Religious Intolerance in the Later Roman Empire - Bad request ...

possibly to impose a curfew on them; this may well have been to prevent the Donatist
elite from mobilising the masses in support of their Church. The elite were evidently
threatened with confiscation of properties. These two measures must be the extent of
the certain evidence concerning official intentions from this text; although the last
phrase, “holy assemblies are transformed into splendid banquet” may refer to the
confiscation of churches, since the author of the sermon later goes on to indicate that
the basilica in which he was speaking had been transformed into a snack-bar. 122
It is unclear precisely what is being referred to when the author speaks of the
profanation of sacraments, but there is evidence that this first persecution involved an
attempt to obliterate physically much of what the Donatists stood for. Excavations in
a church outside Carthage have found bodies and fragments of an inscription dedicated
to Perpetua and Felicitas; Catholic militants may well have destroyed the inscription
because the martyrs featured so large in the Donatist imagination and therefore
Donatist sacrament too, could have been disregarded and not treated with sufficient
respect. 123 There is no evidence that the authorities intended to use violence
deliberately either as an instrument in itself nor to ‘make examples’ of any Donatists.
Although, of course, there remains the possibility that the authorities understood and
accepted the fact that violence and deaths may have had a necessary role in the
proscriptions of property and confiscations of churches.
However in practice the persecution went beyond the (known) requirements of
proscription of the elite and confiscation of churches. The author of the Passio
indicates that the Donatists “with a desire to suffer” went to the church, the scene of
their impending martyrdoms. 124 The author does not indicate why the Donatists went
121
Passio Donati 3 (PL 8.756) coguntur ut cogant saeculi potestates, circum dantur v exillationibus dom us,
proscriptionum m inae protenduntur div itibus, profanantur sacram enta, superinducta gentilitatis caterv a,
conv enticula sacra fiunt, luculenta conv iv ia
122
Passio Donati 4 popina
123
Frend (1952) 160 n2 refers to the discovery of both the bodies and the fragmentary inscription in a
well.
124
Passio Donati 6 (PL 8.755) v oto passion is anim osius conv olav it
86