Theologies of Penance during the Donatist Controversy
Maureen A. Tilley
(Forthcoming in Studia Patristica)

In the Donatist-Catholic schism, scholars tend to highlight the
differences between the two churches. However, their penitential practices
show that they had much in common. This paper will examine the reception
of repentant bishops into the North African churches. The thesis of this
paper that both churches chose to contravene received traditions,
admitting clergy and allowing them to continue as such, not based on
doctrine but on similar pastoral exigencies. 

The Imposition of Hands

In considering the reception of clergy, it is essential to bear in mind
that several rituals used the laying on of hands: acceptance into the
Church at baptism, reception into and the completion of penance, the
non-penitential reception of schismatics and heretics, healing the sick,
and ordination.  The imposition of hands was not accompanied by any words.
Thus, the meaning of the gesture was determined by the situation in which
it was performed.\1/ 

Methods of Reentry before Donatism

The North African churches of the fourth century, inherited a variety of
options for re-entry into the Church. The early precedents ranged from
rebaptism with the imposition of hands to a protracted period of penance
with hands laid on at the end. For those who were not guilty of deliberate
schism but who were baptized by heretics or schismatics, there was a
non-penitential imposition of hands. Rarely did clergy continue in office.
As long as there were only a small number of returnees or converts, these
early practices sufficed.

However, after the Decian persecution, many clergy were seeking
readmittance, including some born and/or ordained in schism.\2/ Given
their numbers, geographic spread and leadership positions, the old methods
were inadequate and the practices of the Novatianists, 'no reentry' or
'reentry by rebaptism', were being marginalized. The common answer for the
laity was admission after a protracted penance.\3/ In general, readmitted
clergy were reduced to the lay state.\4/ 

The problem was not the readmission of clergy per se, but the anomalous
state of the bishop during and after penance. There are two ways to
understand this situation. One is a focus on form and the other on
function. In terms of form, the member of the clergy had already received
a ritual gesture of the presence of the Spirit in ordination. Would the
repetition of the gesture in penance give the lie to the first
administration and somehow retroactively proclaim it invalid?\5/ With
regard to function, the bishop was supposed to be the minister of
reconciliation.  However, as a penitent, he was himself in a liminal
state, and therefore unable to minister to others. In fact, a bishop who
was doing penance would have been able to exercise very few episcopal
duties, certainly not liturgical ones.\6/ An occasional alternative was
the exclusion of the bishop from penance, leaving his judgment to God, but
the usual practice was degradation.The degraded cleric would not do
penance; degradation was considered penance enough.\7/ 

The examples on Chart I show the complexity of the issue.

Trophimus is a good example of the principles involved. He was readmitted
because he was repentent and because he led his congregation back. Yet he
was degraded to the lay state. This decision was an Italian consensus
which Africans accepted as a worthy precedent. But it did not become an
infexible rule. Methods of reintegrating clergy were not systematized.\8/
This should not be a surprise, because the cases were immensely varied. 
Fortunatianus of Assuras and Maximus of Rome are examples. Not only did
Fortunatianus lapse, but he was a thief and scoundrel. He was degraded. On
the other hand, Maximus the presbyter compounded his sin by becoming a
bishop on the outside. But because of his otherwise upright character--and
because he was a charismatic confessor who brought back a congregation--he
received more lenient treatment. Basilides and Martialis illustrate
another significant problem for the reintegration of bishops. Bishops were
the usual arbiters of penance, but here they themeselves were the subjects
of penance. Stephen of Rome was willing to receive them back, apparently
without penance, and to restore them to their sees, but their own
presbyters had already become their successors. The unity of their
churches would have been compromised and, as Cyprian wrote, their
congregations should have rejected these lapsi because their Eucharists
would be ineffective and they would contaminate the entire
congregation.\9/ This was not just an argument about the contagion of
evil. It was about continuing pastoral leadership: these sinner-bishops,
if restored, would select the next generation of bishops.\10/

On the basis of this rationale, repentant bishops should never have been
reintegrated as leaders. But during the third century, regional practices
varied. Bishops generally tolerated the practices of other regions because
they believed that each bishop was responsible before God for doing what
he though best in his situation.\11/ In every case, unity and peace were
paramount. 

