Each of the four practices considered in this chapter has been touched upon in the preceding studies. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving were forms of piety which Christians inherited from Jewish piety. They required no justification but only specification in the new culture and integration with the perspectives peculiar to Christianity. African Christianity never granted the high status to rigorous ascetic practices that the churches in Egypt and Syria, for example, accorded them. Augustine’s discussion of the role of asceticism in the Confessions1 was unusual in African Christian literature. Yet these three forms of practice were integral to Christian life and the celebration of the sacraments. Baptism was preceded by an extended period of fasting and eucharist by a short one. Almsgiving was integral to maintaining the unity of the church and winning the forgiveness of sins. Prayer, both private and communal, was a daily and constitutive practice of Christian life.
The fourth practice, confessing Christ or martyrdom, is here studied because it changed so radically over the centuries under consideration. In the second and third centuries, Christian exclusivism was challenged daily by pervasive idolatry. By the fourth, idolatry was on the wane, but the diabolical enemy had entered the church, to foment schism and conflict among Christians. In the fifth century, however, even once the public rituals of idolatry were forbidden and dying out, Augustine was able to discern the cult of false gods in less conspicuous private practices.
The prayer that is the focus of this section was a private exercise of piety outside the eucharistic liturgy of the community. It might have been practiced in a congregational service, in a small group, or even individually.
Tertullian understood both communal and private prayer as the Christian form of sacrifice that had replaced the offering rituals of Israelite religion.2 On this understanding, he was prepared to specify the proper procedures for prayer. The principal Christian prayer, which set the pattern for all other forms, was the prayer given by Jesus himself. Thus the heart of Tertullian’s treatise on the subject was an explanation of the text of the Lord’s Prayer, followed by prescriptions and recommendations for using it.
Tertullian explained that personal prayer should be offered at least three times each day, though he recommended that it be practiced even more often.3 The first prayer of the day was offered upon rising at daybreak.4 It was then repeated during the day, at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, times related to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the prayer of Peter at Joppa, and the prayer of the disciples in the temple.5 The day was closed with an offering of this prayer before retiring.6 These prayers might have involved the entire household.7 The set times were supplemented by prayers that marked the beginning and end of the day’s activities. One should pray before eating or going into the bath, when greeting a friend, upon entering or departing a house.8 In addition to this oral prayer, Christians traced the sign of the cross on their foreheads.9 They were urged to perform this ritual at every change of activity: when coming and going, when dressing and putting on shoes, when bathing, when at table, when lighting the lamps.10 Before retiring, they signed both themselves and the bed.11 Tertullian noted that they used the sign of the cross and an oath to cure the bite of a scorpion.12
In addition to the prayers and rituals performed every day, Tertullian also referred to the special prayers that characterized fast days.13 The fast was always ended with prayer, whether at three in the afternoon or later in the day.14 He also referred to vigils — prayers offered during the night — and to gatherings of the faithful after dark, though he did not specify the practices.15
In private, Christians seem to have prayed on their knees rather than standing, or so Tertullian recommended. At least the first prayer of every day and all the prayers on a fast day were to be performed kneeling. On Sundays and during the entire period from Easter to Pentecost, however, Christians always prayed standing. Some had begun to stand on Saturday as well, though Tertullian considered this inadequately supported by scripture and a source of dissension within the church.16 During prayer, the arms were to be extended and the hands uplifted (see figs. 120, 130, 131, 134, 135, 137, 139, 140).17 Men were to pray with their heads uncovered.18 Women ought to follow the apostolic precept of covering their heads, even in private prayer.19 Tertullian found no reason for Christians to wash their hands before prayer, since their whole bodies had been made ritually and morally pure in the once-for-all washing of baptism.20 Hands were washed between the meal and the prayer segments of the Lord’s Banquet, the agapē, probably because they were dirty.21 Whenever a group of Christians were praying together, he recommended that they should end with the kiss of peace, which sealed their prayer.22
Christians practiced prayer differently than the traditional polytheists. They need not remove their cloaks, or sit down after praying. They should not spread their arms ostentatiously to get God’s attention or shout out long and elaborate petitions to move God to generosity.23 By praying in secret, Christians confessed that God saw and heard everything. They prayed to one God alone, who gave all blessings. They were restrained in words because God already knew and would provide everything that they needed.24 Indeed, the Lord’s Prayer itself contained all that a Christian needed to present to God,25 though they were free to make more specific requests.26 Such petitions should be made for everyone, even their enemies, persecutors, and calumniators, that they might receive God’s mercy and that God’s name might be sanctified in them.27 Christians might pray for the necessities of life — food and clothing — but not for superfluities.28 In particular, they regularly prayed for a deceased spouse, with whom they could hope to be reunited in the Resurrection.29
Tertullian was of two minds about praying for the coming of the end-time. In the Apology, he claimed that Christians prayed for a quiet life, the good of the empire, and the delay of the troubles which would accompany the end.30 In his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, however, he criticized those who prayed for a continuation of the present order and thus a delay in the coming of the Kingdom of God. They should prefer reigning sooner to serving longer.31
In guiding prayer, Tertullian advised his fellow Christians to be more concerned with spiritual than temporal benefits. They should seek strength and endurance rather than deliverance from the troubles of this age.32
Cyprian’s treatise On the Lord’s Prayer was inspired and guided by that of Tertullian. He repeated, with some elaboration, the specifications of the times of day at which a Christian should pray. The morning and evening prayer, for example, were linked to the Resurrection and the hope for the coming of Christ, whose light would continue unending. The prayer at the ninth hour was occasioned by the death of Jesus rather than the Apostles’ practice of going to the temple at that hour.33 He recommended prayer in secret, in a low rather than a loud voice.34 He referred more regularly to the keeping of vigils but provided no more details of the practice than Tertullian had.35 Christians were to pray not only for one another but for their enemies, that they might receive the grace of God and be converted.36
Because of the divisions in the church preceding, during, and after the Decian persecution, Cyprian insisted on unanimity in prayer. The persecution had been brought on by the refusal of some to join in praying for the good of others.37 God would deliver the community only if all were to pray with one heart for the good of everyone.38 During the schisms after the persecution, he insisted that only unanimous prayer would be effective.39 In anticipation of a renewal of persecution, he urged prayer for the whole church.40 In the Lord’s Prayer, he observed, Christ taught his disciples to pray together in the plural rather than the singular, saying not “My Father” and “give me,” but “Our Father” and “give us.”41
Faced with the massive failure of Christians during the Decian persecution, Cyprian insisted that the fallen must beseech Christ for the forgiveness of their sin and the strength to stand fast in the future.42 Even those who had been preserved from such major failings, however, must pray daily for the forgiveness of their sins of negligence.43
Cyprian also urged that fasting and almsgiving would make prayer effective,44 especially in time of persecution.45 Fasting, in particular, drew the soul away from the distractions of earthly pleasures so that the person would sustain the pleading for deliverance.46
Finally, Cyprian’s community had suffered persecution and anticipated its renewal; he did not recommend prayer for the delay of the end-time. Instead, he noted that the Lord’s Prayer specified the needs of the present day and not those of the morrow. Christians should not anticipate being long in the world.47
The peculiar emphases of Cyprian’s recommendations for Christian prayer can be understood as a response to the reality and threat of persecution, the failure to resist it, and the resulting divisions among Christians. Thus he insisted on the unanimity of the community as it stood before God in prayer.
In the Confessions, Augustine described a particular type of prayer that proceeded by tracking the intelligibility and beauty found in sensible realities back through the human mind to the intelligible light by which they were understood, and thence to the divine reality that was their source. He demonstrated that this form of prayer could be intermittent at best because of the conflicting loves of fallen humans; he concluded that one had to proceed to God by a more humble route, led by the Incarnate Word.48 He later recounted a similar ascent in conversation with his mother at Ostia shortly before her death.49 Then in reflection on his life as a Christian, he described the way in which he continued to practice such prayer.50 Contemplative prayer, Augustine certainly realized, was unusual among the Christians to whom he ministered. When he wished to intimate to them the experience of heaven, he turned not to this intelligible light but to the spoken Word of God, on which they would be fed. Heaven would be somewhat like their being in church, he suggested, away from their daily work, listening to the scripture read and expounded.51 Augustine explained prayer to his congregants and warned them against deviations from right practice.
The closest Augustinian parallels to the discussions of the forms of Christian prayer that are to be found in Tertullian’s On Prayer and Cyprian’s On the Lord’s Prayer are in his On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount and the surviving sermons to the catechumens about the Lord’s Prayer.52 He focused on the meaning of the petitions and on the realities that might properly be asked of God rather than on the appropriate times and positions for prayer. These details of fifth-century practice can be discovered only in asides, during other expositions and arguments.
Augustine did specify that Christians prayed in the early morning and said the Lord’s Prayer many times during the day.53 Christians seem to have prayed standing, for the most part, and were urged to face the east.54 The prayer with which Augustine regularly ended his sermons began with “Turning to the Lord,” and the entire congregation may have turned toward the east, with their backs to the preacher, for this.55 Augustine explained that since God was present everywhere, such turning had a symbolic meaning. As the human body faced the greater heavenly body, the sun, so the mind should be directed to the greater nature, God. If some in the congregation imagined God living in the eastern heavens, that was at least better than thinking that God lived on earth.56 Praying in secret was not considered particularly important: Augustine interpreted Christ’s injunction in Matthew (6:6) figuratively as a warning not to seek praise from human beings by ostentatious forms of prayer.57
The sign of the cross had been traced on the forehead of each Christian at the beginning of the catechumenate.58 Although the sign was never referred to as visible on the face, Christians seem to have been acutely aware of its invisible presence and to have marked it regularly with a finger.59 When frightened, they quickly traced it to claim divine protection.60 In certain circumstances, Augustine suggested, that sign would be a confession of faith;61 but it could not substitute for a more public signal of Christian commitment.62
In Augustine’s view, the intention of the heart was the essence of prayer. Desire to pray could itself fulfill Paul’s exhortation to pray continuously (1 Thess. 5:17).63 The words and set formulae of prayers could recall to mind the thoughts that the Christian should present to God.64 They also served to open the heart and prepare a person to receive the spiritual gifts being sought.65 In Confessions, he gave eloquent testimony to the power of the chanting of Psalms to lift his own mind to God,66 and his sermons taught the congregation how to pray these texts as members of Christ.67
All the things a Christian should ask of God were laid out, Augustine taught the catechumens, in the Lord’s Prayer.68 The divine gifts were primarily spiritual, particularly eternal life itself, because these remained and did not fail.69 In interpreting the petition for daily bread, Augustine observed that it referred not primarily to the eucharist but to spiritual sustenance provided by the Word of God. The eastern church did not communicate every day, he explained, and they could not have ignored or violated a clear and explicit command of the Lord.70 But when preaching to catechumens in Hippo, he preferred the eucharistic meaning, while acknowledging the alternative.71 Observing that Christians were not spared the troubles of earthly life, he concluded that the petition for deliverance and escape from temptation must refer to the divine gifts of strength and endurance. Christ had indicated this meaning by praying that the faith of the Apostles be confirmed (John 17). He rejected a Pelagian interpretation that the petition’s objective was being spared from the bodily accidents that a person could not prevent by foresight and prudence.72
Still, Augustine did not insist that the Lord’s Prayer referred only to spiritual benefits; he allowed petitions for the transitory goods of earthly life.73 Christians prayed for such things as food and drink, clothing and housing, rain for crops, health for themselves and their neighbors.74 Such prayer recognized that these needs were supplied by God and that they must not be sought from the demons.75 Earthly goods were to be asked for in moderation, since God knew individual needs and should be trusted to supply what was necessary.76 Even transitory goods, however, were to be petitioned with the name of Christ and for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, as supports for salvation.77 Riches and superfluities must not be sought from God, therefore, since no one was called to follow Christ for the sake of these pleasures and advantages.78 In fact, God bestowed them on the most disreputable and base people precisely to show that they were of no real and lasting value.79
Christians were forbidden, Augustine insisted, to pray that God take vengeance on sinners and on their own enemies in particular.80 This prohibition required some careful scriptural interpretation. The prophets might seem to have been calling down divine punishments when they were only foretelling and warning what God was about to do; they were not wishing harm on anyone.81 Similarly, the martyrs crying out from beneath the heavenly altar (Rev. 6:10) were pleading for an end to the dominion of sin, under which they had suffered, rather than asking for divine retribution on their persecutors.82 God had avenged neither Christ nor Stephen nor the other martyrs. Instead, time was being allotted for the conversion of sinners.83 Christians must not, then, ask God to bring harm upon their enemies. The Christian banging his head on the floor of the church as he demanded that God kill a particular evil man had best be careful, he observed, lest God start by slaying the wicked petitioner himself.84 To praise God for the misfortune that befell another was, in effect, to make God a collaborator in one’s own hatred.85 Christians were to pray for the conversion rather than the punishment of their enemies.86 If Christ himself seemed beyond imitation, let them take as their model Stephen, who prayed for those who harmed him, or Paul, who had ordered prayers even for persecuting kings (1 Tim. 2:1-4).87 They might hate the sin, but they must love and seek only good for the sinful person.88
Following in the tradition well evidenced in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, Augustine insisted that Christians were sinners who must pray daily for forgiveness.89 Thus he repudiated the statement of the Jewish leaders in John (9:31), to the effect that God does not hear the prayer of sinners — a text that Cyprian had applied to unworthy and schismatic bishops.90 Scripture testified in multiple places that God does hear the prayer of sinners,91 most notably the plea of the publican (Luke 18:9-14).92 Indeed, the very prayer which Christ gave his followers proved that all who prayed it were sinners by including a petition for forgiveness.93
Augustine warned that Christians should assign no particular significance to God’s answering their specific requests. Paul had been told that he would not be liberated from the trouble he was suffering (2 Cor. 12:7) — which Augustine thought might have been a bad headache.94 In contrast, Satan was immediately granted permission to test Job,95 and the demons were allowed to enter the swine.96 God sometimes delayed answering the saints, as Christ did with the Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:21-28), in order to build their desire for the good they sought and thereby open their hearts to receive it.97 In contrast, God sometimes granted the petitions of sinners,98 or turned them over to the desires of their hearts, so that they might eventually grow weary and repent.99 Augustine’s teaching on prayer expanded that of Tertullian and Cyprian primarily by focusing on the spiritual goods which the Christian must seek from God.
