Melchiadis Judicium Donastistae Antiqui

§ V. — The Donatists reject the judgment of the ancient Melchiades, and later falsely accuse him of the betrayal of books. However moderate the sentence of Melchiades may have been, it did not please the Donatists. For they immediately began to murmur against the judgment of the bishops by which they had been defeated, and to complain in petitions presented to Constantine. Whether this complaint of theirs is to be called an appeal is debated among the learned. Yet it is agreed among them that those schismatics did not abide by the judgment of Melchiades, that they demanded other judges from Constantine, and that this demand was unjustly made by them. They alleged, of course, that too few bishops had rendered the sentence, and that they had proceeded to judgment hastily, without having diligently examined all the matters that ought first to have been investigated. This was the sole reason they then put forward to reject the judgment of the Roman synod; and Constantine mentions no other in that letter in which he ordered very many bishops from diverse and almost countless places to assemble in the city of Arles for the purpose of ending the same case (Augustine, Epistle 105, n. 8; Optatus, Book I; Constantine, in Eusebius, Book X, ch. #). From this it is gathered that it never entered the minds of the Donatists, not only before the Roman council but also after, that is, during the entire interval which intervened between this and the Council of Arles, to accuse Melchiades of the crime of betraying the sacred books.

But later they fabricated this, accusing not only Melchiades but also Marcellinus, Marcellus, and Silvester of the same crime. From this we may not rashly suspect that this calumny was not devised by them before the time of Pope Silvester. For although they said that this nefarious act was perpetrated by Marcellus, Melchiades, and Silvester while they were still presbyters under Marcellinus, no one fails to see that they devised this in order to create hatred and ill-will toward the apostolic see and to avoid its authority against themselves; and this, even after Marcellus, Melchiades, and Silvester had already been honored with the dignity of that same see. Indeed, from the words of Augustine in the *Breviculus Collationis cum Donatistis*, chapter 18, it is understood that the Donatists first brought this charge against Melchiades at the Conference of Carthage. "For when the Cognitor compelled them," says Augustine, "to say, if they had anything, against the council and judgment of Melchiades, by which Caecilian was shown to be purged and absolved, then the Donatists began to accuse Melchiades himself of betrayal, and to say that their ancestors had for that reason shunned his judgment." Proving this assertion to be a lie was not very difficult, since their ancestors, while refusing to abide by Melchiades' judgment, are found never to have alleged anything of this sort in their petitions.

But because they were alleging something unheard of not only by the judge but also by the Catholics themselves, therefore, with the judge appointed to determine whether any judgment, either public or ecclesiastical, was brought forth concerning the crime of betrayal, and with the Catholics themselves waiting and demanding that it be proven, the Donatists read out some very lengthy official records before the prefect, where neither the prefect himself appeared of what sort he was, nor was the place read where these things were conducted; but the records themselves, with a very long recitation, resounded with many people handing over many ecclesiastical items, where the name of Melchiades did not sound at all. When these were finished, the judge wondered that something else had been promised and something else recited. Then they recited other records, in which Melchiades was read to have sent the deacons Strato and Cassian to recover places taken from Christians during the time of persecution by order of the emperor. And when in these records as well no crime of Melchiades appeared to the judge and the Catholic defenders, the Donatists said that Strato, the deacon whom he had sent along with others to recover ecclesiastical places, was recited in the earlier records as a traitor: and therefore they wanted to besmirch even Melchiades with the crime of betrayal, because he used that deacon without having degraded him. But when asked whether at least in those records of betrayal it was expressed that Strato was a deacon, they were not able to prove even that.

The Catholics further replied that even if Straton had been called a traditor deacon, it did not follow that he was the same one whom Melchiades later used, since it could have happened that, just as among the apostles there were two Jameses and two Judases, and among the schismatics themselves two Donatuses, of Cása and Carthage, so also among the Roman deacons two Stratons existed at the same time (Aug., Brevic. diei tertiae: collat. cum Donat., ch. 18, n. 34). "This also was added by the Catholics, that even if it were demonstrated—which was not demonstrated at all—that the same Straton the deacon had been a traditor whom Melchiades later sent with other deacons to receive ecclesiastical places, Melchiades would not thereby be stained by that crime, since persecution could have kept him far away and entirely ignorant of it, and he could have considered him innocent, since no one accused him as guilty by denouncing him." (Ibid., n. 35.) Finally, when the Donatists tried to return to the calumnious accusation against Melchiades, they were repelled by the interlocution of the judge.

Nevertheless, they did not desist on that account. For even after the Carthaginian conference, they seized upon an opportunity to slander Melchiades, because the name of Cassianus was found both among his deacons and in those records where the act of tradition was recited (Augustine, *Breviculus Collationis*, n. 36). But this pertinacity of the Donatists and their various attempts to defame Melchiades alone, while sparing the judges of the Roman council, are evidence of how weighty and how inconvenient to themselves they felt his authority to be. And they accomplished nothing else by so many and such unjust machinations, except to make manifest Melchiades’ moderation, equity, integrity, and innocence of life. For it must be that they utterly failed to find anything to reproach in him, since, striving to contrive calumny against him from every side, they were forced to seek occasion in his deacons, or rather in the commonness of the names of his deacons. They themselves, however, revealed how great a frenzy had seized them, when, unwilling to abide by the judgment in which accusers and witnesses were heard together with the accused, and which was indeed pronounced by the judges whom they themselves had sought, and over whom the most equitable president and prince of all bishops presided, they preferred to appeal to the Emperor. Constantine, being more religious, bore their appeal most grievously; but, being a little more indulgent than was fitting, while he did not suppress their audacity, he gave place and occasion to grave evils for the Church.

Although the appeal gave them another judgment at Arles, this, however, according to Augustine, Epistle 43, formerly 162, n. 20, was given “not because it was already necessary, but yielding to their perversities and desiring by every means to restrain such shamelessness.” Nor did this appeal prevent that, as we have already set forth, the bishops Eunomius and Olympius, sent to Africa to settle the affairs of the Carthaginian church, afterwards pronounced that “the sentence of the nineteen bishops, already given long before, could not be dissolved” (Optatus, Book I).