page_title: Parmenian
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Parmenian / Life
context_page_description: Parmenian was a North African Donatist bishop, the successor of Donatus in the Donatist bishopric of Carthage. He wrote several works defending the rigorist views of the Donatists and is recognized as "the most famous Donatist writer of his day", but none of his writings have survived.
context_section_description: Optatus of Milevis, the anti-Donatist polemicist and contemporary of Parmenian, calls him peregrinus, meaning that he was probably not a native of Africa. He may have come from Spain or Gaul.
  Whatever his origin, Parmenian succeeded Donatus as Donatist bishop of Carthage around the year 350. He was banished from the city in 358. He returned in 362 under the decree of Julian that allowed exiled bishops to return to their sees. About this time, if not earlier, he published a work in five parts defending Donatism (Adversus ecclesiam traditorum), to which the treatise of Optatus is a reply. In about 372, he wrote a book against Ticonius. At an unknown year during his episcopacy, he oversaw a council of Donatist bishops that made an important proclamation about the rebaptism of traditores.
  Parmenian died and was succeeded by Primian in about the year 392.
caption: Julian the Apostate presiding at a conference of sectarians (Edward Armitage, 1875). Julian's decree of 362 allowed Parmenian to return to Carthage.
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