Reciting the Psalms was a major form of Christian liturgical and private prayer. Augustine reflected on the way they were to be understood and prayed. The Psalms, like the whole of scripture, referred to Christ in three different ways: as the eternal Son of God, as the human son of Mary and head of the church,100 and as the whole Christ including both head and members.101 Every statement and petition was either of or about Christ. This was illustrated in the attribution of Psalm 21 (22) to the dying Christ in the Gospels (Mark 15:34; Matt. 27:46).102 Some of the prayers in the Psalms, such as those asking for forgiveness, could be attributed to Christ only in unity with his body, the church.103 As Christ prayed the Psalms with the church, so the church prayed them with Christ.104 Christ himself could speak both as head and as one with the members of his body; the members could speak as a body identified with their head, but not in the person of the head.105 This principle was extended to the entire psalter, including the statements of Christ as divine and as son of Mary, not just to the prayers Christ could offer only with his body. Augustine’s explanation of the praying of the Psalms finds no parallel in the work of Tertullian and Cyprian. It would help shape a long and illustrious practice of communal prayer.
Augustine’s writings provide additional information and instruction on community prayer that was not directly associated with the celebration of the eucharist. As has already been seen in detail, the program of the reform of the celebration of the feasts of the saints brought a service of readings, psalms, preaching, and hymns in place of the banquets that had been offered in the churches.106 While still a presbyter, Augustine introduced the change in Hippo for the feast of St. Leontius, the martyr-bishop of that city. Aurelius of Carthage supported the program,107 and a late-fourth-century episcopal council forbade all banqueting by the clergy in church buildings, except to feed travelers, and urged that the congregations be restrained from doing so as much as possible.108 Change in the celebration of the martyrdom of Cyprian in Carthage was even more dramatic. The Basilica Mappalia had been built at the tomb of Cyprian and was the site of a traditional all-night vigil, filled with singing, dancing, and drinking. It was replaced by a service of readings, psalms, and preaching.109 Augustine preached at this service on a number of occasions, and again the next day at the eucharistic offering in the basilica called the Mensa Cypriani, where the great bishop had been executed.110
The Lord’s Prayer was at the center of Christian practices of prayer in the African church. It was recited multiple times each day and guided other forms of prayer: what should be sought from God — both spiritual and bodily blessings — and what must not — harm of one’s enemies. Cyprian placed particular emphasis on unanimity in prayer. Although Augustine developed a Christian form of philosophical contemplation, his principal contribution to church practice was an explanation of the Psalms as the prayer of the whole Christ, head and members.
Abstaining from food during a major part of the day was an established penitential practice, used to seek divine forgiveness for the sins of daily living as well as a part of the formal penitential rite by excommunication and reconciliation. The New Prophecy movement adopted and urged a more rigorous form in the late second century. Cyprian recommended it for adding urgency — and efficacy — to petitionary prayer. Augustine set the practice in the broader context of his understanding of the church.
As has already been seen, Tertullian taught that restricting food and drink was a penitential practice, a means of strengthening one’s prayer for the forgiveness of sins in preparation for baptism and in the ritual of reconciliation.111 Fasting was, however, one of the regular practices of the Christian life that many undertook weekly.
Unlike the community fasts at set times of the year that had been specified in the Mosaic Law, Christians considered their own fasting voluntary. The manner and time of fasts had not been set by Christ; these were determined by individual choice or the decision of the church leaders.112 Still, Christians did look to scripture for guidance. The text of Matthew 9:14-15, which named the time when “the bridegroom had been taken away from them” as proper for fasting,113 provided a justification for avoiding fasting during the whole of the Easter season, from the celebration of the Resurrection until Pentecost.114 The rest of the year, then, was the proper time. The entire community fasted on the Friday when the death of Jesus was commemorated,115 and some continued the fast on Saturday as well.116
Like other Christian practices, fasting was based not on scripture alone but was developed by community traditions. All avoided fasting on Sunday and most on Saturday as well.117 Wednesday and Friday outside of Eastertide were called stational days, when members of the community might fast until mid-afternoon.118 The ending time was justified by appeal to scriptural precedents: the time of the death of Jesus or the time when Peter went into the temple to pray.119 The latter explanation may indicate that the fast was closed with a service of prayer. Bathing was also omitted on fast days.120 The actual fast was voluntary, and it was not observed by all members of the community. At the morning liturgy, those fasting thought that they should neither take the eucharist nor share the kiss of peace. Yet, these refusals could not but call attention to their pious exercise.121 It will be recalled that Tertullian suggested that they share the peace and take the eucharistic bread home with them.122 On days when the entire community was fasting, however, the kiss of peace was omitted at the end of prayer.123 Those days of fasting were called by the leader of the community in support of its prayer for some particular need or as a means of raising money for the support of the poor.124
The devotees of the New Prophecy amplified and extended these practices by committing themselves to all the observances rather than regarding them as optional matters of private devotion. They extended the stational fasts until the end of the day, preferring not to refresh themselves until the hour when Jesus had been laid to rest in the tomb.125 They followed a regimen of “dry” fasting, a xerophagia, which seems to have consisted of bread and water. They avoided meat, succulent fruit, and anything flavored with wine. As part of the dry regimen, they avoided the baths as well.126 During two weeks of the year, which Tertullian neglected to specify, they practiced the xerophagia for five days running, omitting Saturday and Sunday.127
Tertullian explained the function of fasting in a number of ways. It added to the power of prayer, both in asking forgiveness of sins and in requesting favors from God.128 As fasting was helpful in driving out demons, so did it open the way for the entrance of the Holy Spirit.129 Finally, he observed that the dry fasts were particularly helpful in hardening the body to withstand pain in time of persecution and thus to prepare for witness to Christ under torture. He objected to the full meals which other Christians provided to confessors in prison, rendering them unfit for the trials.130
Cyprian exhorted his people to add fasting and almsgiving to their prayers for protection and deliverance during the Decian persecution.131 Similarly, in anticipation of a renewal of persecution under Valerian, he urged that the congregations commit themselves to prayer, with vigils and fasting, to gain divine protection and support.132 In more general discussions, such as his treatises On the Lord’s Prayer and On Works and Alms, Cyprian presented almsgiving, along with fasting, as appropriate to make intercessory prayer fruitful.133
Repentance for sins was, however, the primary focus of Cyprian’s discussion of fasting. In On the Lapsed, he insisted that fasting was necessary to reverse the sin of eating the sacrificial meat and the habits of self-indulgence which had contributed to the failure of so many Christians.134 Almsgiving was also essential to making satisfaction for sin, following the exhortations of Joel (2:12-13) and Isaiah (58:1, 7-9).135 Thus Cyprian urged fasting as part of a program of repentance in which it was accompanied by prayer and care for the poor.
Cyprian did not provide information, as Tertullian had, on the weekly and annual practices of fasting followed by the Christians in Carthage. One letter, however, gave indirect evidence that Christians did not fast during the period between Easter and Pentecost. The writer indicated that even after Easter he continued the penitential activities he had undertaken on behalf of two friends who had failed to confess Christ in Rome.136
Augustine’s letters and sermons provide fuller information on the practices and meaning of fasting in his time than do the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian.
Augustine distinguished between a fasting and an eating day on the basis of the midday meal, prandium, which was the first meal of the day. On a fast day, Christians did not take that meal; instead, they ate at the ninth hour of the day. This afternoon meal was apparently the only one eaten, considered the major meal of the day, cena.137 If a person could not follow this regimen, Augustine recommended that eating and drinking be restricted to the meal times; nothing should be taken outside of the prandium and cena.138
By the fifth century, Wednesday and Friday were well established as the Christian fast days during the week.139 Augustine connected both days to the death of Jesus: the Jewish leaders had plotted his capture on Wednesday, then carried out his arrest and execution on the night and day of Friday.140 In some parts of Africa, Christians fasted on Saturday as well, a custom which was well established in Rome. There it was related to Peter’s fasting in preparation for the confrontation with Simon Magus; Peter continued his fasting in honor of its success.141 No Christian was to choose Sunday as a day of fast,142 especially since the Manichees had made it an obligatory day of abstaining from food. If, however, a Christian had committed to a longer period of fasting, a Sunday that happened to fall within the period could be included in the fast.143 The festivals of the martyrs were also exempt from fasting.144 Fasting was suspended from Easter to Pentecost,145 and the weekly fasts began again immediately after Pentecost.146
An annual forty-day fast preceded Easter and was called quadragesima.147 Fasting was observed for five days of the week, but not on Saturday and Sunday.148 It was performed by all the competentes preparing for baptism and by those among the faithful who wished to accompany them on the journey.149 On Thursday of the final week, the competentes and these faithful broke the fast and went to the baths, in preparation for the celebration of baptism. Others continued the normal fast.150 All fasted again on Friday, to honor the death of Jesus, and on Saturday, in sympathy for the grief of the Apostles.151 Augustine recognized that the faithful could not sustain the forty days without food and drink that characterized the fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus; he urged, however, that they abstain from sexual relations for the whole time.152 Some Christians changed rather than curtailed their diets: they substituted exotic fruit juices for wine and elaborately prepared vegetable dishes for meat.153 Augustine condemned this practice, insisting that quadragesima was the time for everyone to eat the kinds of food that the poor ate always.154 They should then give to the poor whatever savings were realized by their shift to a less expensive diet.155
Fasting was practiced on some particular days, such as the vigil of Christmas.156 Augustine recommended fasting in anticipation of the feast of Cyprian, perhaps as part of the campaign to change the tone of that celebration in Carthage.157 He also urged that fasts be observed on the major feasts of the traditional Roman religion,158 particularly the first of January.159 Although Augustine characterized this abstaining from food as a prayer for the conversion of the pagans and an imitation of Christ, who suffered for the whole world,160 the practice would also have curtailed Christian participation in the celebrations. On one occasion, he extended the sermon through the time of the midday meal to accomplish this end.161
One of the objectives of fasting was to wean the soul away from the pleasure of satisfying the body’s need for food and to shift attention from temporal to eternal delights. Augustine suggested that this could be accomplished even during meals by engaging in religious conversation. This would distract attention from the unavoidable pleasure of eating and drinking.162
Because none of these practices of fasting were specified in the New Testament, they varied by region and even between individual churches within the same area. The Saturday fast was observed in Rome but not in Milan and in only some churches in Africa.163 Augustine regularly recommended the advice that Ambrose had given to his mother when she complained that the church in Milan did not fast on Saturday: follow the local custom or at least the practice of the local bishop. In these matters, the peace and unity of the church were more important;164 they should not be disturbed by attempts to establish the superiority of one’s religious knowledge or culture.165 Citing the Psalms (45:14-15), Augustine distinguished between the interior beauty of the queen, symbolized by the faith itself, and her multicolored garments, represented by the many ways of living it.166 A great variety of practices was compatible with the Christian faith, and no one of them was significantly more successful in promoting morality.
Augustine considered fasting a regular discipline of living the Christian life. In his reflections on the difficulties of daily life in Confessions, he pointed to the challenge presented by eating and drinking. These were necessary for maintaining the mortal body, but the replenishment was pleasurable and easily drew a person beyond what was necessary and profitable.167 To maintain proper control and avoid crossing over to the superfluous, therefore, a person had to pull back somewhat even from what was allowed.168
More generally, Augustine considered fasting a symbolic withdrawal from the pleasures of bodily life169 and even from the vices of the soul.170 Christians should always be fasting from the dominant culture, from that demonically influenced way of life.171 Giving up food was not enough, but it represented a broader attempt to reorient desire from passing to lasting goods.
Desire was appropriately trained by fasting in times of both sorrow and joy. The first was linked to the absence of the Bridegroom but expanded to encompass times of tribulation, conflict, and temptation. Christ set an example in the fast following his baptism and in anticipation of the struggles of his ministry. The soul was humbled by the deprivation of the body and thus provided with a powerful weapon for fighting against the demon.172 One should also fast during times of spiritual joy, in order to keep the goods of the spirit free from adulteration by fleshly pleasures. As a new patch could not be sewn onto an old garment or new wine stored in old skins, so the joys of the spirit must be kept separate from those of the flesh.173
Fasting should always be joined to prayer and almsgiving.174 It purified prayer and thus gave wings to the soul; it strengthened petitions by acting out the prayer.175 It was never to be separated from help given to the poor.176 These three also served as the traditional means of seeking forgiveness for sins. Weekly fasts were necessary, Augustine explained, to repent the small sins of daily living, to pump the bilges so that the ship did not slowly sink from small leaks.177
While affirming the traditional rituals of fasting, Augustine attempted to integrate the practice into a broader context. He was as interested in struggling against the vices of the spirit as in suppressing the pleasures of the body. He refused to separate the asceticism of the individual from love and care for Christ in the persons of the poor.