Donatists and Catholics: Reinventing the Traditions\12/ 

So Donatists and Catholics had a heritage of various traditions.
Responding to their own changing situations, they crafted and recrafted
their policies . Chart II illustrates the development of their positions. 

In the first case, the Council of Cirta, church custom (having twelve
consecrators) and pastoral necessity (filling vacant sees) overruled the
revered Cyprianic doctrine that serious sinners might not celebrate the
sacraments. Ironically, men soon to be Donatists pioneered the
articulation of the principle for which Augustine would later be famous:
the character of the minister of the sacrament was less important than the
performance of the ritual, unity and peace. 

Once the schism was underway, the reincorporation of clergy was a grave
issue. Miltiades' council condemned Donatus for rebaptizing laity and for
imposing hands on bishops who were lapsi, ""quod ab ecclesia alienum
est.""\13/ This charge has two implications. First, it implies that
Donatus forced or allowed clergy to undergo a ritual with the imposition
of hands.  No one disputed this. What this gesture meant was another
question. It was not until half a century later that it was retroactively
interpreted as reordiantion, when some Donatists, but not all, actually
were 'reordaining'. Second, it suggests that the clergy were not
permanently degraded but functioned thereafter as clergy.\14/ The Council
was correct in charging that this was not the general rule. So it seems
that Donatus' party innovated by impositing hands on the clergy in such a
way as to allow them to be reconciled and still continue as clergy. This,
indeed, was the meaning of quod ab ecclesia alienum est. So it was that in
the early years of the schism, Catholic clergy passed into the Donatist
camp with minimal but ambiguous formality.

Even the policy of Donatus did not stand for long. Rebaptism for the laity
seemed too severe and out of line with the larger Church, so for the peace
and unity of the whole Church, Donatists ceased rebaptizing--at least for
a while. If Catholics need not undergo rebaptism, on the same principle,
their ordination would still exist, so reordination was not necessary and
was not widely practiced. Again a theology considered quintessentially
Augustinian appears first in practice among the Donatists.

This rule seems to have lasted for quite a while.\15/ However, after
Julian''s death, the situation changed. Christians turned on each other.
Donatists rescinded the earlier lenient policy and required rebaptism for
all Catholics.\16/ Only now does reordination seem to have become an
issue.\17/ But even after 370 neither practice, rebaptism nor
reordination, was universally observed among the Donatists.\18/

On the Catholic side between 370 and 390, Donatist bishops entered the
Catholic church freely, with neither rebaptism nor reordination. They were
reduced to the lay state (as they were at Rome). The only persons who had
to do penance were bishops who had rebaptized. Thereafter, they were
barred from seeking clerical office since in promotion to a new grade in
the clergy since a second imposition of hands would have to be done--and
that for Catholics was quod ab ecclesia alienum est.  

By the 390s both Donatists and Catholics had good reason not to be harsh;
both sides had a clergy shortage. The situation promoted further
developments on the readmission of clergy.

Large scale expansion, especially in Numidia, required more Donatist
bishops, but schisms within Donatism reduced the number of clergy in the
main party. In response, the main party readmitted schismatic clergy
without degradation and without laying hands upon them.\19/ These clergy
brought with them their congregations, removing them from the malign
influences of schismatics and Catholics. Donatists differentiated these
returning Donatist schismatics from the traditores coming to them from the
Catholics.

Some Catholic clergy did enter Donatist ranks. Donatists found a way to
keep them from penance with its attendant disqualification from church
office.\20/ Donatists treated them as non-baptized persons. They were
admitted to the catechumenate, as if they were converting from paganism.
They received baptism. Then they could be ordained as Donatist clergy.\21/ 
There was no bar to the (re)imposition of hands as Donatists had come to
believe that with the dearth of validly ordained bishops within the
Catholic church, this new generation of Catholic clergy had not undergone
any real baptism or ordination.\22/

On the other side, among the Catholics, both theology and pastoral
problems promoted the easy admission of Donatist clergy. Their sacramental
theology required this. If Donatists had not lost their baptism on the
outside, they had not lost their ability to baptize or ordain on the
outside. Hence, their schismatic sacramental acts were still valid, but
not yet effective.\23/ In addition, if a Donatist had been born into and
ordained in the sect, he was not guilty of defection. So laying hands on
him was the completion of a process of initiation, not a disqualifying
sign of penance. Thus Catholic practice was a variant on Donatist
rebaptism. 

