Christians in Roman North Africa were proud of their heritage as the Church of the Martyrs. Their liturgical calendar was heavily sprinkled with the feast days of those who had shed their blood for the sake of Christ.⁽¹⁾ During periods of persecution stories such as that of Perpetua and Felicity and the good bishop Cyprian encouraged others faced with the prospect of dying for their faith.⁽²⁾

Once the imperial persecutions were over, this glorious heritage still remained. Yet it would have been inappropriate to use the legacy of the martyrs in the same way as before. How did North Africans handle this heritage of the martyrs when it was no longer appropriate to use the stories to encourage martyrdom?

As I have shown elsewhere, Donatists continued to use stories of the martyrs when Catholics used imperial power to persecute them, and when the persecution was no longer bloody, Donatists transformed the martyrs from models of dying in persecution to models of living under stress.⁽³⁾

This paper looks at the other side of the religious divide. It examines the Catholic inheritance. Catholics, of course, could no longer use martyr stories to encourage martyrdom. No one persecuted them in any systematic way. By the fifth century physical attacks by Donatists, while not unknown, were rare.⁽⁴⁾ But the celebration of their feast days did not cease; the proclamation of the martyrdoms did not desist; and shrines to their memory multiplied.⁽⁵⁾ Augustine himself provided for the erection of edifices to the memory of the martyrs.⁽⁶⁾

We know that Catholic bishops still preached sermons on the martyrs on their feast days.⁽⁷⁾ Popular piety precluded them from ignoring these special days. But they felt constrained to harness the power of the martyrs to prevent it from going astray. Their sermons and legislation witness a campaign in stages.

390-401 Preaching and legislation against funerary banquets. No one was to bring food to the graves of the martyrs.⁽⁸⁾

392-97 Graveside funeral commemorations replaced by vigils in the basilica at the tomb of Cyprian

395 Graveside funeral commemorations outlawed at Hippo

397 Graveside funeral commemorations outlawed throughout all of Africa by the Council of Carthage

401 Bishops appeal to civil authorities to suppress graveside gatherings.

401-411 Attempts at more pacific celebrations. Drinking and dancing were prohibited.⁽⁹⁾

After 411 Earlier attempts to control relics and shrines were intensified. Roadside shrines needed the relics of genuine martyrs as well as episcopal approval and no one could use revelations in a dream to license the establishment of a shrine.⁽¹⁰⁾

Other exhortation and legislation continued. Miracles performed through the intercession of a martyr had to be registered with the bishop in order to be acknowledged as true miracles.⁽¹¹⁾ The acts of the martyrs were never to be confused with the word of scripture.⁽¹²⁾ Most of all, Donatist pseudo-martyrs were not to be confused with true martyrs, for only those "who suffer persecution for the sake of justice" could be counted as true martyrs.⁽¹³⁾

Veneration of the martyrs could not be suppressed. The questions would be how could the Catholic bishops harness the power of the martyrs. and to what end would this power be directed. In order to answer the questions, I have examined the Catholic literature in which martyrs are valued: the records of North African councils, the works of Augustine, Fulgentius of Ruspe, Quodvultdeus, and Verecundus of Iunca, to find their methods.

To blunt the appeal of martyrdom as a Donatist phenomenon and make it accessible to non-Donatists, Augustine exploited the full range of the martyrs, including the Maccabees, the Holy Innocents, John the Baptist, Stephen, Peter and Paul.⁽¹⁴⁾  He 'internationalized' the college of martyrs by preaching on Lawrence and Agnes of Rome, Vincent, Fructuosus, and Eulalia of Spain and, of course, Gervasius and Protasius whose relics were found at Milan during Augustine's own lifetime.⁽¹⁵⁾ He built a shrine to Stephen in his own cathedral.⁽¹⁶⁾ In short he established the list of who would be honored, crowding out those who should not be honored.

He also prescribed the way in which the martyrs were to be honored. "Not in rioting and drunkenness," he tells his good friend Aurelius, bishop of Carthage,⁽¹⁷⁾ but soberly and with attention to the poor.⁽¹⁸⁾ He exhorted Aurelius to encourage people to provide meals at the church instead of the graves and to distribute this not out of any sense of pride and ostentation but humbly.⁽¹⁹⁾ This reform program, as Johannes Quasten calls it, was implemented a short time later at the Council of 393⁽²⁰⁾

But to diminish the appeal of martyrdom itself as attractive to Christians, Donatist or not, the bishops had to find ways to transform martyrs into role models without encouraging martyrdom So they did. Their use of the martyrs exposes a Christocentric ecclesiology which valued unity and used the image of the Church as the body of Christ. In the paragraphs that follow I will trace the use they made of this ecclesiology and how it domesticated the martyrs. Let's begin with the martyrs as witnesses, intercessors and true believers.