Periodic abstaining from food and drink was a Christian practice that was integral to prayer, repentance, and helping the poor. The specific practices were associated with scriptural precedents — such as the fasts of Christ, Moses, and Elijah — and with events, particularly the death of Christ. Fasting was both effective in separating Christians from bodily satisfactions and symbolic of the purification of their desires; it oriented them toward the gifts of the Spirit and the glories of the world to come. Tolerating the pain of hunger and thirst trained the Christians to suffer for Christ; the self-indulgent would not withstand pressure and maintain the confession of their faith. Augustine also suggested that on the festivals of traditional polytheist idolatry Christians should fast not only as a way to separate themselves from the feasting but as a petition for the conversion and salvation of their neighbors.
Offering material assistance to the poor was inseparable from prayer and fasting. Like fasting, it was a penitential practice that helped Christians separate themselves from the attachments leading them into sin. The sharing of goods within a congregation realized its unity and symbolized its hope of sharing eternal life.
Tertullian’s writings indicate that almsgiving was a regular practice among the Christians of his day. He noted that giving money to a non-Christian would place the donor in an awkward situation. The grateful beggar would normally call down on the benefactor a blessing from one of the traditionally honored deities. The Christian who did not repudiate that good wish not only failed to confess Christ but allowed the glory of the good deed to be credited to a demon.178 In another context, he argued that marrying a fellow Christian could forestall conflicts over almsgiving (as well as prayer and fasting) that were certain to arise in a union with a non-Christian.179 In a treatise on the virtue of patience, he observed that a Christian who could not suffer the loss of earthly goods with equanimity would never be able to give alms voluntarily to feed and clothe the needy.180 Further evidence of the practice was provided by Christians defending as an alms a bribe paid to escape persecution because it used earthly goods to secure or at least prevent the loss of a heavenly one. Tertullian retorted that the imperial official or soldier who accepted the gratuity certainly did not regard it as an alms and did not invoke a blessing upon the donor, as was customary for beggars. The appropriate payment for a heavenly reward in such a situation, he observed, was in blood rather than money.181
Tertullian did not discuss almsgiving as a penitential work; he focused instead on prayer and on fasting with sackcloth and ashes.182 When Tertullian did discuss Christian wealth and its proper use, his concern was the danger of idolatry associated with the execution of contracts.183 He never appealed to the precedent of the sharing of goods in the Jerusalem community for the establishment of an alternate economy within the church.
Tertullian indicated that the church had a common fund to which the faithful contributed according to their resources and choice. The funds were used not for lavish entertainments but to support the needy: the poor, the orphaned, the elderly, the shipwrecked, and those being punished for confession of Christ.184 Even the regular community meal was an opportunity for feeding the hungry, presumably among the faithful, without subjecting them to the humiliation they often suffered from patrons.185
The absence of a fuller discussion of wealth and almsgiving suggests that the Christian community in Carthage at the end of the second century did not include a significant number of families whose financial status made the sharing of goods a particular challenge to their fidelity to Christ and their following of his teaching. A different situation would be clearly manifest a half-century later in Cyprian’s attempts to deal with the devastation wrought by the Decian persecution.
Contributing to the support of the community and its members was widely practiced and is well evidenced in the middle of the third century in Carthage. The operational costs of the church, including the monthly stipends of the clergy, must have come from voluntary gifts made by some members of the congregation.186 The episcopal correspondence at the time of the Decian persecution provides no indication that the church in Africa owned lands or other income-producing resources that would have been subject to confiscation.187 After the persecution, Cyprian charged that bishops had acquired farms by fraud. This accusation came under the category of abandoning pastoral responsibilities and was accompanied by complaints of their searching for trading opportunities and loaning money at interest. These bishops were being accused of enhancing their personal fortunes while their fellow Christians went hungry.188 Thus the funds used for the support of the church and its ministries seem to have come not from church properties but from the free-will offerings of the faithful.
In ordinary times, the funds of the church were dispersed by the clergy to those in need. In addition to widows, the sick, and the poor,189 Cyprian indicated that some persons whom the church had required to give up livelihoods tainted by idolatry as a condition for acceptance were then supported by the resources of the church.190 During the Decian persecution, similar assistance was extended to those imprisoned for confession of Christ, to workers whose tools and goods were confiscated, and to refugees or exiles attempting to evade imperial attention.191 Such funds were to be given only to those remaining steadfast in their faith and commitment to the community.192 Some of these funds were provided from Cyprian’s own resources.193 During the subsequent Valerian persecution, the church in Carthage sent funds for the alleviation of the suffering of Christians condemned to working in the imperial mines.194
Cyprian and other bishops responded to an appeal from Numidian colleagues for funds to ransom Christians taken captive by raiders.195 The amount of the funds raised from the clergy and laity of Carthage was quite large, equivalent to the monthly wages of 3,000 day-laborers, and indicated that the church had access to significant resources, probably among wealthy members like its bishop, who contributed in case of emergency.196
The financial crisis occasioned by the Decian persecution and the generosity of wealthy Christians made almsgiving a much more significant practice in the middle of the third century than it seems to have been in Tertullian’s time. The Decian edict, which required participation in a sacrifice for the good of the empire, resulted in the first systematic persecution of Christians. Persons who refused to comply could be stripped of their property and sent into exile. The wealthy, along with church leaders, were among the first to be prosecuted: they were not only prominent but worthwhile targets for the imperial treasury. Some Christians abandoned their property and went voluntarily into exile. Others, however, found methods of protecting their holdings, jeopardizing their status within the church. Many performed the sacrifice; others paid a bribe or fine to avoid the requirement. During and immediately after the persecution, Cyprian charged that wealth had proved the undoing of these Christians; it was an enemy within their households that had betrayed them.197
Almsgiving as an antidote to avarice and individualism would then play a significant role in the process of repentance and the reconstitution of the church after failures during the persecution. Those who had fallen through their attachment to money and property were urged to demonstrate both their change of heart and their commitment to the church by dispersing some of the funds they had protected and retained by sinning. During the persecution, some of these Christians undertook the care of exiled confessors and of the refugees who fled to the larger cities where they would escape detection and prosecution. Christians of Carthaginian origin in Rome undertook the support of the exiles there.198 In Carthage, the wealthy who had complied with the imperial edict in order to protect their own households also provided shelter to these refugees.199 Cyprian’s charge that the confessors in prison were being bribed to intercede for the fallen may have been an interpretation of the practice of supporting the families of those under pressure.200 When Cyprian finally returned to Carthage and urged those who had failed during the persecution to undertake the penance necessary to win the forgiveness of Christ, he recommended almsgiving as the most appropriate means of purification and repentance.201 He also cited the sharing of goods practiced by the Jerusalem community as a means to strengthen unity even if the giving of alms was not required as a penitential work to wipe out the crime of apostasy.202 Clearly, Cyprian viewed almsgiving as a means for both the fallen and the faithful to demonstrate commitment to the church community.
In exhortations delivered in the years following the Decian persecution, Cyprian continued to stress the necessity and efficacy of almsgiving in the Christian life. In his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, he observed that selling goods and distributing the proceeds to the poor set a follower of Christ free from all the connections that could bind to family and imperial culture.203 He warned Christian virgins that their wealth had been given to them not for personal enjoyment but as a means of helping others. To expend it on costly clothing and ostentatious living was to miss the point of their renunciation of marriage.204 Such had not been the focus of Tertullian’s fulminations on the dress of virgins and married women.205
Cyprian’s concern with the proper use of wealth was most evident, however, in the collection of scriptural passages on this topic in To Quirinus. It contains thirty-four citations, of which only two focus explicitly on the use of alms as a means of gaining the forgiveness of sins.206 His treatise On Works and Alms repeats half the scriptural citations collected in To Quirinus and adds another thirty. Although it begins with an appeal to the efficacy of alms in winning the forgiveness of sins committed after baptism, its scope is broader than in the writings composed immediately following the Decian persecution. Cyprian observed that no one could claim a pure heart and that repentance was necessary even for sins which did not require the public ritual of exomologesis. He asserted that those who wanted to win forgiveness must supplement fasting and prayer with almsgiving and care of the poor.207
Two arguments in On Works and Alms indicate that fellow Christians were the primary if not exclusive recipients of alms. First, Cyprian explained that alms made prayer effective by enlisting the prayers of the poor, which were heard by God. He then cited the intercession of the needy who had been helped by Tabitha; these had won restoration of bodily life for her through the miracle worked by Peter (Acts 9:36-41).208 Second, referring to the warning of eschatological judgment in Matthew (25:31-46), he argued that Christ himself was served in the poor and had promised to reward the least gift made to them.209
Cyprian also considered objections that might be advanced against the practice of almsgiving he was recommending. A property owner who followed his advice might soon find himself among the poor, unable to feed himself and his family, much less care for anyone else. In response, Cyprian explained that alienating one’s sources of income was an act of faith in God’s own care. Christ had named Zacchaeus a son of Abraham precisely because he had followed the patriarch’s example of faith in disposing of his wealth. Thus a Christian should trust that the prayers of those who had been helped would make God generous to the newly destitute benefactor.210 Retaining one’s wealth, in contrast, courted becoming enslaved to it again after once having been set free by Christ.211 Indeed, Cyprian observed, some of the wealthy were already living off the generosity of the poor: they arrived empty-handed at the community celebrations and shared the (food) offerings made by others.212 A second objection asserted that parents had no right to deprive children of their inheritance by dispersing it to the poor. Cyprian appealed again to almsgiving as an exercise of faith: Christians should love God more than their families.213 Indeed, they would serve their children better by following the example of the widow who gave Elijah the last of her food and thus preserved both herself and her child from starvation.214 Christians might instruct their children in almsgiving, as Tobias had,215 or win the forgiveness of their children’s sins by their own alms, as Job did by daily sacrifice.216
In responding to these objections, Cyprian also introduced a scripturally based consideration that would have a long life in African Christian piety: almsgiving was a means of transforming earthly into heavenly treasure. By entrusting their family wealth to God, parents could leave their children an abiding heavenly inheritance rather than a transitory earthly one.217 By providing food, drink, and clothing to the poor, Christians helped Christ himself and would be amply repaid in heavenly goods.218 Cyprian then addressed the wealthy members of his congregation by contrasting the ostentatious gifts the Roman nobility made to their cities with those of Christians toward the church. The civic benefactors considered themselves blessed in the opportunity to demonstrate their generosity in the presence of important personages and gloried in dedications made to the imperial deities. In serving the poor, by contrast, Christians sought approval and reward from God.219 As judge, Cyprian claimed, Christ would bestow not only a purple crown of martyrdom but a white crown for good works.220
In Cyprian’s community, the possession of wealth constituted a challenge to the Christian life. During the Decian persecution, the faithful who owned and were unprepared to abandon a patrimony — along with the status it conferred — were forced to choose between the Christian and the imperial cultures. In responding to failures during that crisis, Cyprian made almsgiving central to Christian piety. He promoted generosity to the poor as an exercise of faith that prepared Christians for the confession of Christ and even martyrdom by requiring them to cast all their hope upon Christ, to trust that God would care for the families who were willing to offer the parent providing their financial support. Almsgiving became an appropriate and even necessary part of repenting for the apostasy brought on when a person was unwilling to give over property in order to preserve faith. Since attachment to property caused the sin, only giving away property could win its forgiveness.
In Cyprian’s explanation of the efficacy of almsgiving, the primary recipients of alms were assumed to be fellow Christians. The prayers of the powerful poor would not only win a hearing for the petitions of the donor but render God generous to those who had impoverished themselves by almsgiving. The identification of the poor with Christ, who was served in them, also evinced an assumption that the primary recipients of alms were Christian. Finally, the financial and political protection that the lapsed provided to faithful Christians during the persecution later became a basis for the church’s forgiving, readmitting, and commending them to the divine mercy.
The next substantial witness to the practice of almsgiving and the management of wealth by Christians in North Africa comes at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, in the writings and the preaching of Augustine. The Constantinian support and Theodosian establishment of Christianity resulted in greater wealth among Christians — often by the conversion of the aristocracy. In the churches, it brought the ownership of productive property, along with increased responsibilities for the poor. Augustine’s exhortations and advice were complex because he addressed both rich and poor simultaneously and often in relationship to one another.
The congregation to which Augustine preached at Hippo seems to have included both rich and poor. He described most of the members of his congregation as poor,221 though he would use the same term to characterize himself and his family.222 The public accounting he gave of the finances of his clergy indicates that some of them had owned income-producing property and were skilled in its management.223 The fate of the rich man in the parable of Luke (16:19-31) would inspire a collective groan of fear in the congregation and require the preacher to explain that this person had been condemned not for his possessions but for his failure to share them.224 Augustine also warned the poor that the beggar in the parable had been saved by his piety, not his poverty.225 He admonished the poor in the congregation to avoid the common saying that only the rich really live.226 In this context, Augustine made extensive use of 1 Timothy (6:6-10, 17-19), which addresses both rich and poor. He explained that Paul had not required the alienation of riches that had been urged by Christ; instead, he warned that possessions must not be permitted to engender pride.227 The poor, also subject to avarice, should be content with food, shelter, and clothing.228 The true danger, Augustine argued, was not in the possession of riches and their proper use but in eagerness to acquire and increase them.229 This view, in its turn, might have been influenced by his supposition that the quantity of riches in the world was unchanging, so that one person’s gain came only at another’s loss.230 Thus, to desire gain for oneself was to wish loss for another.
