between them and the orthodox should be left to the
judgment of God. This wise policy, to which he consistently adhered to
the close of his reign, was not followed by his son and successor
Constans, who, after repeated attempts to win over the sect by bribes,
resorted to persecution. The renewed excesses of the Circumcelliones,
among whom were ranged fugitive slaves, debtors and political
malcontents of all kinds, had given to the Donatist schism a
revolutionary aspect; and its forcible suppression may therefore have
seemed to Constans even more necessary for the preservation of the
empire than for the vindication of orthodoxy. The power which they had
been the first to invoke having thus declared so emphatically and
persistently against them, the Donatists revived the old world-alien
Christianity of the days of persecution, and repeated Tertullian's
question, "What has the emperor to do with the church?" (_Quid est
imperatori cum ecclesia?_) Such an attitude aggravated the lawlessness
of the Circumcellion adherents of the sect, and their outrages were in
turn made the justification for the most rigorous measures against the
whole Donatist party indiscriminately. Many of their bishops fell
victims to the persecution, and Donatus (Magnus) and several others were
banished from their sees.

With the accession of Julian (361) an entire change took place in the
treatment of the Donatists. Their churches were restored and their
bishops reinstated (Parmenianus succeeding the deceased Donatus at
Carthage), with the natural result of greatly increasing both the
numbers and the enthusiasm of the party. A return to the earlier policy
of repression was made under Valentinian I. and Gratian, by whom the
Donatist churches were again closed, and all their assemblies forbidden.
It was not, however, until the commencement of the 5th century that the
sect began to decline, owing largely to the rise among them of a group
of moderate and scholarly men like the grammarian Tychonius, who vainly
strove to overcome the more fanatical section. Against the house thus
divided against itself both state and church directed not unsuccessful
assaults. In 405 an edict was issued by the emperor Honorius commanding
the Donatists, under the severest penalties, to return to the Catholic
church. On the other hand, Augustine, bishop of Hippo, after several
years' negotiation, arranged a great conference between the Donatists
and the orthodox, which was hel