Witnesses. First, the martyrs were, as their name implies, witnesses. Before their persecutors and the Roman Empire at large, they witnessed to the truth of the Christian faith. But that faith was qualified as faith in Christ.⁽²¹⁾ Thus the focus shifts from the martyrs themselves to Christ, from their heroism to his unique status.

Intercessors. Second, these champions of faith in Christ were powerful figures in life and in death as intercessors.⁽²²⁾ Their intercession was for spiritual favors, but also for temporal ones.⁽²³⁾ However, that power was neither immediate nor personal; it was always exercised in and through Christ.⁽²⁴⁾

True believers. Third, the martyrs' attachment to and subordination to Christ and his Church can be seen in the ways they were marshaled in support of orthodox doctrine. Athansius was not the last to put hagiography in service of correct doctrine. As he used Antony of Egypt to mouth anti-Arian messages, the North African bishops used the martyrs of old. This time the enemies were the Donatists and Arians. The heros of former days were orthodox and their statements before being martyred proved their love of church unity and their devotion to the Father, the Son and the Spirit.⁽²⁵⁾

All of these functions of martyrs: witness, intercession, and true believers (at least against the Arians), might be preached almost anywhere in the Christian world, especially after 312. At that time the challenge for North African Catholic bishops was to use the stories of the martyrs in such a way that they did not lend support to the Donatist community which claimed the mantle of the martyrs, i.e., the identity of the persecuted church. This they did in three ways: they stressed the unity of the Church; the used the metaphor of the Church as Body of Christ; and they domesticated the virtues of the martyrs.

The unity of the Church. The first of these three ways should not be any surprise. The saints were cast as champions of church unity. Obviously Cyprian was the great candidate here.⁽²⁶⁾ Anyone outside the pale of the recognized, i.e., Catholic Church, could not be a true martyr for martyrdom is as much intent as act. Thus, no suicides, Donatist or otherwise, could be counted as martyrs⁽²⁷⁾ nor could the insane.⁽²⁸⁾ Martyrs don't play favorites either; they interceded for the whole church, but only the true Church.⁽²⁹⁾

Saints as the Body of Christ. More importantly, the saints were in an organic union with Christ, as members of his body. This is the Catholic use we find most frequently in the period of the Donatist controversy.

This metaphor has a reciprocal relationship with the unity function but goes farther. Christ was their head and spouse of the docile Church.⁽³⁰⁾ The martyrs could never have suffered unless Christ did. They were just following his example, empowered by his grace.⁽³¹⁾ All of the psalm texts which preachers applied to the martyrs could be applied to them only because the voice of Christ, the ultimate martyr, spoke for his body.⁽³²⁾ He modeled behavior for them, not so much in the shedding of blood as in patient endurance.⁽³³⁾ He had suffered in the past; his sufferings were over; but they suffered in history as his body.⁽³⁴⁾ Augustine moved quickly from commemorating the blood of Cyprian spilt in the past to the blood of Christ offered in the Eucharist.⁽³⁵⁾ The altar at which he celebrated was not the mensa of Cyprian but the altar of God.⁽³⁶⁾ Another difference is this. The saints may have laid down their lives for their faith, but historically there was an element of compulsion in their act. Only Christ laid it down freely and only his death was redemptive.⁽³⁷⁾ On all counts, the valor of the martyrs were relativized.

Incidentally, this head and body metaphor is not the typology of the renegade Donatist Tyconius, though Augustine read and appreciated him.⁽³⁸⁾ He used the head and body metaphor to explain persecution and evil in the church, just the opposite of the Catholics who were using it to explain virtue.

Mundane martyrdom. The third and final method Catholic bishops used the martyrs was to domesticate them. As members of Christ's body, the martyrs had lived and died. The bishops transformed the martyrs into models for all Christians in living and dying as non-martyrs.

