Donatism was a rigorist movement that held that no Christian who had surrendered the scriptures when their possession was forbidden by Diocletian could validly perform church functions. Donatus himself was a claimant of the bishopric on Carthage on these grounds in Constantine's time. By Augustine's day, Donatism was a separate church, with its own ecclesiastical structure.
The great Marxist historian of class struggle in the Roman empire, G. E. M. de St. Croix, regards Donatism as "primarily a religious movement and not an expression of social protest," but, he says, "there is no doubt that it contained a strong element of such protest, simply because the class of large landowners in north Africa was overwhelmingly Catholic." He describes the Circumcellions, "the militant wing of the Donatists," as "sometimes appearing ... as a kind of lunatic fringe, bent on religious suicide," who "waged open war on occasion not only against the Catholic Church in Africa but also upon the class of large landowners from which that Church derived its main support."
Augustine did argue that the stringent laws passed against heresy in the late fourth century and early fifth could be used against these people. But he was not referring to them when he spoke of "a conspiracy growing by drawing from the disaffected" -- rather to the foundations of all states, including the Roman empire. The City of God argues that, since it lacked justice, the empire was only a "great gang of thieves."
--CGE
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Shane Mage wrote:
> C.G.Estabrook wrote:
>
> >"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..."