of religion, and, by an edict in 321, granted the Donatists full liberty of faith and worship. He remained faithful to this policy of toleration, and exhorted the Catholics to patience and indulgence. At a council in 330 the Donatists numbered two hundred and seventy bishops. Constans, the successor of Constantino, resorted again to violent measures ; but neither threats nor promises made any impression on the party. It came to blood. The Circumeel- lions, a sort of Donatist mendicant monks, who wandered about the country among the cottages of the peasantry,' carried on plunder, arson, and inurder, in conjunction with mutinous peasants and slaves, and in crazy zeal for the martyr's crown, as genuine soldiers of Christ, rushed into fire and water, and ' " Cellas circumientea rusticorum." Hence the name Circumcellioncs. IJut they called themselves Miliies Chnsti Agonistici. Their date and origin are uncer- tain. According to Optatus of Mileve, they first appeared under Constans, in 347. § 70. AUGUSTINE AND THE DONATISTS. 363 threw themselves down from rocks. Yet there were Doiiatists wlio disapproved this revolutionary frenzy. The insurrection was suppressed by military force ; several leaders of the Dona- tists were executed, others were banished, and their churches were closed or confiscated. Donatus the Great died in exile. He was succeeded by one Parmenianus. Under Julian the Apostate the Donatists again obtained, with all other heretics and schismatics, freedom of religion, and returned to the possession of their churches, which they painted anew, to redeem them from their profanation by the Catholics. But under the subsequent emperors their condition grew worse, both from persecutions without and dissensions within. The quarrel between the two parties extended into all the affairs of daily life ; the Donatist bishop Faustinus of Hippo, for example, allowing none of the members of his church to bake bread for the Catholic inhabitants. § 70. Aiigustine and the Donatists. Their Persecution and Extinction. At the end of the fourth century, and in the beginning of the fifth, the great Augustine, of Hippo, where there was also a strong congregation of the schismatics, made a powerful effort, by instruction and persuasion, to rec6ncile the Donatists with the Catholic church. He wrote several works on the subject, and set the whole African churcli in motion against them. They feared his superior dialectics, and avoided him wherever they could. The matter, however, was brought, by order of the emperor in 411, to a three days' arbitration at Carthage, attended by two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops and two hundred and seventy -nine Donatist.' Augustine, who, in two beautiful sermons before the begin- ning of the disputation, exhorted to love, forbearance, and meekness, was the chief speaker on the part of the Catholics ; Petilian, on the part of the schismatics. Marcellinus, the im- ' Augustine gives an account of the debate in his Breviculus CoUationis cum Donatistia (Opera, torn. ix. p. 545-580). 364 THIRD PERIOD. A.D, 311-590. perial tribune and notary, and a friend of Augnstine,