How did Donatism affect the early church?

Answer 1

In 311 CE, Caecilian was consecrated Catholic bishop of Carthage. One of his consecrators had collaborated with the Roman emperor Diocletian in his Great Persecution of the Church, and to many in North Africa, this invalidated his ordination, even if he himself was innocent. In 313 Donatus was consecrated as a rival bishop to Caecilian.

The Donatists, followers of Donatus, believed that the Church exists only for those who have kept themselves faithful to God. Their church was a communion of the holy and saved, not a hospital for sinners, and those who had renounced their faith by collaborating with the persecutors of the Christians were to be permanently excluded. If the Catholic Church was willing to reconcile with traitors, the Donatists would not.

Although the Donatists were simply concerned with religious right and wrong, they spawned a terrorist organisation called the Circumcellions, who roved the countryside and the cities attacking their opponents. The Circumcellions avidly embraced martyrdom. When they were not attacking their co-religionists, they sought out and attended pagan rites in order to denounce them, hoping to provoke the Romans to make them martyrs.

The Donatists showed an ugly side of early Christianity, intolerant and socially destructive. The Circumcellions, whom the Donatists officially disavowed, simply took these attributes to an extreme. Whether the Christian persecution of the pagan temples, which was to follow, was influenced by the Donatist and Circumcellion example would be hard to say.