Gratian, by whom the Donatist churches were again closed, and all assemblies of adherents of the sect forbidden. It was not, however, until the commencement of the 5th century that the sect began to decline, owing partly to the occurrence of a division within it, but still more to the arguments used against it by the greatest theologian of the early church. The division arose out of a quarrel between Maximian, a deacon in Carthage, and Primian, the successor, of Parrnenian in the (Donatist) bishopric. Maximian, being excommunicated, formed a party which, as Neander puts it, " stood in precisely the same relation to the body of the Donatists as the Donatists themselves did to the Catholic church." The dispute was a source of weakness in itself, and still more by the unanswerable arguments it furnished to the Catholic party, who during the reign of the emperor Honorius made repeated and determined efforts to secure the extinction of the schism. In 405 an imperial edict was issued commanding the Donatists, under the severest penalties, to return to the Catholic church. Meanwhile the more appropriate weapon of argument was being effectively wielded by the Catholic party, under the leadership of one of the ablest controver sialists the Christian church has ever known. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, after several years negotiation, found it possible to arrange a great conference between the Donatists and the orthodox, which took place under the orders of the emperor at Carthage in 411. There were present two hundred and eighty-six Catholic and two hundred and seventy-nine Donatist bishops. Before entering on the proceedings the Catholics pledged themselves, if defeated, to give up their sees, while in the other event they promised to recognize the Donatists as bishops on their simply declaring their adherence to the Catholic church. The latter proposal, though it was received with scorn at the time, had perhaps ultimately as much influence as the resistless logic of Augustine in breaking the strength of the schism. The discussion, which lasted for three days, Augustine and Aurelius being the chief speakers on the one side, and Primian and Petiliau on the other, turned exclusively upon the two questions that had given rise to the schism, first, the question of fact, whether Felix had been a traditor, and secondly, the question of doctrine, whether a church by tolerance of unworthy members within its pale lost the essential attributes of purity and catholicity. On the second point, to which alone abiding interest attaches itself, the Catholic view was stated and defended by Augustine with a force of argument, an aptness of quotation from Scripture (often, however, founded on mis interpretation), and a beauty of language that all but compel assent. Nowhere else in polemical theology are there to be found more valuable statements as to the con nection between the divine and the human elements in the communication of grace, and as to the relative importance of the two attributes of catholicity and purity respectively as tests of the true church. It is to be observed, however, that on the side of Augustine as well as on that of his opponents there is the inevitable confusion of thought that arises from failure to apprehend the distinction between the
visible and the invisible church.The decision of Marcellinus, the imperial commissioner, was in favour of the Catholic party on both questions, and it was at once confirmed on an appeal to the emperor. As in the case of the similar decision almost exactly a century earlier, there followed the severest penal measures against the ^ schismatics, the clergy being banished and the laity B-jbjected to heavy fines. The extinction of the schism, which all the arguments of Augustine had failed to effect, was still less to be brought about by persecution. The Donatists continued to maintain an independent existence until the 7th century, when they disappear from history, along with the whole Christian church of North Africa, before the invading Saracens.
Sources.—1. Contemporary.—Optatus Milevitanha De Schismate Donatislarum Lib. VII., (Dupuis s cd., Paris, 1700), and several of the works of Augustine. 2. Modern.—Walsh s Entwurf ciner vollstdndigcn Historic der Ketzereien, Neander s Kirchcngeschichle, Hagenbach s Kirchengeschichte, Herzog s Encyclopddie, art. " Don- atisten," Robertson s History of the Christian Church.
DONATUS, Ælius, a grammarian and rhetorician, who taught at Rome in the middle of the 4th century A.D., had the honour of numbering St Jerome among his pupils, and was the author of a number of professional works. We still possess his Ars grammatica, consisting of three parts, De literis, syllabi s, pedibus et tonis, De octopartibiis orationis, and De barbarismo, solecismo, schematibus, et tropis ; the larger portion of his commentary on Terence, in a greatly interpolated condition ; and a few fragments of his notes on Virgil preserved and severely criticised by Servius. The first of these works, and especially the section De octo partibus, though possessing little claim to originality, and in fact evidently based on the same authorities which were used by Charisius and Diomedes, attained such popularity as a school-book that in the Middle Ages the writer s name became a common metonymy for a rudimentary treatise of any sort, and bade fair to furnish as permanent an addition to the English vocabulary as has been obtained in French from the name of Calepinus. Avaricia, for example, in the Vision of Piers Plowman, tells how he " drowe among draperes his donet to learn;" and bishop Pecock published about 1440 a Donat into Christian Religion. On the introduction of printing the little book was one of the first rendered accessible by the new process, and editions were soon multiplied to such an extent that the bibliography of Donatus is nearly as intricate a subject as that of the Bible. Copies still exist, though in a mutilated condition, of impressions produced by the early wooden-block system, details about which may be found in Sotzmann s " Aelteste Geschichte der Xylographie" in the Historische Taschenlmch for 1837. The Ars Grammatica is reprinted by Putsch in Gram. Latince Auctores Antiqui, Hanover, 1605, and by Lindemann in Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum, vol. i.; and the Commentaries on Terence, first published at Rome in 1472, may be found in Klotz s edition of the dramatist, 1838–40. The Commentary on Virgil discovered by J. Jovian Pontanus, and published by Scipio Capecius at Naples in 1535, is the work of a later grammarian of the same name, Tiberius Claudius Donatus.
See Teuffel, History of Roman Literature, vol. ii., and the writers there referred to.
Swabia-Neuburg, 25 miles N. of Augsburg, on the left bank of the Danube, at the confluence of the Wornitz. It is of some importance as a river port, and the centre of a considerable agricultural trade ; but its main interest is historical. Having grown up in the course of the 11th and 12th centuries under the protection of the castle of Mangoldstein, it became in the 13th the seat of the duke of Upper Bavaria, who, however, soon withdrew to Munich to escape if possible from the manes of his wife Maria of Brabant, whom he had there beheaded on an unfounded suspicion of infidelity. The town received the freedom of the empire in 1308, and maintained its position in spite of the encroachments of Bavaria till ]1607, when the interference of the Protestant inhabitants with the abbot of the Holy Cross called forth an imperial law authorizing the duke of Bavaria to inflict chastisement for the offence. In the Thirty Years War which soon after broke out, it was stormed by Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, and captured by King Ferdinand in 1634. In the vicinity the Bavarians
and French were defeated by Maryborough and Prince