In addition, Catholics too had a clergy shortage. In 393 the Council of
Hippo proposed what it understood as a precedent-breaking solution.\24/
The bishops decided to admit Donatist bishops as bishops provided that
they had not rebaptized anyone and that they brought over their
congregations with them.\25/ There was the imposition of hands, a gesture
of reconciliation, distinct from penance in purpose, but visually similar.
To avoid confusion, Augustine maintained that it should not be done in
public.\26/ In essence, now the Catholics proposed to treat Donatists the
very same way Donatists earlier treated their own repentant schismatics.

Conclusion

North African Christians inherited from their history a variety of ways of
dealing with the reintegration of sinful or schismatic clergy. But during
the Donatist-Catholic schism, these older traditions proved inadequate.
While there were experiments with more and less stringent policies in both
Catholic and Donatist communities, on the whole, reintegration was made
progressively easier to promote the growth of the Church, peace and unity.
Catholics followed the lead of Donatists in promoting reconciliation and
eventually built an alternative sacramental theology around it. 


NOTES

\1/ On the possibility of the confusion of rites with similar gestures,
see James Dallen, "The Imposition of Hands in Penance: A Study in
Liturgical History," Worship 15 (May 1977), pp. 224-247; Victor Saxer, Vie
liturgique et quotidienne à Carthage vers le milieu de la IIIe siècle: Le
témoignage de Saint Cyprien et de ses contemporains d'Afrique (Rome:
Pontificio Instituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1969), p. 172; Wunibald
Roetzer, Des heiligen Augustinus Schriften als liturgie-geschichtliche
Quelle: Eine liturgie-geschichtliche Studie (Munich: Max Hueber, 1930), p.
194 regarding Augustine, De bapt. 2.7.11, 3.16.21, and 5.23.33.

\2/  Cyprian, De lapsis 7 and 22. For a thorough treatment of praxis and
theology in Cyprian's time, see Saxer, pp. 145-188. 

\3/ On a period of penance being too short and not acceptable to the
congregation, see Cyprian, Ep. 64.1.1. 

\4/ For evidence from the Council of Elvira (306) to Toledo (400) and
Ireland (450), see Patrick Saint-Roch, La pénitence dans les conciles et
les lettres des papes des origines à la mort de Gregoire le grand, Studi
de antichità cristiana 46 (Rome: Pontificio Instituto di archeologia
cristiana, 1991), pp. 19 and 99-100.

\5/ On the example of the residual hesitancy to reanoint is the
instruction of the Rituale romanum, at least up to 1972, that the hands of
priests were to be anointed differently from others in the administration
of Extreme Unction: "Et adverte quod sacerdotibus ut dictum est, manus non
inungantur, sed exterius" in Ordo ministandi Sacramentum [sic] Extremæ
Unctionis §10, Rituale Romanum Pauli V Pontificis Maximi jussu editum a
Benedicto XIV et a Pio X . . . (Turin: Maretti, 1917), p. 95

\6/ Cyprian, Orat. dom. 18.

\7/  See Augustine, Contra Cresconium 27.30. . This was based on the idea
that a bishop could pray for a penitent lay person, but there was no
higher authority to pray for and readmit a bishop. The popular saying was
Sacerdos si peccaverit, quis orabit illo, a paraphrase of various parts of
Lev. 5 and 1 Kgs. 2.25. See n. 40. 

\8/ For a variety of conflicting practices, see St. Roch, pp. 95-100.