Christian almsgiving was not restricted to the church community. Many of the beggars for whom Augustine sought the generosity of the congregation gathered in the street outside the doors of the church rather than standing within it.231 He clearly asserted that support was to be extended to pagans, Jews, and Christian heretics.232 The collection at the beginning of the winter was for the support of both the local poor and foreigners stranded in Hippo by the close of maritime shipping.233 Christian generosity was extended to sinners and enemies as well as the deserving.234 In a discussion of gifts made to the unjust, however, Augustine specified that the donor must be focused on meeting the needs of the human being created by God and not on encouraging sinful behavior: giving to arena performers and prostitutes was suspect.235 Thus, while Christians should give of their excess to the needy who approached them, they had a responsibility to seek out the particularly deserving. Because the true servants of God were more likely to suffer in silence, the faithful ought to be solicitous of their needs.236
In practice, most Christian almsgiving seems to have been focused on the church and the congregation. Augustine’s appeal to the practice of the Jerusalem community described in Acts (4:32) encouraged the wealthy to make most of their gifts within the church.237 He also insisted that by identifying himself with the faithful (Matt. 25:40), Christ had given his followers the opportunity to serve him as Martha had,238 and thereby to gain an eternal reward.239 This gave the Christian poor a special claim on the generosity of their fellows.240 In an extended analysis of Christ’s promise that gifts to the righteous and to disciples would be rewarded in Matthew (10:41-42), and the more general exhortations of Luke (6:30) and Romans (12:20), Augustine was able to show that all Christian almsgiving should promote conversion and salvation, thereby qualifying the donor for a heavenly reward.241
Augustine insisted that almsgiving was the responsibility of all Christians, not just the rich.242 The poor could give alms out of the little they had,243 as was made clear by Christ’s promise that even the gift of a cup of cold water, by one who had no resources to heat it, would not go unrewarded.244 He suggested that alms could be given by service as well as money: guiding the blind, carrying the lame, and consoling the perplexed. It would be very difficult to find someone, he concluded, who had no resources for assisting another.245 The wealthy faced the opposite dilemma: determining how much of their resources should be given in alms. Unlike Cyprian, Augustine did not require or urge that all possessions be dispersed,246 or even that the wealthy sacrifice their more refined lifestyle.247 Instead, he suggested that a tithe was the minimum for these Christians, whose justice should exceed that of the Pharisees.248 Whatever funds they determined they could afford should be set aside, as a sort of tax for the treasury of Christ. Thus, when the time came for giving, they would not feel that they were depriving their own households for the sake of others.249
As bishop, Augustine followed the practice of retaining principal and distributing income in the administration of the property belonging to his church. He claimed to manage more than twenty times the inheritance he had himself donated to the church in his hometown of Thagaste upon his ordination.250 Those responsible for church property — presbyters and bishops — were forbidden to sell any of it without prior consultation and approval of episcopal supervisors.251 Augustine insisted that the income from church property had to be shared with the poor,252 following the established practice.253 Funds given to the church for the support of operations and the care of the poor were clearly distinguished, in Augustine’s judgment, from those used to build a basilica for the congregation’s use.254
Augustine assigned many functions to almsgiving in the Christian life. It was a way to make petitionary prayer effective.255 The presence and needs of the poor were a test for the rich: to demonstrate and maintain that poverty of spirit that prevented avarice.256 Almsgiving was a well-established means of acting out repentance and praying for the forgiveness of sins; Augustine reminded his people regularly that they should seek the divine mercy for their daily sins by the twin acts of almsgiving and forgiving one another.257 Fasting, also employed as a means of repentance, was ineffective unless joined to almsgiving.258 Some Christians judged the practices of giving and forgiving so effective that Augustine had to caution that these would not substitute for repentance and reform of life. One could not continue to sin and to refuse canonical penance in the mistaken hope that salvation would be secured by generously dispersing to the poor a portion of ill-gotten gains.259
Alms were also given to win mercy for the deceased in the Judgment. Although the dead could not merit for themselves, Augustine asserted that some Christians had lived well enough to be judged worthy of benefiting from the good works of others after their deaths. Praying and working for the salvation of the dead could be understood as similar to seeking the conversion and perseverance of the living: in both, the divine mercy was implored. Since no one could be sure of the status of anyone among the dead, Augustine recommended that alms and prayers be offered for all.260 He recognized that Christians would make gifts for the benefit of their family and friends, expecting that the same would be done for them eventually.261 Indeed, he urged this almsgiving as a better way to honor and comfort the dead than observing the traditional feasts at their tombs.262
In his sermons, Augustine regularly commended almsgiving as a means of turning earthly into heavenly treasure.263 Building on Christ’s self-identification with the Christian poor, he characterized them as porters who could carry wealth from earth to heaven264 and their hungry bellies as storehouses where the wealthy could safely store their surplus grain.265 Any Christian eager for true profit could lend to Christ in this world and collect from him in the next, at an exorbitant rate of interest.266 In response to the claim that a patrimony had to be maintained and expanded for future generations, Augustine suggested that parents ought to pay out in alms the patrimony of those children who predeceased them, rather than dividing the inheritance among the survivors.267 If their children were all still alive, they might count Christ among their heirs, giving him an equal portion of their estates.268 In practice, Augustine was careful of inheritance rights. He refused to participate in a scheme by which one of his clergy would have disinherited his children in favor of the church, though he did accept bequests which were not so encumbered.269 He refused to accept the gift of patrimony offered by the deacon Heraclius, who was still a young man.270 He strongly chastised a mother who had bestowed her property on monks — of questionable virtue — and thereby compromised her son’s future.271
Augustine’s preaching on almsgiving mirrored the changes in the economic profile of the Christian community a century after the Constantinian emancipation of the church. The church continued to include both rich and poor among its members. By the fifth century, however, they were integrated into Roman society, and their property was protected from the confiscation that had been experienced during major persecutions. Augustine did not urge the full alienation of property, though this remained an option for the clergy and the practice of those joining a monastic community.272 He encouraged the practice of making gifts for the religious benefit of the dead and attempted to provide a rationale for it. In this, he developed the connection that Cyprian had made between Christ and the poor to whom alms were given.
Although almsgiving is well attested in the writings of Tertullian, the explanation of its role in the Christian life was more fully developed by Cyprian and Augustine. The Decian persecution demonstrated that wealth could be an obstacle to fidelity in time of persecution. Cyprian stressed almsgiving as a means of distancing oneself from possessions and the imperial culture: it was useful to prepare for public confession of Christ and to repent for apostasy. In the face of division and conflict, he also recommended the sharing of resources and prayer between rich and poor as a way to strengthen the unifying bonds of the community and even transform earthly goods into heavenly treasure. This interaction within the community was further developed by Augustine. He identified pride as the temptation of the rich and avarice as that of the poor: both were to be overcome by gifts of money and service to others. When Christians gave alms, they should attend to human need: they must neither punish nor reward sinners; they should be seeking out the poor who suffered patiently and not attend only to the demanding.
Cyprian and Augustine displayed attitudes towards the preservation of wealth that contrasted sharply. Cyprian encouraged the rich to trust in God and dispose of both their income and the property that produced it, leaving their children only a heavenly inheritance. Augustine’s advice reflected a different age and social setting: Christians should not seek to increase their property — achieved only by depriving others — but might maintain it as a source of the income that they shared with the needy. He declined to criticize the rich for providing a better style of life for their households and supported their efforts to insure an inheritance for their surviving children. His program reflected the practice of the church itself: it maintained the property that it had received and dispensed its surplus income to the poor.
Cyprian recommended almsgiving as a penitential work to reverse the attachment to riches which had led to sin. For Augustine, however, giving and forgiving were the primary works of repentance: fasting was effective only when it resulted in almsgiving.
The culture of the Roman Empire presented a challenge to the exclusive monotheism of Christians. Christian theology, following the lead of Paul (1 Cor. 8:4; 10:19-21) identified the traditional religion as an elaboration of the demons, who had set themselves up in opposition to God. The idols were of no significance in themselves, but they served as instruments of the demons in leading humans astray. The symbols and rituals of the traditional religion, as Tertullian observed, were everywhere and unavoidable in a Roman city or town. Christians had to develop techniques for maintaining their baptismal renunciation of all the works and displays of Satan. Prudential adaptations changed with shifts in imperial attitudes toward Christianity; the circumlocutions that were acceptable in peacetime could not be tolerated under persecution. When Theodosius I forbade the traditional rituals, Augustine had to identify other ways in which the demons challenged Christians’ commitment to Christ. Witnessing to Christ could range, then, from dying in the arena, to turning aside when sacrifice was offered at a relative’s party, to waving off the blessing of a beggar, to refusing the curative amulet offered by a servant.
Tertullian explained that the idols, which usually had a human form, were actually the images of people who had lived in the past and been venerated after their deaths. The traditional ritual was a cult of the dead, and it was continued in funeral practices. The demons had taken over this ancestor cult and used it to lead humans away from God. The observances themselves, therefore, had to be avoided because they were being used as a demonic assault on the sovereignty of God.273
Roman public life was permeated with idolatry. A person could not walk around in a town or city without looking at idols, smelling the smoke of sacrifices, or passing through crowds caught up in festivals and observances.274 To respect their baptismal commitment, Tertullian urged, Christians ought to avoid what they could. They should not attend public shows and spectacles; indeed, they should avoid the places and buildings where these were presented even when they were not in use.275
The theater was forbidden because of the lewdness of the shows.276 When a Christian woman was being exorcised after being possessed in the theater, the demon protested that she had been in its domain and was quite legitimately invaded.277 After attending a tragic play, another woman was warned in a dream and then died.278 Christians should avoid not only food offered to idols, Tertullian argued, but the banquets presented to honor the dead, since the whole demonic cult was an elaboration of the funeral rituals.279
Christian rejection of idolatry extended to all the commercial and cultural practices that supported it. God had clearly forbidden the making of idols280 and the practice of astrology.281 Tertullian urged that Christians should also refrain from trading in the supplies that were used in the cult: they could buy and use incense for their own purposes but must not supply it to others for their idolatrous worship.282 How could a Christian spit on an incense burner as he passed by if he had sold the mixture?283 Tertullian also argued, as the emperor Julian would later decree, that Christians should not teach literature: it necessarily involved the promotion of idolatry through treating the myths. The entire teaching schedule, moreover, was based on a participation in religious festivals. Studying literature was permissible as the only means of education. Pupils could avoid the associated religious practices that their master could not. Still, Christian students must be forearmed with knowledge to combat the catechesis inherent in the literature they read.284
Tertullian did recognize some compromises that had been developed among Christians. They could share the necessities and even reasonable comforts of life with their idolatrous neighbors. Thus they could eat the meat of the kinds of animals used for sacrifices, and they could burn incense to cover noxious odors. They could wear the types of clothing that indicated civil but not religious status. They need reject only those items that had been developed specifically for idolatry, but they should avoid ceremonials associated with more common items.285
A Christian could attend celebrations of events common to human life, such as a marriage, the giving of a name, or the taking of clothing appropriate to a stage of life. If a sacrifice was offered as part of the festivities, the Christian should avoid taking an active part but could attend as long as the religious ritual was only incidental to the principal purpose of the gathering.286 When the invitation was for the sacrifice itself, however, the Christian should decline.287 Slaves and members of the household of a pagan should also refuse or avoid actual participation in the ritual.288
Finally, Christians could not really avoid using the names of the traditional deities, since these identified buildings and were used as proper names for people with whom they had to deal. But they could decline to use their titles, except in disparaging ways, such as “so-called gods,” or by referring to the usage that others made of them, “the gods of the nations.”289
Tertullian approved these concessions to the common life of Christians and Roman traditionalists. Since he took a rigorist stance on these matters, particularly once he became a devotee of the New Prophecy, it may be assumed that these adaptations were commonly accepted by the Christians of the time.
Tertullian’s writings provide evidence of a number of disputes about proper Christian practice in relation to the traditional religion. Most of these seem to have occurred within the Christian community itself. Some, such as the followers of Valentinus, believed that a Christian need not make public profession of faith and suffer the consequences of avoiding idolatry. Tertullian strongly objected, arguing that in clearly prohibiting idolatry, God willed the martyrdom that could be the consequence of obedience.290 Most of Tertullian’s fellows would certainly have agreed to this, since they venerated the martyrs as heroes.
Tertullian’s treatise On the Crown focused on a Christian soldier who had provoked his superiors by throwing off the garland worn on a festival day to receive an imperial distribution of gifts. Some objected that this display was unnecessary: the soldier should have passively endured the crown and thus avoided trouble not only for himself but for other Christians serving in the ranks.291 Tertullian took the opposite stance, disapproving such collaboration in idolatry. He took the opportunity to argue that a Christian should not join the military. A soldier who converted should find a way to leave the service, undertaking the complex task of working out permission to do this, or be prepared to accept martyrdom. Necessity was no excuse.292 He argued elsewhere that all Christians had been disarmed by Christ in the person of Peter (Matt. 26:51-53) and should avoid military service — even if all compromises with idolatry could be eliminated.293
The same problems arose, Tertullian argued, for Christians who attempted to hold civic office. They had to steer clear of arranging and participating in sacrifices, spectacles, and anything else connected with idolatry. As judges, they could deal only with cases involving money; they should not judge, condemn, or execute criminals. Because of these restrictions, they did better to shun the honor of offices altogether.294 Indeed, the power of the state was arrayed against God; Christians should have no part in it.295
In time of persecution, Christians attempted a variety of evasions and justifications for using them, most of which Tertullian disputed. The faithful could not deny being Christian, explaining that they thereby denied themselves but not Christ.296 Christians should not flee from the city to avoid prosecution. Christ’s directive to flee persecution (Matt. 10:23) applied only to the original apostles sent to evangelize the Jews; it was explicitly limited to the cities of Judea and could not be used by Africans.297 Flight for fear of failing in the trial was already an apostasy, at least in intention, if not in deed. Christians should trust that God, who sent the trial, would provide the strength to endure it.298 Christians, either individually or as a community, must not bribe soldiers or imperial officials to ignore them; this was itself a form of flight. They could not claim to have made a confession of Christ by acknowledging their identity in offering the gratuity, nor could they rationalize the bribe as an alms.299 During times of civil disturbance and persecution, then, Christians ought to be about their normal routines: they should assemble at the normal times and in normal numbers. If absolutely necessary, they might switch to nighttime gatherings or meet in smaller groups.300
Normal civic life also gave rise to disagreements about what was compatible with a commitment to Christ. To some Christians, decorating their doors, exchanging gifts in celebration of the new year, and showing up for parties — as long as an active role in idolatry was avoided — seemed appropriate for maintaining good social relations. By totally refusing to share in civic life, Christians would provoke animosity. In response, Tertullian cited the account of a Christian whose servants had decorated the door of the house while he was away. Upon his return, he made them take down the offending signs at once. Yet the poor man was then chastised in a dream for the offense.301 Tertullian concluded that Christians should completely reject participation in traditional festivals.