Most North African Catholic Christians were not in constant conflict with Donatists nor were they daily debating Arians. Their religious problems were much less doctrinally oriented and more mundane. They lived their lives in villages where gossip was a communal art form and everyone anticipated sickness and eventual death. The bishops of North Africa used the martyrs as models of virtue in these circumstances. Martyrs provided examples for the suppression of anger, and avarice, and words of wisdom against trusting influential neighbors or self inordinately.⁽³⁹⁾ Most of all, they showed the way to practice patience and perseverance in putting up with the vexations of daily life.⁽⁴⁰⁾ They were models for every age and gender, for clergy and laity alike.⁽⁴¹⁾ They showed contemporary Christians how to rate the world as nought,⁽⁴²⁾ to pray,⁽⁴³⁾ and never to fear death, however it came.⁽⁴⁴⁾

The accomplishments of the martyrs which the bishops recount cast them as docile disciples, models for contemporary Christians.

However, lest one focus solely on the martyrs, the bishops reminded their flocks that the martyrs' abilities to model virtue were not in any way cause for their exaltation. Even in their suffering, their distinctive witness was placed in a subordinate position. Both their inspiration and their power came from Christ.⁽⁴⁵⁾ In a sense, Augustine and his cohort 'short-circuited' the example of the martyrs. By making him the head of the body, the Church, and them members of him and it, North Africans were given the opportunity for direct, rather than indirect, connection to the source of their strength. Not only was their strength directly from an increasingly powerful Jesus, but that strength was for the very tasks everyday Christians had to do. The martyrs as particualr persons were dispensable.

However, their relics were not. So the power they mediated needed to be tamed--and tamed it was. First, the North African bishops controlled the veneration of relics by their own building program. The choice of the saint to be venerated at a roadside shrine was not entirely within their control, but the activities in a chapel in their own cathedral were. Not only could they control the choice of the saint, but also, by their preaching, they exercised some control over the tenor of the festivities.⁽⁴⁶⁾ In addition, by changing the place of the relics from an independent constructions in chapels to boxes cemented under the main altar, within the altar rail, bishops made the relics difficult to see and impossible to touch. Then the relics would be perceived only in connection with the blood of Christ or, in the case of reliquaries in former baptisteries, in connection with baptism into Christ.⁽⁴⁷⁾

Augustine minimized the miracles performed at the graves of saints. They were much greater in the past and abroad, he said.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Relics of martyrs from abroad became more important than those of local saints whom the Donatists might coopt. These foreigners included Gervasius and Protasius, Stephen, Peter and Paul, and the Holy Innocents. Their shrines multiplied under the vigilance of Catholic bishops who physically mixed the relics of foreigners with those of popular local saints.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Any miracle obtained through the intervention of these fragments of bodies--not persons--or even through the dirt of the Holy Land or the wood of the true cross, had to be reported to the local bishop for recording in the libelli miraculorum of the diocesan archives.⁽⁵⁰⁾ The bishop could then choose which saints to promote. In The City of God, for example, Augustine recounts a host of miracles obtained through contact with relics. All except one rely on the relics of foreigners. In that one case, a boy offered prayers for new clothes at the shrine of the Twenty (nameless) Martyrs and more than enough money is found--mirabile dictu--when a gold ring is discovered in the belly of a fish.⁽⁵¹⁾ This is not a miracle that would raise any eyebrows with its power. Finally, the power which works the miracles is the power of God; the martyrs are at most cooperators.⁽⁵²⁾ More and more they became dehumanized conduits.

In summary, Catholic bishops harnassed the power of the martyrs by promoting a Christocentric eccelsiology. This theology domesticated their virtues and reduced the importance of the martyrs, tranforming them from individual heroes to conduits of Christ's power. Finally, it dehumanized their bones and focused all attention on Christ as the ultimate source of power.Miracles performed through the intercession of a martyr had to be registered with the bishop in order to be acknowledged as true miracles.⁽⁵³⁾

1. Calendar of Carthage, first published by Mabillon in Vetera Analecta, vol 3 (Paris 1682), pp. 398-401; more widely available in Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris, 1928), 8.644-645. While the calendar does date back to at least the sixth century, it is not clear in what period it was composed. For what is known about the sanctoral cycle in Augustine's time see Anna-Marie Bonnardiere, "Les Ennarationes in Psalmos prêchees par saint Augustin à l'occasion des fêtes des martyrs," Recherches Augustiniennes 7 (1971), pp. 73-104, specifically p. 82; and "La Bible 'liturgique' de saint Augustin' in John Chrysostome et Augustin: Actes du colloque de Chantilly, 22-24 septembre 1974, ed. by Charles Kannengiesser, Theologie historique 35 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1975), p. 153.

