The Donatist Controversy
After each major persecution by the Roman Empire against the Church, two groups formed: the rigorists and the laxists. Rigorists believed that the lapsi should not be readmitted to communion after the persecution ended. Instead, they should be excommunicated, and if the lapsi were clergy, they should forfeit their ecclesiastical offices. This inflexible position embraced the heretical view that lapsed clergy could not validly celebrate the sacraments. The rigorist position was widely held in North Africa, a site of intense persecution (especially under Diocletian), and caused a challenging problem for the Church in the early fourth century. In some ways, rigorist thinking was understandable, since those who had suffered during the imperial persecutions looked with great suspicion on those who lapsed. The loss of a loved one as a martyr to the imperial authorities could easily foster feelings of anger or resentment toward the lapsi. Laxists believed that lapsi should undergo a period of penance before readmittance to the Church, but did not embrace the rigorist beliefs.
Donatus, a man “with a genius for organization and propaganda,” was one of the leaders of the rigorist movement in North Africa.7 The rigorist/laxist issue came to the forefront in the year 312 when Caecilian, the bishop of Carthage, was ordained. The rigorists objected to Caecilian’s ordination, holding that it was null and void because one of his episcopal consecrators, Felix, was supposedly a member of the lapsi. Allegedly, Felix had handed over the Scriptures during the Great Persecution, but the charge was false. Nonetheless, the taint of being a lapsi hovered over Felix; the rigorists refused to recognize Caecilian’s ordination, and elected Donatus bishop. The scandal of two bishops in Carthage produced a schism in the Church in Africa. In an effort to solve the situation, those who favored Donatus (known as Donatists) appealed to the emperor to solve the conundrum.
In an example of caesaro-papsim, Constantine accepted the case because he feared the loss of God’s favor and the ascendancy of a rival if he did not act. Constantine wanted to use the Church to foster unity under his leadership of the Empire and would not tolerate disunity in the Church.8 Eventually, Constantine ruled in favor of Caecilian, much to the chagrin of the Donatists, who appealed the decision. The emperor turned the appeal over to Pope Miltiades (r. 311–314), who convened a council in Rome to discuss the matter. Donatus traveled to Rome and presented his case, but the assembled clerics were not convinced, and, once more, Caecilian’s ordination was held to be valid. The Donatists refused to accept Rome’s decision and continued to cause problems in Carthage. Their continued resistance caused such agitation for Constantine that the emperor reopened the case. He called for a group of bishops to meet at Arles to once more hear the Donatists’ arguments. The local council of Arles met, with forty-six bishops in attendance, and once more upheld the validity of Caecilian’s consecration. They also condemned and excommunicated the Donatists in the hopes of ending the controversy. Unfortunately, the Donatists persisted in their rigorist views and heretical teachings, which impacted Church unity for the next century.
The Edict of Milan
Constantine knew that, despite his favoritism toward the Catholic Church, she still did not have a legal right to exist in the Empire due to Nero’s law instituted nearly three hundred years earlier. Constantine remedied that situation when he met with the eastern Emperor Licinius in Rome at the marriage of Licinius to Constantine’s sister, Constantia. The two emperors issued a joint declaration on religion, granting “to Christians and others, full authority to observe that religion which each preferred.”9 Although the edict allowed for religious toleration of all faiths, the co-emperors clearly specified Christians in the document: “We have given to those Christians free and unrestricted opportunity of religious worship.”10 Moreover, Christian property taken during the Great Persecution under Diocletian was restored in the edict. This imperial action legalized the Faith and allowed the Church to exist as a legally recognized corporation within the Empire. Paganism was allowed to continue, but the Church was placed on equal legal footing with the pagan cults. Most importantly, Christians were free to publicly worship without fear of government persecution. Just a decade earlier, such an act on the part of a Roman emperor, let alone both emperors, would have been unthinkable and improbable — but through the miracle of the cross in the sky and Constantine’s victory over Maxentius, the unthinkable and improbable became reality.
Sole Emperor
With the Edict of Milan, Christians in the Roman Empire assumed the horrible days of persecution were over. Unfortunately, for the Christians in the eastern provinces, this was not the case. Licinius had co-issued the edict with Constantine, but he was no friend of the Church. Instead, his childhood friendship with Galerius, the initiator of the Great Persecution, was the defining relationship in his life. Several years after the edict of toleration at Milan, Licinius initiated a persecution of Christians in his territory and engaged in conflict with Constantine over who would rule the Empire. After a few battles and an uneasy truce, the forces of Licinius and Constantine finally clashed decisively at the Battle of Adrianople on July 3, 324. Licinius lost and, with the remnant of his army, retreated to the town of Byzantium. A few months later, in the final battle of the civil war, Constantine overwhelmingly defeated Licinius, who begged for his life. Constantine allowed his brother-in-law to live, no doubt influenced by the pleadings of his sister, but the reprieve was short-lived. Within a year, Constantine ordered Licinius’s execution. The death of Licinius and the supremacy of Constantine’s army produced an event not seen in the Empire for the last generation: a sole emperor.
Constantine’s desire to rule a united empire had come to pass, and he endeavored to build a worthy monument to the accomplishment of that goal. He spared no expense to build a magnificent new city on the site of the town of Byzantium. Several years of construction produced a city so vast and massive that Saint Jerome would later remark, “in clothing Constantinople the rest of the world was left naked.”11 The city, now the capital seat of the Empire, was consecrated in the year 330 as “New Rome.” Later, the city would take on the name of its founder and be known as Constantinople.12
Heresy
The Church had confronted heresy in her first centuries, but the impact had been limited. Now that the emperor favored the Church and converts came from all strata of society, the danger of heresy and its impact were compounded. False teaching destroyed communion and threatened the security of the social order, necessitating a response from secular government. Unfortunately, a heresy that began in the early fourth century proved a “pernicious attack” that would consume the Church for the next five hundred years. The Church assembled in ecumenical councils to combat the spread of heresy and to define her teachings,13 mostly in response to the question of who Jesus is — or, more precisely, what words should be used to describe who Jesus is, and what relationship he has to the Father and the Holy Spirit. Theologians, priests, and monks sought to answer the question, but their teachings were not always in conformity with the apostolic faith.
Arius the Heretic
As a priest in Alexandria, Egypt, Arius had seen firsthand the impact of the recent wave of converts resulting from imperial favoritism of the Church. He knew that many educated Romans steeped in Greco-Roman philosophy and logic struggled with the Church’s teachings — namely, the Trinity, and the concept of Jesus as both God and man — because these posed paradoxes for the Roman mind. He tried to explain these teachings in a book entitled Thalia. Arius’s teachings became very popular and were even set to music as