Christians could not simply retreat into silence. When someone called upon a traditional god — in curse, oath, or blessing — Tertullian insisted that a Christian must immediately object. Silence would be construed as an affirmation of the majesty and power of the god. The case was worse when a beggar offered a blessing in response to a gift. The honor for the kindness was being credited to some demon. Could the Christian fail to defend the glory of God, who had inspired the good generosity?302
The situation became even more complex when an oath was required to execute contracts for money or property. Some Christians argued that as long as they said nothing but only wrote a formula that the other party dictated, they had not actually violated the prohibitions against oaths or calling on other gods. In response, Tertullian pointed out that they could not distinguish between speaking and writing; they would be bound by the document in any legal proceeding. Better for Christians to deal only with other Christians, or to avoid such business completely.303
As these examples indicate, the Christian community at Carthage was divided in its stance toward the idolatry that permeated the customary practices of civic life. Some tried to work out compromises that allowed them to live and work in a culture that actively opposed their religious beliefs and practices. Tertullian could hardly have been alone in his more separatist position, insisting that Christians must actively resist idolatry, even incurring resentment, animosity, and alienation from their neighbors. In arguing for his position, Tertullian occasionally referred to the teachings of the New Prophecy,304 but he also called upon dreams and visions that might be more broadly credited by Christians.305
Because he had to deal with the Decian and Valerian persecutions, the first systematic imperial actions that affected all Christians, most of Cyprian’s attention was focused on the appropriate response to demands for participation in traditional Roman religious rituals of supplication. The decree of the Roman government in 250 did not require anyone to renounce other practices or beliefs. Still, most Christians understood that compliance with the edict broke their baptismal oath to Christ. Later, the decree authorizing the Valerian persecution seems to have forbidden Christian practice itself. Cyprian himself went into voluntary exile during the Decian persecution to avoid a confrontation; in the Valerian persecution, he was involuntarily exiled and then executed.
Cyprian provided very little information on the interaction of Christians with the traditional religious culture during peacetime. He did indicate that Christians were forbidden to work as actors in the theater and to train others to do so.306
Christians who were apprehended by imperial authorities during persecution and required to participate in idolatrous rituals had only one approved option: to resist and refuse, even at the cost of their lives. Those who complied — either voluntarily, or under torture, or even by failing to maintain control of their bodies — had to undergo penitential cleansing, whose length and intensity depended upon the degree of their consent and participation in the action.307 In arguing for his decision to allow those who sacrificed to undertake penance and eventually to be returned to communion, Cyprian observed that some had immediately and voluntarily complied, while others did so only under pressure; some required that their entire household participate, while others made the offering themselves and shielded their dependents; some used the status gained by complying with the edict to provide safe haven to exiles and refugees attempting to evade its enforcement.308
Cyprian and his community believed that a ritual pollution resulted from even involuntary contact with idolatry. He referred regularly not only to the conscience soiled by intention309 but to the hand, mouth, and eyes contaminated by any contact.310 The Roman clergy took a similar stance in letters to Cyprian.311 A child’s body was polluted by sacrificial meat that had been fed to her by a nurse; she immediately vomited up the eucharistic wine after it was given to her by the deacon.312 Those who sinned intentionally suffered even greater harm.313 An idolatrous Christian bishop or presbyter could spread contamination to the community that accepted his ministry.314 Cyprian and his colleagues later made assertions about the polluting effect of baptism performed in schism: even a person who was ignorant of the wrong was contaminated by the minister’s sin of rebellion.315
In both Africa and Rome, Christians attempted to avoid imperial punishment by obtaining certificates testifying to their having performed the sacrifice, although they carefully avoided doing so. In some cases, they used agents to obtain the documents, thereby hoping to excuse themselves of any wrongdoing.316 Others acknowledged that they were Christians and asked for the favor of being spared a forbidden action.317 The bishops ruled that this procedure was also a denial of Christ, since the certified were willing to have it generally believed that the certificate was true: that they had sacrificed and thus denied Christ. These sinners were required to cleanse their polluted consciences.318
In defending against the revolt of the laxists in Carthage, Cyprian argued that the division of the church was a second stage in the demonic attack initiated in the Decian edict. As such, it presented an opportunity for the fallen to confess Christ by holding to the unity of the church and submitting to its penitential ritual. Their loyalty would reverse their earlier apostasy, secure its forgiveness, and prepare them for winning the crown of martyrdom.319 With his episcopal colleagues, he later asserted that the rituals of baptism and eucharist, when celebrated in schism, were as polluting as the sacrifices of traditional polytheism.320
Cyprian took a rigorist stance toward the consequences of contact with idolatry, but he was more liberal in approving means of avoiding it. He himself went into exile after the civil disturbances that accompanied the initial enforcement of the Decian edict. He was recognized as a prominent person in Carthage,321 and he claimed to have withdrawn in order to prevent a focus of imperial and popular attention on the Christian community.322 Fear of provoking a riot against the Christians kept him away for more than a year.323 He did not allow the same privilege of voluntary exile to other members of the clergy, whose social station did not attract the same attention.324
Cyprian asserted that flight from persecution had been both practiced and urged by Christ. Rather than relying on Christ’s directive to missionaries to move on when rejected (Matt. 10:23), which Tertullian had disputed, Cyprian cited the directive to avoid impurity by withdrawing (Isa. 52:11) and the command to abandon Babylon the Great (Rev. 18:4), and alluded to Christ’s own withdrawals to avoid confrontation (Luke 4:30; John 8:59).325 In a direct response to Tertullian’s own argument that flight was equivalent to failure, Cyprian asserted that martyrdom was the gift of God, who would find a way to give it to the chosen. Christians might withdraw and await God’s initiative.326 Those who had the option of flight, however, would have risked having the imperial treasury confiscate any property they left behind, as Cyprian himself apparently did. That many Christians refused to abandon their wealth demonstrated that for others even flight was a form of confession.327
Even more striking than Cyprian’s rejection of Tertullian’s position on flight from persecution was his attention to a variety of ways to confess Christ. During the persecution, he insisted that all the imprisoned who died for the faith, even if they died from hunger or disease, were to be counted as martyrs. Those who refused to deny Christ had offered themselves to God, even if they did not die under torture.328 Going further, he exhorted the faithful who had not been apprehended to stand fast. They need not fear the end of persecution and coming of peace before they could confess, suffer for Christ, and thus win the crown. God knew and would crown their resolve and intention.329 Immediately upon his return to Carthage, he praised all who had taken no initiative to obey the edict: by allowing the deadline for compliance to pass, they had confessed Christ.330 Both those who had stayed in Carthage and those who had abandoned their property to take flight were confessors in private; in honor they were only one degree below those who had won public victories.331 Cornelius, the newly elected Bishop of Rome, received similar praise. He had been prepared to follow the footsteps of his predecessor to a martyr’s death; in accepting the office, he suffered all that God allowed.332 As the persecution of Gallus approached, Cyprian advised flight: Christ would be the Christians’ companion in exile and would witness to their martyrdom, even if death was incurred by accident, bandit, or wild beast.333 Christ would honor among the martyrs all who had been willing to leave all and follow him.334
In a move that again directly contradicted Tertullian and anticipated Augustine, Cyprian extended the argument to those who might die of fever during the summer plague. They must not regret that they had died in bed of fever and thus failed to gain a martyr’s death and crown. Martyrdom had failed their spirits; they had not failed martyrdom. God, he explained, seeks faith, not blood.335
Tertullian, particularly when he reflected the spirit of the New Prophecy, urged Christians to an active confrontation of the idolatry of Roman culture. Cyprian, faced with a systematic imperial attack, argued that Christians could and indeed should avoid such confrontations whenever doing so did not involve a denial of Christ. They could use their lower social status to avoid attention; they could take refuge in another city where they would not be recognized as Christian; they could abandon their patrimony and retreat into exile. His own practice was to avoid provoking a conflict that might put others to the test. If God had chosen a Christian for the crown of martyrdom, then God could be trusted to provide the occasion for trial and public victory. God, moreover, would reward all whose hearts were ready for that call, even if they died of fever in their beds.
Cyprian also recognized that a Christian could fail as secretly as they could confess. After the Decian persecution, some who had escaped detection and apparently been faithful admitted that they had in fact failed. They confessed that they had decided that if they were brought to trial, they would comply with the edict and participate in the sacrifice. These Cyprian urged to engage in penance, as privately as they had sinned, and beg for God’s forgiveness.336
The Christians of Africa experienced a brief period of persecution under Diocletian, which was focused on the confiscation of sacred vessels and books. It resulted in some deaths. After judicial attempts to resolve the schism between Caecilian and Donatus, Constantine ordered the confiscation of Donatist churches. That provoked resistance in Carthage. An extended period of toleration was terminated by a new attempt at reunion of the churches by Constans, which brought more extensive resistance and the exile of Donatist leaders. Under Julian, the Donatist leaders were allowed to return and reclaim their basilicas; that takeover resulted in the deaths of some Caecilianists. Similarly, Honorius’s attempts to bring about a settlement of the division again resulted in violent resistance and some deaths.
At the end of the Diocletian persecution, the Council of Arles distinguished three forms of apostasy in Africa: handing over the scriptures to be burned, handing over the sacred vessels to be destroyed, and identifying other Christians to the authorities.337 Court records show that some bishops and clergy had provided no resistance to the confiscation of sacred vessels but had refused to cooperate by giving the names of the readers who held the sacred books.338 In other instances, both in Carthage and in Numidia, bishops resisted by subterfuge: they hid the scriptures and substituted profane or heretical books.339 At least some bishops stood their ground and paid with their lives.340
After the persecution, the bishops had to remove unworthy colleagues from their offices without giving occasion for false accusations and unending conflict. A meeting of Numidian bishops in Cirta agreed to leave all charges of betrayal to the divine Judgment.341 The council meeting in Arles to deal with the Donatist schism decided that any cleric whom public records proved guilty of betrayal was to be excluded from office. Private accusations were not to be credited. The provisions set forth by the Roman bishop, Miltiades, enforced these decisions.342
The Caecilianist or Catholic party in Africa did not claim the title of confessor or martyr for those who suffered at the hands of Donatist schismatics during the ensuing conflict. The Donatists, however, honored their members who continued to resist imperial attempts to enforce the unity of the church. Those who died when the government used force in 317 to confiscate the Donatist basilica in Carthage were buried in that church and proclaimed martyrs.343 In a sermon commemorating the event, the crown of martyrdom was assigned to all who participated in the resistance, on the grounds that God rewarded the faith and not only the blood of believers.344 When Constans attempted to achieve unity by financial inducements, the Donatists again honored their resisters. The Numidian bishops Marculus and Donatus of Bagai lost their lives and were treated as martyrs.345 In Carthage, two Donatist laymen, Maximian and Isaac, died in prison awaiting punishment for tearing down the decree of unification of the churches; they were honored with an account of their suffering.346 The Donatist bishops who were sent into exile for refusing to join the Catholic communion were also recognized as having confessed Christ.347
Optatus, the Donatist Bishop of Thamugadi in southern Numidia, allied himself with Gildo in revolt against the government of Honorius in 397. When the uprising was put down in 398, both Gildo and Optatus were executed. Some of the Donatists regarded Optatus as a martyr for his resistance;348 others found his resort to violence in this and other instances a great embarrassment to their cause.349
An irregular force of Donatist fighters, the Circumcellions, made its first appearance in the 340s and played a much-discussed role in the conflict between the Donatists and the Caecilianists that continued through Honorius’s attempts to achieve unity in the early fifth century.350 Augustine reported that these individuals actively sought death in the service of their church and were widely venerated among the Donatists as martyrs.351
A number of Caecilianists were attacked and some killed by Donatist forces attempting to prevent the unification of the two churches under Emperor Honorius. Laity were also threatened with the destruction of their property.352 The imperial commissioner Marcellinus may have paid with his life for his judgment in favor of the Caecilianist party at the Conference of Carthage.353 A series of presbyters whom Augustine had appointed to serve the formerly Donatist congregation in Fussala were mistreated and killed.354 Yet, none of these Caecilianists were honored as martyrs, though they had died in the course of service to Christ and the church.
When the government of Honorius outlawed not only idolatrous rituals but the display of statues of the gods, some Caecilianists undertook to enforce the edict themselves.355 Riots ensued and lives were lost.356 None of those killed was honored as a martyr, and the bishops discouraged any further confrontations.357
The Donatists celebrated the resistance of their bishops and laity to the empire’s efforts to bring about a union of the two churches. Those who suffered injury, exile, or death at the hands of either the imperial forces or the polytheists protecting their statues and temples were regarded as martyrs, even if they had provoked the violence. The Caecilianists, however, did not celebrate the sacrifices of their clergy who were victims of Donatist violence. They may have judged that labeling the Donatists as agents of demonic oppression would undermine their attempts to achieve reconciliation and unity.