2. See Francesco Scorza Barcellona, "Sogni e visioni nella letteratura martiriologica africana posteriore al III secolo," Augustinianum 29 (1989), pp. 193-212; and Maureen A. Tilley, "Scripture as an Element of Social Control," Harvard Theological Review 83/4 (1990), pp. 383-397.

3. Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997); and "Sustaining Donatist Identity: From the Church of the Martyrs to the Collecta of the Desert," Journal of Early Christian Studies 5/1 (1997), pp. 21-35.

4. E.g., Augustine, Ep. 185.7.27.

5. Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis Excerpta 83 in Concilia Africae A. 345 - A. 525, edited by C. Munier, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 149 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1974), pp. 204-205.

6. See Augustine Sermon 356.10, and the comments of Johannes Quasten on Augustine and martyr basilicas in "Die Reform des Martyrkultes durch Augustinus," Theologie und Glaube 25 (1933), pp. 318-331, specifically, p. 320.

7. Cyrille Lambot compiled a catalogue of the saints' days and Augustine's sermons for each of the days in "Les sermons de saint Augustin pour les fêtes de martyrs," Revue Bénédictine 79/1-2 (1969), pp. 82-97. For Augustine's gradually increasing interest in the martyrs, due primarily to his encounters with the Donatists, see Tarcisius J. van Bavel, "The Cult of the Martyrs in St. Augustine: Theology versus Popular Religion?" in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans, ed. by M. Lamberights and P. Van Deun, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Louvaniensium 117 (Leuven: University Press and Peeters, 1995), pp. 351-361.

8. See Augustine Confessions 6.2, Civ. Dei 8.27, Epp. 22.5-6, 29.10, 28.8-9, Serm. 311.5, Enn. in Ps. 32/2.1.5, and the chronology given in Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique chrétienne aux premiérs siècles: Les témoignages de Tertullien, Cyprien et Augustin à la lumière de l'archéologie africaine (Paris: Beauchesne, 1980), p. 124. R. van den Broek discusses the phenomenon of funeral meals in the East and the West in "Popular Religious Practices and Ecclesiastical Policies in the Early Church," in Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies, ed. by Pieter Hendrik Vrijhof and Jacques Waardenburg, Religion and Society 19 (The Hague, Paris, and New York: Mouton, 1979), pp. 1-54.

9. See Mor. eccl. cath. 1.34.75, Contra Faust. 20.4 and 21, Epp. 22.3 and 29.2.9, Serm. 273.8 and 351.4, and Enn. in Ps. 69.22.5, all cited in W. H. C. Frend "The North African Cult of the Martyrs," in Jenseitsvorstellungen in Antike und Christenstun: Gedenkscrift für Alfred Stuiber, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Erganzungband 9 (Münster Westfalen: Ascendorffsche, 1982), pp. 154-167, specifically, p. 162.

10. See note 5 above.

11. Civ. Dei 22.8.

12. Augustine, De natura et anima 1.10.12; Concilium Hipponense 393 §5 (CCL 149.21).

13. Serm. 53A.13, 138.2, 380.8; C.Gaudentium 1.20.22

14. See the list in F. van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop: Religion and Society at the Dawn of the Middle Ages, trans. by Brian Battershaw and G. R. Lamb (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1961, repr. 1983), p. 646, nn. 22-25.

15. Cf. van der Meer, p.646, nn 31-35.

16. Augustine, Serm. 319.8

17. Rom 13.13 in Ep. 22.3 echoing the verse of his own conversion (cf. Confessions 8.29).

18. Ep. 22.6.

19. Ep. 2.8.

20. Quasten, p. 329; cf. Brevarium Hipponense 29 (CCL 149.41).

21. Augustine, Serm. 113A, 128.2.3, 280.6.6 and 285.5.

22. For examples of pre-death power, see the Passio Perpetuae 4.1 and 10, and 7.9-8.4, a story still read in the liturgy in the fifth century; see Augustine Serm. 260-262.

23. Augustine, Serm. 159.1, 317.1 and 280.6.

24. Enn. in Ps. 85.24.30; see the discussion in Michele Pellegrino, "Chiesa e martirio in Sant'Agostino," Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 1/2 (1965), pp. 191-227; repr. in Riccerche patristiche (1938-1980) (Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1982), specifically, pp. 203-206. Admittedly this is at the level of episcopal rhetoric; popular rhetoric may not have been quite so careful about the agency of Christ.

