>"Massacring its enemies" is a bit strong. Augustine (d. 430 CE) did say
>that the state had a role in providing public order in disputes that had a
>religious dimension (notably Donatism)...
And this is where "the devil shows his heel." What, after all, was
"Donatism?" During the Diocletianian persecution, most of the
rich North African Christians (Augustine's homeboys) made the
abjurations necessary to save their estates. Then, when
the Constantine gang had made Christianity the State Religion,
they put their crosses back on. This did not sit well with the
mass of unemployed and landless Christian laborers, the
"Circoncellions," whose religious leader, Bishop Donatus,
denounced the readmission of those landowning apostates
to the Church. Augustine was an outspoken advocate for
violent state repression of those proletarian "heretics,"
which he so memorably described as:
>... a conspiracy grow[ing] by drawing from the disaffected...
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos