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

Therefore, the persecutions proved who were the real Christians; persecution was
virtually an im prim atur indicating that the Donatist Church was the true and correct
body of Christ on earth.
The place and moment when the persecution occurred was therefore of prime
importance, since that event indicated the moment when the Donatist position was
vindicated. Hence it was preserved in inscriptions in the very church in which the
vindication had taken place. The speaker of the Passio drew his congregation’s
attention to these inscriptions and noted the location and the time: “It is this very
basilica, I say, between whose walls so many bodies were cut down and buried. Here,
in the inscriptions, memory preserves the name of the persecution as Caecilianist until
the end of time.” 130 The presence of the inscriptions indicates that for the Donatists
the benefits of martyrdoms were not to be recalled merely once a year on their
anniversary, 131 but were a constant presence in the church; a daily reminder to
themselves of what their co-religionists had achieved and of when their Church had
fulfilled the scriptural criteria determining which was the true Church.
The end of the First Persecution.
Just as there is something of a hiatus between the reasons for the beginning of the
persecution in 317 there is also something of a ‘gap’ between the reasons for the ending
of that persecution in 321. It has been explained due to the need for Constantine to
concentrate on the impending war with Licinius, 132 but at the same time, Constantine
had previously indicated that he regarded correct religious worship to be integral to
130 Passio Donati 8 (PL 8.756) Basilica, inquam , intra cujus parietes et occisa et sepulta sunt corpora
num erosa, et illic extitulationibus nom inum persecutionis etiam Caecilian ensis usque in finem m em oria
prorogatur
131 Brown (1981) 101-102 on the reading of Passiones on anniversaries; an event which allowed the whole
community to come together in celebrating and remembering ‘a tense moment when potent images of
“clean” and “unclean” power came together.’
132 By Frend (1952) 161 and Tilley (1996) xxxii
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