This treatise was written about 400 A.D. Concerning it Aug. in Retract. Book II. c. xviii., says: I have written seven books on Baptism against the Donatists, who strive to defend themselves by the authority of the most blessed bishop and martyr Cyprian; in which I show that nothing is so effectual for the refutation of the Donatists, and for shutting their mouths directly from upholding their schism against the Catholic Church, as the letters and act of Cyprian. Aeterna Press

The Donatist schism in Africa began in 311 and flourished just one hundred years, until the conference at Carthage in 411, after which its importance waned. St. Augustine began his victorious campaign against Donatism soon after he was ordained priest in 391. His popular psalm or "Abecedarium" against the Donatists was intended to make known to the people the arguments set forth by St. Optatus, with the same conciliatory end in view. It shows that the sect was founded by traditors, condemned by pope and council, separated from the whole world, a cause of division, violence, and bloodshed; the true Church is the one Vine, whose branches are over all the earth. After St. Augustine had become bishop in 395, he obtained conferences with some of the Donatist leaders, though not with his rival at Hippo. In 400 he wrote three books against the letter of Parmenianus, refuting his calumnies and his arguments from Scripture. More important were his seven books on baptism, in which, after developing the principle already laid down by St. Optatus, that the effect of the sacrament is independent of the holiness of the minister, he shows in great detail that the authority of St. Cyprian is more awkward than convenient for the Donatists. The principal Donatist controversialist of the day was Petilianus, Bishop of Constantine, a successor of the traditor Silvanus. St. Augustine wrote two books in reply to a letter of his against the Church, adding a third book to answer another letter in which he was himself attacked by Petilianus. Before this last book he published his "De Unitate ecclesiae" about 403. To these works must be added some sermons and some letters which are real treatises.

This volume offers a comprehensive portrait--or rather, self-portrait, since its words are mostly Augustine's own--drawn from the breadth of his writings and from the long course of his career

The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age examines an apocalypse that never happened, seen through the eyes of a dissident church that no longer exists. Jesse A. Hoover considers Donatists, members of an ecclesiastical communion that for a brief moment formed the majority church in Roman North Africa—modern Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya—before fading away sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries. Hoover studies how Donatists perceived the end of the world to offer a glimpse into the inner life of the dissident communion: what it valued, whom it feared, and how it defined its place in history while on the cusp of history's end. By recovering these appeals to apocalyptic themes in surviving Donatist writings, this study uncovers a significant element within the dissident movement's self-perception that has so far gone unexamined. In contrast to previous assessments, it argues that such eschatological expectations are not out of sync with the wider world of Latin Christianity in late antiquity, and that they functioned as an effective polemical strategy designed to counter their opponents' claim to be the true church in North Africa.

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Employs the sectarian battles which divided African Christians in late antiquity to explore the nature of violence in religious conflicts.

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In Against Julian Augustine stresses in the first two books the traditional teachings of the Church found in the Fathers and contrasts their teaching with the rationalism of the Pelagians

This is the first book for over twenty years to undertake a holistic examination of the Donatist Controversy, a bilious and sometimes violent schism that broke out in the North African Christian Church in the early years of the century AD and which continued up until the sixth century AD. What made this religious dispute so important was that its protagonists brought to the fore a number of issues and practices that had empire-wide ramifications for how the Christian church and the Roman imperial government dealt with the growing number of dissidents in their ranks. Very significantly it was during the Donatist Controversy that Augustine of Hippo, who was heavily involved in the dispute, developed the idea of 'tough love' in dealing with those at odds with the tenets of the main church, which in turn acted as the justification for the later brutal excesses of the Inquisition. In order to reappraise the Donatist Controversy for the first time in many years, 14 specialists in the religious, cultural, social, legal and political history as well as the archaeology of Late Antique North Africa have examined what was one of the most significant religious controversies in the Late Roman World through a set of key contexts that explain its significance the Donatist Schism not just in North Africa but across the whole Roman Empire, and beyond.