This collection of the Anti-Donatist Writings of Saint Augustine has all of the following works: On Baptism Answer to Letters of Petilian, Bishop of Cirta On the Correction of the Donatists Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, schoolman, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full.

The Donatist schism in Africa began in 311 and flourished just one hundred years, until the conference at Carthage in 411, after which its importance waned. St. Augustine began his victorious campaign against Donatism soon after he was ordained priest in 391. His popular psalm or "Abecedarium" against the Donatists was intended to make known to the people the arguments set forth by St. Optatus, with the same conciliatory end in view. It shows that the sect was founded by traditors, condemned by pope and council, separated from the whole world, a cause of division, violence, and bloodshed; the true Church is the one Vine, whose branches are over all the earth. After St. Augustine had become bishop in 395, he obtained conferences with some of the Donatist leaders, though not with his rival at Hippo. In 400 he wrote three books against the letter of Parmenianus, refuting his calumnies and his arguments from Scripture. More important were his seven books on baptism, in which, after developing the principle already laid down by St. Optatus, that the effect of the sacrament is independent of the holiness of the minister, he shows in great detail that the authority of St. Cyprian is more awkward than convenient for the Donatists. The principal Donatist controversialist of the day was Petilianus, Bishop of Constantine, a successor of the traditor Silvanus. St. Augustine wrote two books in reply to a letter of his against the Church, adding a third book to answer another letter in which he was himself attacked by Petilianus. Before this last book he published his "De Unitate ecclesiae" about 403. To these works must be added some sermons and some letters which are real treatises.

We all know that Augustine was a teacher of rhetoric before he became a highly influential Church leader. We know that he never stopped using rhetoric as a bishop. What we do not always know is what we mean by Augustine's rhetoric. Is it the style, the figures of speech, encrypted in strange names like hendiadys or homoioteleuton? We also know that Augustine wrote letters throughout his ecclesiastical career, some of them highly polemical. The scholars tend to see the ancient correspondence as a part of a celebrated ritual of friendship. But has Augustine really used the letters written in the heat of the Donatist controversy within this cultural context? For decades the works of Augustine have been of interest mostly for Church historians and theologians, and rightly so. It is worth noticing, however, that the people who read or listened to them at the time of their composition were alumni of rhetorical and law schools, where they had to read Cicero's speeches and learn from rhetorical handbooks (some authored by himself, other written under his influence). The aim of this study is to prove that Augustine's polemical correspondence is teeming with examples of rhetorical tricks commonly used in courtroom argumentation. I argue that the backbone of Augustine's anti-Donatist letters, that is his patterns of argumentation and strategies of persuasion, is largely formed by the techniques of forensic rhetoric. My aim here is to offer an insight into how Augustine used rhetorical tools inherited from classical theory in building and developing polemical strategies in his anti-Donatist letters. This study should expand our knowledge on such various topics as history of rhetoric, ancient epistolography, polemical literature and Augustine's art as a polemicist.

Reproduction of the original: Writings In Connection with the Donatist Controversy by Aurelius Augustine

This book explores how the Donatist church, a schismatic movement that for a brief moment formed the majority church in Roman North Africa interpreted the apocalypse during the first two centuries of its existence (c. 300-500).

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