Joshua Bruce: Schisma Inveteratum: How The Donatists’ Theological Schism Became A Legal Heresy

Much of the scholarship addressing Augustine and coercion has attempted to contextualize and explain the reception of Augustine’s justification of coercion by seeking to identify a change of mind in Augustine or discern his evolving attitude. However, this paper builds upon the recent arguments of Erika Hermanowicz and shows (pace Émilien Lamirande and Peter Brown) that searching for a change of mind or an evolving attitude in Augustine on coercion overlooks the extent to which Donatist juridical precedents and Theodosian anti-heresy legislation (CTh.16.5.21) had already shaped and organized the contours of Augustine’s thought on coercion by the early 390s. It is argued that Augustine’s practical juridical strategy in the 390s and early 400s was not the product of an evolving posture towards coercion of schismatics, but rather reflected Augustine’s argument to imperial authorities that the Donatists were heretics as members of an inveterate schism (schisma inveteratum, c. Cresc. 2.7). Moreover, numerous attempts to explain Augustine’s justifications for imperial coercion of the Donatist Church have focused on how Augustine set the precedent for later rationalizations of coercion against religious dissidents. But this paper looks at Augustine’s own precedents and shows that Augustine’s decision to label the Donatist schismatics as heretics pursuant to imperial anti-heresy legislation followed a juridical precedent established by the Donatists’ own arguments. These findings recontextualize ongoing scholarly discourse on late antique ecclesiastical recourse to imperial power, because they demonstrate that this controversial aspect of Augustine’s thought came from the Donatists themselves.