Against the Donatists

Optatus of Milevis (d. 390)

APPENDIX III. CONSTANTINUS AUGUSTUS AELAFIO.

I NTRODUCTION

In this letter Constantine sends orders to his Vicar in Africa that Caecilian and certain other Bishops (both Catholic and Donatist) should be directed to proceed, with some of their clergy, to Aries, where a Council was to be held (as he explains) once more publicly to vindicate the character of Caecilian. The date is 314.

This letter may be compared with another letter sent by Constantine to Chrestus, Bishop of Syracuse, and preserved for us by Eusebius (x, 5). In both these letters August 1 is fixed as the date for the opening of the Council at Arles; in both we find a reference to the Council which had been already held at Rome under Miltiades. Indeed the similarity between them is so striking that it has been suggested that the letter to Aelafius is a forgery and has been copied from that to Chrestus. But Mgr. Duchesne has shown ( op. cit. p. 32) that this is quite impossible, since the letter to Chrestus was unknown in Africa, at the time when the letter to Aelafius was placed in the collection used by Optatus. The only edition of Eusebius known to St. Augustine, for example, was the version of Rufinus, where Book Ten…

See also

• More works by Optatus of Milevis

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