Donatism

   Reminiscent of Novatianism (q.v.), the Donatists of North Africa (q.v.) argued that the sacraments given by priests who had compromised the faith during the Great Persecution (q.v.), including sacraments given by priests who had been ordained by such priests, were invalid. The controversy began with the refusal of the Donatists in 311 to recognize Caecilian as bishop (q.v.) of Carthage because he had been ordained by a bishop accused of having surrendered liturgical items during the Great Persecution. They consecrated Donatus in his place. The controversy refused to go away, even after Constantine I (q.v.), and a commission headed by Pope Miltiades, rejected the Donatist claims, a decision confirmed by the Council of Arles (q.v.) in 314. Donatism grew to be a separatist church of great proportions, a native church that rejected the state-supported church, which it viewed as foreign, as imposed, as a kind of anti-church. Despite the opposition of Augustine (q.v.), who affirmed the principle that the validity of the sacraments are not dependent on the moral character of the priest administering them, despite every attempt to persecute them, the Donatists maintained their church as an underground movement up to the Arab conquest of the seventh century.