\9/ Cyprian, Epp. 65 and 67.3.2. For other ranks of the clergy, see
67.4.2.  See the discussion in The Letters of Cyprian: Vol. 4, trans. and
ed. by G.  W. Clarke, Ancient Christian Writers 47 (New York and Mahwah,
NJ: Paulist, 1989), pp. 139-140

\10/  Cyprian, Ep. 67.3.2 and 4.1-2

\11/ Cyprian, Ep. 55.21.2.

\12/ For the title to this section I am indebted to Eric Hobsbawm and
Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: University Press,
1983).  Their series of essays treat the passage of practices from
'innovation' to 'tradition'.

\13/ Optatus 1.24 (quod confessus sit se rebaptizasse et episcopis lapsis
manum inposuisse. quod ab ecclesia alienum est) and 2.25. In is far from
clear whether the verb baptizasse here applies to the clergy who have
hands laid on them or to other persons. See Allan Fitizgerald, Conversion
through Penance in the Italian Church of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries: 
New approaches to the experience of Conversion from Sin, Studies in the
Bible and Early Christianity 15 (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin
Mellen, 1998) p. 23 for the interpretation of et as disjunctive. Cf. 
comments by Bernard Poschmann, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick,
trans. and revised by Francis Courtney (New York: Herder and Herder,
1964), pp. 110-111, justifying this imposition of hands as penance and not
reordination.

\14/ At this point the charge of reordination is not made. Optatus does
make it elsewhere in his work, at 2.24, but he is writing approximately
sixty years later. For a consideration of the dating of Optatus' works,
see the introduction to Optatus: Against the Donatists, trans. and ed. by
Mark Edwards (Liverpool: Liverpool University, 1997). pp. xvi-xviii.

\15/ Remi Crespin, Ministère et sainteté: Pastorale du clergé et solution
de la crise donatiste dans la vie et la doctrine de saint Augustin (Paris: 
Études Augustiniennes, 1965), p. 30; Paul Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de
l'Afrique chrétiene depuis les origines jusqu'a l'invasion arabe, 7 vols. 
(Paris 1901-1921; repr. Brussels: Culture et civilisation, 1966), 4.336. 

\16/ This change coincides with the dates of imperial laws proscribing the
practice Codex Theodosianus 16.6.1 of February 20, 373, 16.6.2 of October
17, 377 and 16.5.5 of August 20, 379. 

\17/  Optatus 3.23.

\18/ Augustine provides evidence of this when he attempted to reinforce
the resolve of Donatist bishops who did not rebaptize and therefore, would
not reordain.  Augustine, Ep. 23.3 and 5; and 44.5.12. Cf. Crespin, p.30
and Monceaux 4.338..

\19/ Augustine, De baptismo 1.6.8 and 1.8.10; Epp. 93.20 and 185.17; 
Contr.  Cresc. 4.14.16.. For an extended discussion of Augustine's
treatment of this seeming inconsistency, see A. C. de Veer,
"L'exploitation du schisme maximianiste par Saint Augustin dans la lutte
contre le Donatisme," Recherches Augustiniennes 3 (1965), pp.  133-172. 

\20/ Optatus, 2.23

\21/  Augustine, Ep. 23.2

\22/ This resembles the theology of ordination of sedevacantist Catholics
in the late twentieth century.

\23/ See, inter alia, Augustine, Contr. ep. Parm. 2.13.28.

\24/ For the identity of the previous council ruling to the contrary, see
Crespin, pp. 21-24.

\25/ Brevarium Hipponense §37 (CCL 149.43-44). The proviso of not
baptizing indicated that even as late as 393 rebaptism was not a universal
Donatist practice.

\26/ Augustine, Contra epistulam Parmeniani 2.13.28, De bapt. 1.12. See
the discussion in Fitzgerald, p. 89, n. 264; and A. De Veer, "L'admission
aux fonctions ecclesiastiques des clercs donatistes convertis," a note on
Contr. Cresc. 2.11.13, in Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, 4ème series: Traités
Anti-Donatistes, vol 4: Contra Cresconium Libri IV, De Unico Baptismo,
Bibliothèque Augustinienne 31, trans. by G. Finaert (Paris: Desclée de
Brouwer, 1968), pp. 766-771.

//end of second article//