A construção da primazia e da autoridade da ecclesia de Roma no contexto da controvérsia donatista: embates entre donatistas e nicenianos pela unidade da Ecclesia de Cristo (Sécs.III-V E.C.)

Abstract

Study of the relationship between the resistance of the Donatist movement to the Nicenian project of universalizing Ecclesia and the strengthening of the primacy and authority of the ecclesia of Rome between the third and fifth centuries AD. From the fourth century, under the rule of the Emperor Constantine, Christian communities have their legal status changed from superstitio to religio licita, receiving validation as one more religion existing in the Empire and, gradually, reaching the level of official religion. Such integration of Christians into the emperor's political project considers the level of acceptance and diffusion of Christian communities in the empire in various social strata and also the social welfare service provided by them, crediting them to the role of social aggregation of the unity project of the Roman Empire. However, for Christian communities to offer the desired cohesion to the diversity that composes the Empire, it is necessary for them to become a unified body, since the heterogeneous reality of their existence causes frequent disputes and rivalries, which would not be coherent with the policy adopted by Constantine and with his expectation placed on Christians. Within the Christian plurality, we find, among other communities, the Donatists and the Nicenians, among whom there is no room for negotiations around the unity. The Nicenians, an alignment of communities around the primacy of Rome that has a universalizing structure and ideal that identifies and places itself at the service of Constantine's project of unity, while also benefited and recognized as Catholics, desire the absorption of the Donatists in their universal Ecclesia, accusing them of schismatics and later of heretics. The Donatists, communities of Christians in North Africa that cherish the autonomy of their rites and beliefs, for which they claim the authority of the African Christian tradition, evoking names such as that of Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (mid-3rd century AD). Ecclesia whose concept of catholicity is linked to the integrity of their lineage, which goes back to the martyrs, and to the purity of their adherents, especially those who exercise ecclesiastical functions, and are not yet in favor of the empire-Ecclesia alliance. It is a period of construction of Christian identities, whose conflicts will be unbalanced by the political factor that represents the need for stability of the Roman Empire, which can not passively watch the ruin of the base of its unity, represented by the identities of the Christian communities, fighting, in partnership with the Nicenians, the dissonant elements of its project