Donatus Magnus
270 CE–355 CE · Carthage
Donatus Magnus (c. 270 - c. 355) was a Berber bishop of Carthage and the leading figure of Donatism, a North African movement holding that sacraments administered by clergy who had lapsed under persecution were invalid, and that the Church must consist only of the pure, who were rebaptized. The Donatist schism was opposed by Augustine and suppressed by imperial and church authority; Donatus was exiled in 347 and died in exile.
Contested teaching
Leader of the Donatist schism, opposed by Augustine and suppressed by imperial and church authority; Donatus was exiled in the persecution of 347 and died in exile.
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CarthageAfrica Proconsularis
What they did here
Consecrated bishop of Carthage around 313, Donatus led the rigorist North African church that bore his name until the imperial 'Macarian' suppression of 347 exiled him; he died in exile around 355.
Carthage in this era
Still under Roman and then Vandal rule (the Vandals captured the city in 439 CE), Carthage hosted the landmark Council of Carthage in 397 CE, which reaffirmed the Synod of Hippo (393) biblical canon list for the Latin West pending confirmation by Rome, while nearby Hippo's Augustine engaged the Donatist schism partly through Carthaginian councils.
About Carthage
Carthage, near modern Tunis on the coast of Tunisia, was the Phoenician-founded power destroyed by Rome in 146 BC at the end of the Third Punic War and later refounded as a Roman colony. The historian Polybius witnessed and recorded its final destruction. Under Rome, Carthage was the milieu of the Latin author and Middle Platonist Apuleius, who studied and lectured there.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Donatus Magnus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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