerned a secular judge, I thought those same bishops should be directed to the footsteps of your piety, so that they might themselves suggest to your most serene ears what they confess to have endured on behalf of the Catholic faith.

Wherefore I beseech that the Christianity of our lords, for the salvation of their soul and the life of their most pious offspring, command with strict punishment those whom it recognizes to be such, and stay by the hand of rescue the ruin of those who are perishing, and apply the medicine of correction to disordered minds, and drive from them the diseases of errors: so that, while by the remedy of your pious provision the darkness of pestilential depravity shall have been dispelled, and the true faith shall have shed the rays of its serenity there, a heavenly triumph may await you before the eyes of our Redeemer; because those whom you defend outwardly from the enemy, you also free inwardly—which is more glorious—from the poison of diabolical deceit.