The Christian community of the early fifth century faced a very different imperial culture than that of the late second and third centuries. Constantine and Licinius had liberated Christians from persecution and civil disabilities. Apart from a brief period of alienation under Julian, Christians found themselves increasingly at home in the Roman world. At the end of the fourth century, Theodosius I not only privileged Christians but withdrew state support from the traditional rites; his sons completed the process by outlawing public displays and sacrifices in honor of the traditional gods. Augustine observed in his sermons that the cult of the traditional deities had disappeared from Rome and was being driven out of Carthage.358 Christians, he counseled, should leave this process in the hands of the imperial authorities; they were not to act outside the law by tearing down statues or invading country estates to destroy shrines.359 He warned that persecution remained even in the new, Christian age; it would be limited and hidden.360 In his sermons, he pointed out ways in which the demons continued their assault on Christians, attacks to which Christians should respond in faith and thus bear witness to Christ.
Although many traditional entertainments and practices presented temptations to Christians, Augustine did not rank participation in these as direct denials of Christ. He did not warn against idolatry when he urged Christians to stay away from the theater, the races, and blood spectacles. Instead, he cited their lewdness, cruelty, and vanity as incompatible with Christian morals.361 In the initial legislation of the reform program mounted by Aurelius of Carthage, the children of bishops were forbidden to present or attend games.362 Later, the bishops complained that the churches were sparsely attended on the octave of Easter and attempted to prevent games and spectacles on Sundays and Christian feast days.363 Augustine also tried to convince his parishioners that Christians should prefer worship to the pagan dramas.364 The readings of the acta of the martyrs provided a better spectacle,365 he claimed, whose actors were fit models for imitation.366 Parents did not want their children to grow up to be jugglers, tight-rope walkers, or gladiators; why should they encourage and support such people?367 He urged Christians to boycott the theaters and games. Preaching in Bulla Regia, he berated the congregation for the flourishing condition of their town’s entertainments. In many places, he claimed, Christians had refused to attend such presentations and thereby shut them down. In Simitthu, in particular, the population had refused to watch a special show provided by an imperial official.368 If the Christians stopped attending, the pagans would be embarrassed by the small audiences, and the whole business would soon shut down.369
The traditional festivals were a concern for the bishops, particularly the first of January and the midsummer celebration — that coincided with the Christian feast of the birth of John the Baptist. Augustine preached his longest surviving sermon on the January feast, urging his congregation to fast and pray for their neighbors’ conversion and salvation, rather than eating, drinking, gambling, and exchanging presents.370 The midsummer activities included bonfires on the vigil and cavorting in the sea on the feast day. This latter was a mockery, he claimed, of John’s baptizing work.371 The Jews, he proclaimed, were models in rejecting these pagan celebrations.372
In the Christian empire, oaths no longer presented the same challenge as they had earlier, when one was required to call upon a demon — in the guise of a traditional god — as witness. The danger was perjury, or committing to perform an evil action. God could swear oaths without danger of perjury, but humans could not be sure that they were telling the truth.373 Humans could not see one another’s hearts, so they required oaths to impede lying. To require an oath knowing that the other person would lie, however, was to force another to sin and even to murder one’s own soul.374 In any case, an oath should be broken to prevent a greater sin in carrying it out.375
Astrologers and soothsayers still worked their trades, claiming to provide information about the future course of events. The problem was widespread enough for Augustine to discuss it twice in Confessions.376 He attacked it in his sermons as a temptation but not as a major sin.377
The culture did, however, provide occasions for true apostasy. When faced with these crises, a Christian had to decide for or against Christ. In either case, life itself could be at stake.
Augustine described a situation in which a person might be pressured to lie in court. A powerful person might require a poor person to give false testimony in support of a fraudulent suit. Credible threats against life and property were made if the witness testified truthfully. By refusing the perjury, a Christian witnessed to and might suffer for Christ, who was identified as Truth.378
Illness presented a second challenge to the Christian. Healing practices related to traditional religion or magic were still available. A Christian lying on a sickbed might be approached by a friend or a servant with an amulet or an incantation that was said to have worked a cure for others. Hanging the charm around one’s neck or even calling upon God and the angels in some special way would guarantee a cure. Augustine did not dispute the efficacy of such practices for healing the body. Instead, he asserted that these cures were the work of the demons and called upon Christians to reject them. Those who did so thereby confessed Christ; if they died as a consequence, they would win the martyr’s crown.379
Such martyrs as these did not win public victories; their tombs would not be shrines; they would not be commemorated in the liturgy on the anniversaries of their death. Instead, they would be crowned in secret by Christ, as Cyprian had taught about voluntary exiles. Commenting on the trial of Susanna, Augustine pointed out that God did not always deliver the innocent; but for Daniel’s inspired intervention, the faithful matron would have been a martyr in secret.380
In another context, Augustine expanded this new understanding of witness to Christ. Martyrdom was the highest of God’s gifts, but it could remain a virtuous attitude hidden in the soul. On occasion it would be publicly tested and made manifest; more regularly it remained unrecognized. In contrast, the gifts of consecrated virginity and declared widowhood were public ones. Those who had received them must remember that some of their fellows, among them matrons, might indeed have answered, albeit secretly, the higher calling of martyrdom and would receive a greater honor.381
Tertullian’s treatment of Christian witness had been focused on practices that demarcated the boundary separating the holy realm of the church from that of demonic idolatry. He was more insistent in asserting Christian faith and challenging the practices of idolatry than most of his contemporaries and successors. Under the pressure of persecution, Cyprian added considerations of the interior dispositions that could accompany flight from persecution and even death from sickness. Augustine noted more subtle but no less real ways in which the demons continued to challenge Christian faith. He focused on the witness of a moral life, which was more regularly challenged. Still, he found ways in which Christians could still witness to faith in Christ, both publicly and privately, though their victories might be recognized only by their own families and rewarded in secret by Christ.
The practices discussed in this chapter — prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and confession of Christ — leave few physical remains with which the literary evidence can be correlated. The cult of the martyrs, as distinguished from the practice of martyrdom itself, has left significant material evidence, particularly in the tomb covers for burials that occasionally express the prayers of the faithful for the assistance of the martyr (cf. fig. 143). A number of these also provide illustrations of the posture that Christians assumed for prayer: standing with arms outstretched (e.g., figs. 120, 130, 131, 134, 135, 137, 139, 140).
Some material remains have no corresponding textual evidence but might be considered indicators of everyday pious practices. These include innumerable examples of the distinctive African red slipware, including bowls, lamps, cups, vases, and platters. Many of these were decorated with biblical figures, saints, or other Christian symbols (e.g., fish, Christograms) applied to the wet clay and fused as low relief in the process of firing (cf. fig. 152).382 Tertullian commented (negatively) on the use of drinking goblets or glasses that were decorated with figures of the Good Shepherd, possibly because they reminded him of fancy wine cups with the image of Bacchus.383
In the fifth and sixth centuries, potteries began producing decorative tiles with Christian designs. These tiles, originally painted with bright colors, were intended for the decoration of walls and ceilings. They have been found in quantities at the sites of Byzantine-era churches but may have also been used in ordinary homes (cf. figs. 150, 151).
Other small items that reflected an owner’s religious sentiments in an everyday manner were finger rings and seals that featured incised gems or simple etched designs, including the legend ΙΧΘΥΣ with a fish, or a Good Shepherd figure.384
The discussion of prayer in each of the African theologians tended to focus on problems that could be identified in the community. In a congregation that could not hope to secure its position in the imperial culture and economy, Tertullian urged that intercessory prayer should focus on spiritual rather than material benefits. Cyprian was attempting to manage a church divided by conflict even before the crisis of the Decian persecution, when these rivalries broke out into open schism and competing Christian communions were formed within the city. He focused on the unanimity and mutual support that make prayer effective before God.
In Augustine’s preaching and writing on prayer, theology and practice influenced one another. At the heart of the Donatist controversy was the church’s power to forgive sins; the animosity between the two communions frustrated all attempts to settle the historical issues and to develop a more adequate understanding of the church. Augustine focused on the petition for forgiveness and the promise to forgive others linked together in the Lord’s Prayer. He not only exhorted believers to the practice of forgiveness but built a theology of the church in which the mutual forgiveness of the Christian faithful was the exemplary exercise of the power to forgive. He added that Christians must neither pray that God execute vengeance on their enemies nor give thanks to God for the misfortunes that befell them.
The method of interpreting the Psalms that Augustine developed on the basis of Tyconius’s Rules transformed these prayers into a means of enacting an understanding of the church as the body of Christ. Praying the Psalms in union with Christ and, thus, with the universal church would become foundational to the work of monks in their daily office.
Tertullian and Cyprian understood fasting primarily as a support for prayer, either interceding for forgiveness or asking for divine assistance. To this, Tertullian added the notion that the control of bodily desires prepared a person to withstand coercion. Augustine’s focus was more on fasting as an exercise of control of the appetites and desires associated with bodily living, so that the mind might be freer for seeking God. Using his understanding of the unity of the body of Christ, he argued that fasting should not just deprive one person but should benefit another: either the food or the money saved by fasting should be given to the poor. Fasting became an exercise of affirming the unity of Christians as members of Christ.
Tertullian remarked on both communal and individual almsgiving, which was extended to both fellow Christians and to traditionalists. After the Decian persecution, Cyprian insisted on almsgiving as a means of overcoming the attachment to wealth that had led so many Christians to compromise their commitment to Christ. Giving their resources to the community and the Christian poor was also a means of transferring uncertain earthly wealth to the security of heavenly treasure. Cyprian did not recognize a need to retain capital assets in order to care for one’s own family. Later, in the radically different social situation of an empire in which Christians were protected and could expect a delay of the end-time, Augustine approved the preservation of income-producing principal by churches and by families; he urged that the income must be shared. An appreciation of the church as the body of Christ, moreover, enabled Augustine to explain that care of fellow Christians was a privileged means of caring for Christ and thus transforming earthly into heavenly wealth. This theology required that every Christian should be a donor; the poor had time and physical labor to share, even if they had no money to give away. The sharing of resources was itself a sign of the unity of the church as Christ’s body.
African Christianity was characterized by a militant confrontation with idolatry; its practices changed not with the development of theology but with the social location of the church. Though Tertullian allowed that Christians might participate in activities in which direct contact in idolatry was avoidable, he insisted that Christians must do nothing that would support the traditional religions, even by supplying materials for their rituals. In time of persecution, moreover, Christians must neither seek nor avoid confrontations: they should be ready to witness to their faith when God required it of them. Because he was dealing with sustained and systematic persecution, Cyprian approved prudent retreat from confrontation. He was able, moreover, to recognize different forms of demonic assault on the church, and thus to identify schismatic Christian rituals as equivalent to idolatrous ones. In the fourth century, the Donatists identified confessing Christ with resisting the remnants of apostasy within the church, while the Caecilianists — following Cyprian — found the demons at work in the continuing schism. Augustine lived to see the empire prohibit idolatrous rites and to hear reports of Christians attacking the temples and destroying the statues of the traditional gods. He warned, however, that the challenge of witnessing to Christ was still at hand. A Christian might be threatened for refusing to lie in court or might risk death by declining to employ a cure for illness that relied on the power of a demon. The mode of witness might change, but the temptation to demonic idolatry remained. In the following century, African Christians would once again experience the uncertainty of living under a government hostile to their Nicene Christianity.
1. Aug. Conf. 10.
2. Tert. Apol. 30.6; Marc. 4.1.
3. Tert. Or. 25.
4. Or. 23.3, 25.
5. Tert. Or. 25; Ieiun. 10.
6. Tert. Or. 25.5.
7. Tert. Or. 18.6, when the kiss of peace could be deferred because the household knew of the fast. Similarly, Cast. 7.3 dealt with the offering that was performed in the absence of clergy.
8. Tert. Or. 25.6–26.1.
9. Tert. Apol. 21.2; Marc. 3.22.5-6.
10. Tert. Cor. 3.4.
11. Tert. Ux. 2.5.14.
12. Tert. Scorp. 1.3. They also smeared the insect’s body on their heel. Tertullian linked the efficacy to Paul’s encounter with the viper in Acts 28:3.
13. Tert. Or. 23.4, 29.3. These were referred to as “stational” days.
14. Tert. Ieiun. 10.13.
15. Tert. Or. 29.3; Ux. 2.4.2. The nocturna conuocatio was distinguished in his text from the conuiuium dominicum.
16. Tert. Or. 23.1-4.
17. Tert. Or. 14; Apol. 30.4; An. 51.6.
18. Tert. Apol. 30.4.
19. Tert. Or. 21-22.
20. Tert. Or. 13.1.
21. Tert. Apol. 39.18.
22. Tert. Or. 18.1-5.
23. Tert. Or. 15-17.
24. Tert. Or. 1.4-6.
25. Tert. Or. 1.6.
26. Tert. Or. 10.
27. Tert. Or. 3.4; Apol. 31.2; Pat. 6.5; Marc. 4.16.1.
28. Tert. Or. 6.1, 4.
29. Tert. Cast. 11.1-2; Mon. 10.23, 11.8.
30. Tert. Apol. 32.1.
31. Tert. Or. 5.1.
32. Tert. Or. 29.
33. Cypr. Dom. orat. 34.
34. Cypr. Dom. orat. 4.
35. Cypr. Dom. orat. 29; Ep. 11.5.1.
36. Cypr. Dom. orat. 17; Zel. et liu. 15.
37. Cypr. Ep. 11.3.1.
38. Cypr. Ep. 11.2.2, 7.3.
39. Cypr. Unit. eccl. 12, 13, 25.
40. Cypr. Ep. 60.5.2.
41. Cypr. Dom. orat. 8.
42. Cypr. Laps. 35.
43. Cypr. Dom. orat. 22; adding fasting and almsgiving to their prayer (Eleem. 4).
44. Cypr. Dom. orat. 32-33; Mort. 10.
45. Cypr. Ep. 11.1.1; 60.5.1.
46. Cypr. Ep. 11.6.2.
47. Cypr. Dom. orat. 19-21.
48. Aug. Conf. 7.10.16–20.26.
49. Aug. Conf. 9.10.23-24.
50. Aug. Conf. 10.40.65.
51. Aug. Serm. 104.4, 7.
52. Aug. Serm. Dom. 2.4.15–11.39; Serm. 56-59.
53. Aug. Psal. 118.29.4; Serm. Dom. 2.7.26.
54. Aug. Serm. 333.2.
55. See Serge Lancel, Saint Augustine, trans. Antonia Neville (London: SCM Press, 2002), 240, using Serm. Dolb. 19(130A).12. This interpretation is highly speculative.
