Against the Donatists

Optatus was bishop of Milevis in Numidia. Jerome says that he wrote six books against the Donatists under the emperors Valentinian and Valens, that is between 364 and 375 (On Illustrious Men 110); the manuscripts have seven. Optatus himself says that more than sixty years had passed since the persecution (1.13). He writes to answer a book by Parmenian, the Donatist bishop of Carthage, and his aim is to show that the other side, not his own, began the schism and included men who had handed over the Scriptures.

The work is therefore a partisan account by a writer two generations after the events, and nothing comparable survives from the Donatist side. Its value lies in the documents. Optatus appended a file of older papers to prove his case: the minutes of a meeting of Numidian bishops at Cirta, the record of a hearing before the governor Zenophilus in 320, the inquiry that cleared Felix of Aptunga, letters of Constantine, and the letter of the Council of Arles to the bishop of Rome. Only one manuscript preserves this appendix, and it is incomplete. Several of the same documents are quoted independently by Eusebius and by Augustine.