Religião e violência na África romana: Agostinho e os donatistas

Abstract

In 311 AD, a schism split the church of North Africa. A group of bishops of Numídia didn´t recognize the legitimacy of the consecration of Caecilian, new bishop of Carthage, alleging that he was consecrated by those that had betrayed the faith during the Great Persecution of Diocletian (284-305). They consecrate their own bishops and claim to be the true Christian Church, the “Church of martyrs”. The Catholics - supporters of Caecilian - call them “Donatists”, because one of his leaders, the bishop Donatus of Carthage. The interference of imperial power in the dispute helped the Catholic group and placed the Donatists in the crosshair of official repression. In this work we tried to analyze the speeches of Augustine of Hippo (354-430), in which he sought to legitimize the use of violence against the Donatists. Our hypothesis is that, to achieve this goal, he sought to build a representation stigmatizing their opponents who would justify the actions of the civil power against them. The methodology used is that of Discourse Analysis.