Saint Optatus

Optatus, sometimes anglicized as Optate, was Bishop of Milevis, in Numidia, in the fourth century, remembered for his writings against Donatism. Augustine of Hippo suggests that Optatus was a convert: "Do we not see with how great a booty of gold and silver and garments Cyprian, doctor suavissimus, came forth out of Egypt, and likewise Lactantius, Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary?" (De doctrina Christiana, xl). His (untitled) work against the Donatists is an answer to Parmenianus, the successor of Donatus in the primatial see of Carthage. According to Jerome (De viris illustribus, # 110), it was in six books and was written under Valens and Valentinian I (364-75). Seven books are now known, and the list of popes is carried as far as Siricius (384-98). Similarly the Donatist succession of antipopes is given (II, IV), as Victor, Bonifatius, Encolpius, Macrobius, Lucianus, Claudianus (the date of the last is about 380), though a few sentences earlier Macrobius is mentioned as the actual bishop. The plan of the work is laid down in Book I, and is completed in six books. It seems, then, that the seventh book, which Jerome did not know in 392, was an appendix to a new edition in which Optatus made additions to the two episcopal lists. The date of the original work is fixed by the statement in I, xiii, that sixty years and more had passed since the persecution of Diocletian (303-5). Photinus (d. 376) is apparently regarded as still alive; Julian is dead (363). Thus the first books were published about 366–70, and the second edition about 385–90. He died around 387. In his writings on the conflict between Christians and Donatists, Optatus is notably mild among Church Fathers in his views against schism. Optatus distinguishes between schismatics and heretics, saying that the former have rejected unity, but have true doctrine and true sacraments, and that therefore Parmenian should not have threatened them with eternal damnation.