56. Aug. Serm. Dom. 2.5.18.
57. Aug. Serm. Dom. 2.3.11.
58. Aug. Serm. 160.6; 215.5; 302.3; 342.1; Serm. Casin. 2.114-15(97A).3; Serm. Denis 17(301A).8.
59. Aug. Psal. 48.2.2; 59.9; 73.6; 85.13; 91.7; 141.9; Serm. 32.13.
60. Aug. Psal. 50.1.
61. Aug. Psal. 68.1.12.
62. Aug. Serm. Denis 17(301A).7. The catechumen excused his attendance at the theater on the grounds that he was not yet baptized; Augustine noted that he took into that place the forehead bearing the sign of Christ.
63. Aug. Psal. 37.14.
64. Aug. Serm. Dom. 2.3.13.
65. Aug. Serm. Dom. 2.3.14; Serm. 56.3.4.
66. Aug. Conf. 10.33.49-50.
67. For example, Aug. Psal. 85.1; 140.3.
68. Aug. Serm. 56.3.4.
69. Aug. Serm. Dom. 2.3.14, 7.25; Psal. 144.21; Serm. 80.7; Serm. Morin 16(77B).1.
70. Aug. Serm. Dom. 2.7.26.
71. Aug. Serm. 56.6.9; 57.7.7; 58.4.5; 59.3.6. See Serm. 58.4.5 for the word of God meaning eucharist.
72. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 30(348A).1-2.
73. Aug. Serm. Morin 16(77B).2-3.
74. Aug. Serm. 58.4.5; 57.7.7; Serm. Morin 16(77B).2.
75. Aug. Serm. 56.2.2.
76. Aug. Serm. 80.7; 354.7.7; Serm. Wilm. 12(61A).3-6.
77. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 28(20B).3.
78. Aug. Serm. 302.2-5.
79. Aug. Serm. Lamb. 1(105A).1-2.
80. Aug. Serm. 211.6.
81. Aug. Serm. Dom. 1.21.72; Serm. 56.3.3.
82. Aug. Serm. Dom. 1.22.77.
83. Aug. Serm. 58.7.8.
84. Aug. Serm. 382.5.
85. Aug. Psal. 39.4.
86. Aug. Serm. 56.10.14–11.15.
87. Aug. Serm. 149.16.17.
88. Aug. Psal. 138.27-28.
89. Aug. Serm. 58.9.10; 59.4.7; 351.1.1–4.7; 352.2.7; Psal. 140.18.
90. Cypr. Ep. 65.2.2; 67.2.2; 70.2.3.
91. Aug. Serm. 135.5.6-7.8; 136.2; Serm. Mai 130(136A).2.
92. Aug. Serm. Lamb. 10(136B).2; 11(136C).4.
93. Aug. Serm. 135.6.7–7.8.
94. Aug. Serm. Morin 15(306C).7; Serm. Dolb. 28(20B).12.
95. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 28(20B).6.
96. Aug. Serm. Morin 15(306C).7; 16(77B).4.
97. Aug. Serm. 77.1.1; 61.4.5–5.6; 80.2; Serm. Guelf. 33(77A).1; Serm. Morin 16(77B).1.
98. Aug. Serm. 354.7.7.
99. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 28(20B).6.
100. The fear he expressed before his Passion did refer to his own humanity, but as head of the church, as he took on the feelings of his members (Aug. Psal. 31.2.26; 40.6; 42.7).
101. Aug. Serm. 341.1.1–3.3, 9.11; Psal. 37.6, 27; 39.5; 40.1; 56.1; 58.1.2.
102. Aug. Psal. 34.2.5.
103. In some instances, such as the confession of sins and the complaint of Paul’s persecution (Acts 9:4-5), Christ speaks as identified with his members: Aug. Serm. 345.4; Psal. 37.6; 90.2.5; 101.1.2; 123.1.
104. Aug. Psal. 85.1; 140.3; 118.32.1; 122.2; 130.1.
105. Aug. Psal. 142.3.
106. Aug. Ep. 29.10-11 describes the ritual for the feast of Leontius, the first Bishop of Hippo. See above, pp. 536-38.
107. In Ep. 22 to Aurelius, Augustine sought his leadership.
108. Bru. Hipp. 29.
109. Aug. Serm. 311.5.5–6.6; Serm. Denis 14(313A); Psal. 32.2.1.5.
110. This corresponds to the identification of the place and time of his preaching of Serm. Denis 11(308A), which was clearly preached on the vigil, and Psal. 32.2.1. This pattern corresponds to the view of Maria Boulding that Psal. 32.2 was preached in the vigil at the Mappalia and then that Psal. 32.2.2 was preached the next day at the Mensa. See Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, trans. Maria Boulding, ed. John E. Rotelle (Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 2000-2004), 3/15-20/15:392, 406. For a contrary view, see Augustine, Sermons, trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle /1-11 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 1990), 3/9:121-22.
111. Tert. Bapt. 20; Paen. 9.
112. Tert. Ieiun. 2.1-2.
113. Tert. Ieiun. 2.2, 13.1.
114. Tert. Cor. 3.4.
115. Tert. Or. 18.7; Ieiun. 14.2.
116. Tert. Ieiun. 14.3.
117. Tert. Cor. 3.4; Ieiun. 14.3, 15.2.
118. Tert. Ieiun. 2.3, 13.1.
119. Tert. Ieiun. 2.3, 10.1-6. Acts 3:1. Christians fasted while Jesus suffered and ate once he had died.
120. Tert. Ux. 2.4; Ieiun. 1.4.
121. Tert. Or. 18.1, 6; 19.1.
122. See above, pp. 238-39.
123. Tert. Or. 18.7.
124. Tert. Ieiun. 13.3-4. The funds which were not spent on food were presumably given to the poor.
125. Tert. Ieiun. 1.4, 10.8.
126. Tert. Ieiun. 1.4. Tertullian cited scriptural precedents for this form of fasting (Ieiun. 9).
127. Tert. Ieiun. 15.2.
128. Tert. Bapt. 20; Paen. 9; Ieiun. 7.
129. Tert. Ieiun. 8.3.
130. Tert. Ieiun. 12.
131. Cypr. Ep. 11.1.1.
132. Cypr. Ep. 60.5.1.
133. Cypr. Dom. orat. 32; Eleem. 5; in both cases citing Tob. 12:8-9.
134. Cypr. Laps. 29-31, 35.
135. Cypr. Eleem. 4; Ep. 55.22.2.
136. Cypr. Ep. 21.2.1. Celerinus had been in the Roman military. He subsequently returned to Carthage and was ordained into Cyprian’s clergy (Ep. 39).
137. Aug. Ep. 36.2.4.
138. Aug. Ep. 211.8; Reg. Praeceptum 3.3.1.
139. Aug. Ep. 36.4.7-8.
140. Aug. Ep. 36.13.30.
141. Aug. Ep. 82.14; 36.4.8, 5.9, 8.19.
142. Aug. Ep. 36.1.2–2.3, 7.16, 8.19, 12.27.
143. Aug. Ep. 36.12.27, 29.
144. Aug. Ep. 36.9.21; Serm. Dolb. 26(198*).9.
145. Aug. Ep. 36.8.19; 55.15.28; Serm. 210.1.2, 3.4, 6.8; 252.12.
146. Aug. Serm. 357.5.
147. Aug. Emer. 4; Quaest. 1.169; Ep. 55.15.28; Ep. Divj. 28*.2; Eu. Io. 17.4; Serm. 205.1; 206.1; 207.1; 209.3; 210.1.2; 252.10-11.
148. Aug. Serm. 210.6.9; Ep. 36.8.19.
149. Aug. Fid. et op. 6.8; Psal. 80.10; Serm. 210.1.2; 229.1-2.
150. Aug. Ep. 54.7.9-10.
151. Aug. Ep. 82.14; 36.13.31.
152. Aug. Serm. 210.6.9.
153. Aug. Serm. 207.2; 210.8.10–9.11.
154. Aug. Serm. 210.9.11.
155. Aug. Serm. 209.3; 210.10.12; 390.1.
156. Aug. Ep. 65.1-2.
157. Aug. Serm. Frang. 5(163B).6.
158. Aug. Psal. 98.5; Serm. Dolb. 22(341*).26; 26(198*).6.
159. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 26(198*).8.
160. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 26(198*).58.
161. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 26(198*); the sermon may have lasted more than two hours.
162. Aug. Iul. 4.14.71; Ep. 211.8.
163. Aug. Ep. 54.2.2; 36.1.2, 9.22–11.25.
164. Aug. Ep. 36.1.2, 9.22–11.25, 14.32; 54.2.2-3.
165. Aug. Ep. 54.2.3. Augustine was unusually harsh in his condemnation of liturgical absolutists.
166. Aug. Ep. 36.9.22, 13.31.
167. Aug. Conf. 10.31.43-44.
168. Aug. Util. iei. 5-6.
169. Aug. Perf. 8.18; Bon. coniug. 10.11; Serm. 205.2.
170. Aug. Serm. 80.3; 206.3; 207.3; 209.3.
171. Aug. Serm. 125.7, 9; 252.10-11; 264.5; 270.3; Serm. Mai 98(263A).4.
172. Aug. Cons. 2.4.9, 27.63; Serm. 210.2.3–4.5.
173. Aug. Cons. 2.27.63; Qu. eu. 2.18; Serm. 210.3.4.
174. Aug. Parm. 2.10.20; Ep. 130.24; Psal. 42.8; 66.7; Perf. 8.18; Serm. 9.17, 21; 150.6.7; 206.3; 207.1, 3; 351.3.6; Serm. Dolb. 26(198*).56.
175. Aug. Serm. 210.6.9; 358.6; Ep. 130.13.24; Psal. 50.11; Serm. Dolb. 26(198*).8.
176. Aug. Serm. 150.6.7.
177. Aug. Parm. 2.10.20; Qu. eu. 2.18; Eu. Io. 12.14; Psal. 66.7; Serm. 351.3.6.
178. Tert. Idol. 22.
179. Tert. Ux. 2.8.
180. Tert. Pat. 7.8, 10, 13.
181. Tert. Fug. 12-13.
182. Tert. Paen. 9.4; 11.1.
183. Tert. Idol. 23.
184. Tert. Apol. 39.5-6.
185. Tert. Apol. 39.16.
186. These are evidenced in Cypr. Ep. 34.4.2; 39.5.1.
187. Cypr. Ep. 66.4.1 provides evidence of an attempt to confiscate Cyprian’s personal property.
188. Cypr. Laps. 6.
189. Cypr. Ep. 7.1.
190. Cypr. Ep. 2.2.3.
191. Cypr. Ep. 5.1.2.
192. Cypr. Ep. 5.1.2; 12.2.2; 41.1.2.
193. Cypr. Ep. 7.2.
194. Cypr. Ep. 77.3.2; 78.3.1; 79.1.1.
195. Cypr. Ep. 62.
196. The figure of 100,000 sesterces is given in Cypr. Ep. 62.3.2. The value is calculated in Graeme W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage (New York: Newman Press, 1984), 3:284-85, n. 11.
197. Cypr. Ep. 11.1.2; Laps. 6, 10-12, 35.
198. As reported by the confessor Celerinus (Ep. 21.2.2, 3.2).
199. Cypr. Ep. 55.13.2.
200. Cypr. Ep. 15.3.2.
201. Cypr. Laps. 35, repeated in Unit. eccl. 26 and in Ep. 55.22.1, 28.1.
202. Cypr. Laps. 35.
203. Cypr. Dom. orat. 20.
204. Cypr. Hab. uirg. 11.
205. See, for example, Tert. Cult. fem. 1.4-9, 2.1-2 and Virg. 14.
206. Cypr. Test. 3.1.
207. Cypr. Eleem. 1-4, 14, using Isa. 58:7-9.
208. Cypr. Eleem. 5, 9, 6. A similar point, without this explanation, was made in Dom. orat. 32-33.
209. Cypr. Eleem. 8, 23. Cyprian had not made the transition to identifying the presence of Christ in the non-Christian; that would be made later.
210. Cypr. Eleem. 8-9, 11-12.
211. Cypr. Eleem. 10, 13, 14.
212. Cypr. Eleem. 15.
213. Cypr. Eleem. 16.
214. Cypr. Eleem. 17, 19.
215. Cypr. Eleem. 20.
216. Cypr. Eleem. 18.
217. Cypr. Eleem. 19. He cited Ps. 36:25-26 and Prov. 20:7.
218. Cypr. Eleem. 24, repeated in Mort. 26 and Hab. uirg. 11.
219. Cypr. Eleem. 21-22.
220. Cypr. Eleem. 26.
221. Aug. Serm. 85.2.2–3.3.
222. Aug. Serm. 356.13. Augustine’s father was a curialis of Thagaste, a rank based on wealth (Aug. Conf. 2.3.5; Possid. Vita Aug. 1.1). See Lancel, Saint Augustine, 6-7.
