Global InformationPurpurius information
Purpurius[1] was a Donatist bishop from 305 to 320 AD, who was instrumental in establishing the Donatist movement of Roman North Africa.
He is known from several correspondences.[2] It was Purpurius who first introduced the likening of the Donatist community as a new expression of the Israelites following Moses in the Desert.[3]
He was an attendee at the Synod of Cirta, the beginning of the Donatist movement. Optatus tells he had a dispute with Secundus of Tigisis,[4] who charged him as a murderer,[5] a charge he admitted. The accusation was he had murdered his nephews at Milevus, though we are not told what the circumstance of the act were. Augustine[6] describes him as a violent man.
Optatus also claims he was brigand and had stolen vinegar from the imperial stores.[7]
All this, however, was not enough to exclude him from the meeting though, as Tilley puts it
...since Purpurius had not been a traditor... he was still a member – albeit a sinful member – of the true church. His private affairs, even murder, were no bar to his participation in the ritual of consecration.[8]
- ^ Henri Irénée Marrou, André Mandouze, Anne-Marie La Bonnardière, Prosopographie de l'Afrique chrétienne (303-533) (Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1 Jan. 1982) [1].
- ^ Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Fortress Press, 1997) p80-81
- ^ Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Fortress Press, 1997). p80.
- ^ Wace, Henry, Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (Delmarva Publications, Inc., 1911).
- ^ Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church: from the Original Documents, to the close of the Second Council of Nicaea A.D. 787 (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1 Feb. 2007 ) p 129.
- ^ Augustine, Contra Cresconium, III.30
- ^ J. Stevenson, W. H. C. Frend, A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337 (Baker Books, 1 Jul. 2013)
- ^ Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Fortress Press, 1997)p102.