Entre táticas e estratégias: tolerância e intolerância religiosa no epistolário de Agostinho de Hipona (390-430)

Abstract

This work investigates the correspondence between the North-African Catholic bishop Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and his Donatist and pagan interlocutors. The analysis of those discourses reveals strategies and tactics employed by each of those involved in the religious conflicts of that context; also, it shows a reality in which tolerance and intolerance, dissension and coexistence, are present. The use of Augustine’s letters as basis for research allowed for a look at such realities from concrete situations of the bishop and his interlocutors’ day to day. Investigation results revealed a world of conflicts in which each group fought to affirm its identity through discourse and praxis. However, it has also revealed a world of coexistence, appropriation and reappropriation, equivalence and continuity. As intolerance and repression against religious groups that diverged from Catholicism grew, situations of coexistence decreased; and those of violence and clash increased instead. The Empire’s coercive force — whose legislation favored Catholicism and criminalized its adversaries — backed Augustine, who from that advantageous position established strategies for the legitimation of such position. His interlocutors responded by availing themselves of various tactics. Regarding pagans, there are examples from both the employment of violence and dialogue attempts; regarding Donatists, the practice of rebaptism, accusations of persecution and the refusal to reply to Augustine’s letters and debate him. Those were all expressions of identity affirmation and resistance to Catholic dominance.