223. Aug. Serm. 356.
224. Aug. Serm. 367.2-3; Serm. Mai 13(113B).4; Serm. Guelf. 9(299E).3.
225. Aug. Psal. 51.14.
226. Aug. Serm. 345.1.
227. Aug. Serm. 177.7; 345.1; Serm. Dolb. 5(114B).12-13; Psal. 48.1.3; 132.4; 136.13.
228. Aug. Serm. 61.10.11; 85.5.6; Serm. Morin 11(53A).3.
229. Aug. Serm. Lamb. 4(359A).6; Serm. Dolb. 5(114B).9-10, 12.
230. Aug. Psal. 64.9.
231. Thus in Aug. Serm. 61.12.13; a similar appeal was made in Serm. 66.5, at its end.
232. Aug. Psal. 32.2.2.29. In Psal. 46.5, he remarked that the non-Christians seek alms but not faith from the Christians.
233. Aug. Serm. 25.8.
234. Aug. Serm. Lamb. 4(359A).11; 28(164A).1-4.
235. Aug. Psal. 102.12-13.
236. Aug. Psal. 146.17.
237. Aug. Psal. 44.28.
238. Aug. Serm. 103.1.2; 179.3; 239.3.3. He made the same connection with the widow of Zareptha’s service of Elijah: Serm. 277.1.1; Serm. Lamb. 10(136B).4.
239. Aug. Serm. 236.3; 239.4.4, 5.6–6.7; 389.6; 399.7.
240. Aug. Serm. 25.8; 38.8; 41.7; 86.3.3, 4.5; 123.4; 206.2; 345.2, 4; Serm. Mai 13(113B).4; Serm. Lamb. 4(359A).11.
241. Aug. Serm. Lamb. 28(164A).4; Serm. 359.3; Psal. 102.12-13; 103.3.10.
242. Aug. Psal. 49.13-17.
243. Aug. Serm. 39.6; 85.5.6; Serm. Lamb. 4(359A).12.
244. Aug. Serm. Lamb. 1(105A).1; 5(107A).8; Psal. 125.11-12.
245. Aug. Serm. 91.7.9; Psal. 36.2.13; 125.12-13.
246. Aug. Serm. 39.6.
247. Aug. Serm. 61.11.12.
248. Aug. Serm. 85.4.5; Psal. 146.17.
249. Aug. Psal. 146.17.
250. Aug. Ep. 126.7; see also Serm. 355.2; 356.10.
251. Cau. Apiar. 33. Presbyters cannot sell the goods of the church without the permission of the bishop, just as bishops cannot do so without the advice of the council or their presbyters.
252. Aug. Serm. 355.4-5. He refused to accept the gift of a shipping company because the church would have had to maintain a reserve fund to repay shippers for any losses. This would have required withholding available funds from the needy.
253. In the Acta apud Zenophilum, the governor was astonished to learn that the poor had received nothing of the money that Lucilla had given to the bishops Silvanus and Purpurius or that Victor had paid to Silvanus to make him a presbyter: CSEL 26:194.36–195.2, 195.30–196.2, 196.26–197.7.
254. Aug. Serm. Lamb. 5(107A).9.
255. Aug. Serm. 206.2.
256. Aug. Serm. 177.5, 10.
257. Aug. Serm. 9.17-18, 21; 42.1; 56.7.11; 83.2.2; 389.5.
258. Aug. Serm. 390.1.
259. The fullest discussion is in Aug. Ciu. 21.22-23, 27; see also Enchir. 20.75-77; Serm. 113.2.2; 178.4.4–5.5; Serm. Lamb. 4(359A).13.
261. Aug. Serm. 9.20; 86.8.9.
262. Aug. Ep. 22.1.6.
263. Aug. Serm. 86.1.1; 177.10; 302.8; 357.5; 367.3; 389.3-4; Serm. Morin 11(53A).6.
264. Aug. Serm. 18.4; 60.6; 114.5; 311.5.5; Serm. Morin 11(53A).6; Serm. Frang. 9(114A).4-5; Serm. Lamb. 2(335C).8-9.
265. Aug. Serm. 36.9; 376A.3.
266. Aug. Serm. 38.9; 86.9.11–11.12; 123.5. He cited the fac trajectitium, a commercial loan that was made in one part of the empire and repaid in another (Serm. 390.2).
267. Aug. Serm. 170.2.
268. Aug. Serm. 86.11.13; Psal. 48.1.14.
269. Aug. Serm. 355.3-4.
270. Aug. Serm. 356.7. He feared that the family would judge that he had exercised inappropriate influence to deprive the young man.
271. Aug. Ep. 262.7-8. The husband had legal control over his wife’s property. She should have recognized as well that she had no right to force her son to become a monk or a cleric by depriving him of the resources he needed for a family of his own.
272. It had been a requirement of the clergy of Hippo, but Augustine decided to relax it rather than have it violated in secret (Serm. 356.14). The legislation of the plenary council in 401 on the disposition of the property of bishops assumed that they would retain their property: Reg. Carth. 81.
273. Tert. Idol. 15.1-2.
274. Tert. Mart. 2.7.
275. Tert. Spec. 4.1, 3; 8.10.
276. Tert. Spec. 17.5-6.
277. Tert. Spec. 26.1-2.
278. Tert. Spec. 26.3-4.
279. Tert. Spec. 13.4.
280. Tert. Idol. 4.1.
281. Tert. Idol. 9.1.
282. Tert. Idol. 11.2-7. Christians used incense in their funerals.
283. Tert. Idol. 11.7.
284. Tert. Idol. 10.5-6, 18. See Julian’s Ep. 61; the decree is witnessed in Augustine, Conf. 8.5.10 and Ciu. 18.52.
285. Tert. Cor. 8.5; 10.4-5. Christians did not have to avoid chicken because Socrates had sacrificed a rooster.
286. Tert. Idol. 16.1-5.
287. Tert. Idol. 16.14-15.
288. Tert. Idol. 17.1. This would have implied that a servant could be a Christian only with the consent of the master or mistress.
289. Tert. Idol. 20.
290. Tert. Scorp. 4.3-4.
291. Tert. Cor. 1.1-5.
292. Tert. Cor. 11.4-6.
293. Tert. Idol. 19.
294. Tert. Idol. 11.7, 17.2-3.
295. Tert. Idol. 18.8.
296. Tert. Scorp. 9.12.
297. Tert. Fug. 4.1; 6.1-7.
298. Tert. Fug. 5.1-3.
299. Tert. Fug. 12.1-2; 13.1, 5.
300. Tert. Fug. 3.4; 14.2.
301. Tert. Idol. 13-15.
302. Tert. Idol. 21-22.
303. Tert. Idol. 23.
304. Tert. Cor. 1.4; Fug. 9.4.
305. Tert. Spec. 26.1-3; Idol. 15.7.
306. Ep. 2.1.1-2.
307. A woman whose hand was held and forced through the action, in Ep. 24; others fell under torture, Ep. 56; most volunteered to comply, Laps. 8-9, 13.
308. Cypr. Ep. 55.13.2.
309. Cypr. Ep. 55.14.2.
310. Cypr. Ep. 20.2.2; 30.3.2; 59.15.3.
311. Cypr. Ep. 31.7.1.
312. Cypr. Laps. 25.
313. Cypr. Laps. 23-26.
314. Cypr. Ep. 65.2.1-2, 3.3, 4.1; 67.2.2, 3.1, 9.2.
315. Cypr. Ep. 70.3.1; 72.2.2; 73.21.2; Unit. eccl. 11.
316. The Roman clergy provided a description of the process in Cypr. Ep. 30.3.1.
317. Cypr. Ep. 55.14.1.
318. Cypr. Laps. 27; Ep. 55.14.2.
319. Cypr. Ep. 43.3.1-2, 6.1–7.2; Laps. 33-36; Unit. eccl. 3, 10, 19.
320. Cypr. Ep. 72.2.1-2.
321. Cypr. Ep. 8.1.1. The Roman clergy recognized him as a persona insignis.
322. Cypr. Ep. 7.1; 20.1.2; he claimed a divine mandate for his action but did not quote a scriptural text.
323. Cypr. Ep. 14.1.2; 43.4.1-2.
324. Cypr. Ep. 14.2.1; 34.4.1. The surviving evidence does not indicate whether action was taken against other clergy who left Carthage.
325. Cypr. Laps. 10.
326. Cypr. Laps. 10.
327. Cypr. Laps. 11-12.
328. Cypr. Ep. 12.1.2-3.
329. Cypr. Ep. 10.5.1-2.
330. Cypr. Laps. 3.
331. Cypr. Laps. 2-3.
332. Cypr. Ep. 55.9.2.
333. Cypr. Ep. 58.4.1-2.
334. Cypr. Fort. 12.
335. Cypr. Mort. 17; see Tert. Fug. 9.4; Aug. Virg. 44.45–46.47.
336. Cypr. Laps. 28.
337. Con. Arel. a. 314, 14; CCSL 148:12.42-51.
338. Act. Zeno.; CSEL 26:186.31–187.2. Strikingly, two of the subdeacons who had just carried out the church’s sacred vessels absolutely refused to betray the readers, preferring to be killed (26:188.1-2).
339. Mensurius was described as claiming to have allowed heretical books to be confiscated in a letter produced by the Donatists; Numidian bishops gave medical texts or martyrs’ acts. See Aug. Coll. 3.13.25; Cresc. 3.27.30.
340. Pas. Fel.
341. Aug. Cresc. 3.27.30.
342. Con. Arel. a. 314, 14; Aug. Ep. 43.16.
343. Pas. Don. 6-8, 11-13. Jean-Louis Maier, Le dossier du donatisme, 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1987), 1:198-211.
344. Pas. Don. 9.
345. Pas. Marc. The passio of Donatus has not survived. The events are mentioned in Optat. Parm. 3.4. Augustine objected to their being honored as martyrs, among other reasons, because their modes of death — precipitation from a cliff and drowning in a well — were not normal Roman methods of execution but could have been means of suicide (Aug. Eu. Io. 11.15).
346. Pas. Isa. Max. The proconsul attempted to dispose of their bodies in order to prevent their veneration.
347. Augustine reported that Donatus of Carthage was honored as a martyr (Don. 16.20).
348. Aug. Ep. 76.3.
349. Augustine noted that the Donatists were embarrassed by Optatus (Petil. 2.23.53, 92.209).
350. First mentioned in Optat. Parm. 3.4.
351. He claimed that they not only engaged in criminal activities but threw themselves off cliffs — in imitation of the reported death of Marculus — or forced others to kill them: Aug. Ep. 88.8-9; 89.2-3; 105.2.5; Parm. 3.6.29; Petil. 2.49.114, 71.160, 87.193; Gaud. 1.27.30, 31.36-38; Serm. Guelf. 28(313E).6. Their shrines may have been the object of the attempt to determine the authenticity of martyrs (Reg. Carth. 83).
352. An early summary is provided in Aug. Cresc. 3.41.45–48.53.
353. Aug. Ep. 151.
354. Aug. Ep. 209.2.
355. Quodu. Prom. 3.38.44 reports the takeover of the temple of Juno Caelestis in Carthage. See also Aug. Serm. 105.9.12.
356. Aug. Ep. 50; Serm. 24.5.
357. Aug. Serm. 62.11.17–12.18.
358. Aug. Serm. 24.6; 105.9.12.
359. Aug. Serm. 62.11.17–12.18.
360. Aug. Serm. 62.10.15.
361. Aug. Ep. Io. 2.13; Psal. 18.2.1; Serm. 198.3.
362. Bru. Hipp. 11; repeated in Cau. Apiar. 15.
363. Con. Carth. June, a. 401; Reg. Carth. 61.
364. Aug. Psal. 30.3.2; 50.1; 147.7.
365. Aug. Serm. 51.1.2; 300.1.
366. Aug. Serm. Denis 14(313A).3.
367. Aug. Psal. 102.13.
368. Aug. Serm. Denis 17(301A).7-9.
369. Aug. Serm. Denis 14(313A).3-4; Serm. Dolb. 26(198*).9.
370. Aug. Serm. Dolb. 26(198*); see also Serm. 196.4.
371. Aug. Serm. 196.4; 279.13; Serm. Frang. 8(293B).5.
372. Aug. Serm. 196.4.
373. Aug. Psal. 109.17; Serm. 307.3.4.
374. Aug. Serm. 308.3.3–5.5.
375. Aug. Serm. 308.2.2.
376. Aug. Conf. 4.3.4-6; 7.6.8-10.
377. Aug. Serm. 4.36; 9.3, 17; Serm. Denis 21(15A).4; Serm. Dolb. 26(198*).58.
378. Aug. Serm. 97.4; Serm. Cail. 2.6(94A).2-3; Serm. Denis 17(301A).5; Serm. Dolb. 18(306E).10.
379. Aug. Serm. 4.36; 286.8.7; 318.3; 328.9.6 (Serm. Lamb. 13); Serm. Lamb. 6(335D).3, 5; Serm. Dolb. 18(306E).7-8.
380. Aug. Serm. 343.2.
381. Aug. Virg. 44.45–46.47.
382. See John Herrmann and Annewies van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine: Late Antique Ceramics from North Africa (Tunisia) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Divinity School, 2002).
383. Tert. Pud. 10.
384. For examples, see Jeffrey Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems, Spätantike, frühes Christentum, Byzanz., Reihe B (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2007), nos. 191, 152, 194, 364.