Chrétiens d'Afrique à l'aube de la paix constantinienne: Les premiers échos de la grande persécution (review)

Yvette Duval. Chrétiens d'Afrique à l'aube de la paix constantinienne: Les premiers échos de la grande persécution . Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 164. Paris: Institute d'Études Augustiniennes, 2000. Pp. 540. 43,35.

The final years of Roman persecution of Christianity and the origins of the Donatist schism are both well known and obscure. The basic scenario seems clear enough: Roman authorities persecuted Christians, and when peace came, Christians turned on each another, unable to resolve how lapsed Christians should be reintegrated into the Church. What is unclear is just about everything else: exactly when the persecutions ceased in Africa, who handed over the Scriptures, and when the schism actually started. Key sources, Gesta apud Zenophilum, Acta purgationis Felicis, and the minutes of the Council of Cirta survive. They were gathered, along with others, around 340 to support the Catholic contention that their leader, Caecilian of Carthage, had been validly elected and had not been guilty of collaboration with the Romans but that key Donatists had been traditores. Tothe critical editions of these documents, Yvette Duval adds a new manuscript of the Gesta and Acta, Cormery (with a photographic reproduction and a transcription of relevant sections). The result is a corrected and more nuanced history of the schism in one major city, Cirta (called Constantine after 320).

Duval devotes the first part of her volume to the Gesta, the trial of Silvanus, one of the bishops responsible for accusations against Caecilian. In 320 Silvanus was accused of having handed over the Scriptures more than a decade earlier. Paradoxically he was charged with obeying a then obsolete law. On the basis of comparing Cormery with previous versions and of internal evidence, Duval argues that the events occurred not at Timgad but at Cirta. Those who testified against Silvanus did not actually protest his election for over a decade precisely because they themselves had been guilty of collaboration. It was only the later deeds of the bishop which evoked the charges. Duval reinforces this argument with a careful reading of the proto-Donatist Council of Cirta, which vetted the electors of Bishop Silvanus at the end of Diocletian's persecution. This document is found in variant versions in Augustine and in the Gesta collationis Carthaginensis (411).

The second part of the volume sets the church at Cirta in the context of civil and ecclesiastical life in Africa Proconsularis. Here Duval focuses on the Acta purgationis Felicis which exonerated Felix of Apthugni of collaboration. Felix's exoneration was crucial to Catholics since he had consecrated their bishop, Caecilian of Carthage, and this consecration was the proximate cause of the Donatist schism. As in the first part of the book, Duval carefully reviews the variations between Cormery and the earlier editions to show how accepting Cormery alters the history of Donatism. Her results include an understanding of relationships between civil and ecclesiastical authorities as well as between the church in Carthage and the rest of Africa.

The third part of the volume uses the results of Duval's investigations to enliven a picture of daily life in African Christianity, providing a knowledge of Christian buildings and cemeteries and the objects used in these settings. Eleven illustrations supplement this final section, but not all are clearly reproduced. Curiously, the author provides a photograph of only half of the well-known Uppena mosaic commemorating the martyrs even though she provides a transcrip-tion of the wording of the entire mosaic.

In general, Duval's work is quite technical; it is for a sophisticated audience thoroughly familiar with the minutiae of the subject. For the uninitiated, however, she does provide some summaries of previous work. An appreciation of her arguments requires close attention to paleography, access to the previous Latin editions of Optatus's and Augustine's...