Diligite homines, interficite errores. The Ethics of Saint Augustine (354-430) in Approaching the Donatist Issue

Abstract. This study addresses Augustin’s position, as the exponent of Ca-tholicity in the West, from an ethical perspective in relation to the Donatist schism which in 401-411 was a serious blow to the Church. The Church was facing a crisis caused by the bishops who had succumbed to the persecution and thus became traditores (traitors). The Donatists were a particular group within the Church who contended that in order for the Curch to be holy, united and truly full of grace it ought to remove those who had compro-mised. Augustin’s intervention in this delicate problem was rooted in an orderly distribution of love: first God and then one’s neighbor. Augustin assumed the role of mediator between the Donatists and the Church with the intention of winning the Donatists to Catholicity. To ascertain this he appealed to ethical values rooted in the concept of Absolute Good, founded in love as the motivation of any action (dilige, et quod uis fac―love and do what you will), which, on the one hand, elicits the love of people and de-stroys the errors, and on the other hand, when necessary, imposes the juridi-co-political correction of civil nature (coercitio)