25. Augustine, Enn. in Ps. 39.1 and 16; Fulgentius, De Stephano 3.13 and 14, and Fragmneta 16, 31, and 34; Vercundus of Iunca, In cant. Deut. 6 where Stephen is used equally against heretics and Jews.

26. Augustine, In Ioh. Ev. 3.21.63 and 6.23; Fulgentius, Dicta regis Thrasmundi, l. 885. See the discussion in Pellegrino, pp. 193-196.

27. Enn. in Ps. 34.2.1, 34.2.13, 118.9.2-3; In Ioh. Ev. 6.23 and 11.15.

28. Registrum ecclesiae Carthaginensis 345-348 (CCL 149.4).

29. Serm. 273.

30. Serm. 64A.3, Enn. in Ps. 34.2.1, 32.2.15, 85.1, 101.2.2.

31. Enn. in Ps. 63.1 and 15, and 102.4.

32. Enn. in Ps. 63.2 and 69.3; cf. 127.1.

33. Serm. 68.3 and 69.5. This was a common theme for Catholics and Donatists in the last decade of the fourth century; see Tilley, The Bible, chapter 5.

34. Augustine, Enn. in Ps. 40.1.

35. Serm. 310.2 and Denis 14.5.

36. In Ioh. Ev. 84.1.

37. In Ioh. Ev. 84.1-2 and 105.4

38. Tyconius: The Book of Rules, trans. by William Babcock, Texts and Translations 31, Early Christian Literature series 7 (Altanta: Scholars, 1989), Rule 1, pp. 3-14. For Augustine's creative transformation of Tyconius' rules, see Maureen A.Tilley, "Understanding Augustine Misunderstanding Tyconius," Studia Patrsitica 27 (1991), ed. by Elizabeth Livingstone (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), pp. 405-408.

39. Anger: Augustine, Mai 19.1 and Serm. 298.11; avarice, Quodvultdeus, De cataclysmo 1; inordinate respect: Augustine, Serm. 65.1 and 3, and 276

40. Augustine, Serm. 59.15, 127.5, Lambot 12, Enn. in Ps. 59.5-6 and 59.13, 69.8 and 69.14; Quodvultdeus, Sermo de tempore barbarico 1.5.

41. Quodvultdeus, De quattuor virtutibus caritatis 14; Augustine, In Ioh. Ev. 51.13; cf. 113.2

42. Augustine, Enn. in Ps. 32.2.1, 127.6, 137.17, and 140.21.

43. Augustine, Enn. in Ps. 101.1.3 and 102.1.3.

44. Augustine, Serm.229H and 273, In Ioh. Ev. 43.12; cf. Serm. 65.17; Quodvultdeus, De quattuor virtutibus caritatis 14.

45. Augustine, Serm. 128.2.3, 285.5 and Denis 14.3; Enn. in Ps. 4.16, 39.16.29, 69.3.25; Quaest. in Hept. 7.49.3.

46. Witness the great building program at Hippo for Theogenes, the Twenty Martyrs, Leontius, and James. See the preaching of Augustine at Hippo, Carthage and elsewhere in Serm. 148, 252.4, 257, 260, 262, 273, 317, 356325, 326 and Morin 2.3; Ep. 29; Civ. Dei 22.8 and 10; and the discussion in Saxer, pp. 174-197.

47. E.g., at Jebel Oust and Haidra.

48. Civ. Dei 22.8 ad init. and De cura mort. 18.21 concerning the miracles at the tombs of Felix at Nola and of Gervasius and Protasius at Milan.

49. For the lists of mixtures, see F. Van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop: Religion and Society at the Dawn of the Middle ages, trans. by Brian Battershaw and G.R. Lamb (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 480

50. Civ. Dei 22.8.21, Serm. 79, 94, 321-322, Wilmart 12.5.

51. Civ. Dei 22.8. See also Saxer, pp. 255-257. Of the twenty-five miracle stories he found in Augustine, only two were associated with North African saints. For eight others, no saint was named. Of these, one was through the agency of holy dirt and three associated with baptism. The remaining fifteen were through the agency of non-African saints.

52. Civ. Dei 22.10.

53. Civ. Dei 22.8.