Primian (Primianus) was an early Christian Bishop of Carthage, and leader of the Donatist movement in Roman North Africa. Seen as a moderate by some in his faction, he was a controversial figure in a time of fragmentation of the Donatists, a reactionary branch of Christianity.
Biography He was the Bishop of Carthage, and hence the leader of the Donatist movement in Roman North Africa.Primianus, Donatist bp. of Carthage at Christian Classic Library.Peter Linehan, Janet L Nelson, The Medieval World (Routledge, 2013) p565.Caroline Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (OUP Oxford, 2007) p188.
He had succeeded Parmenian as bishop in about 391,Mesnage, Joseph; Toulotte, Anatole (1912). L'Afrique chrétienne : évêchés et ruines antiques. Description de l'Afrique du Nord. Musées et collections archéologiques de l'Algérie et de la Tunisie (in French). 17. Paris: E. Leroux. pp. 1–19. OCLC 609155089. winning a tightly fought election for the role.Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford University Press, 2001) p388. His rival, Maximian, a relative of the founder of their movement, saw him as a lax and conformist appeaser.
The rivalry did not end with the election. In 393 a council was called by Maximian where forty of the sixty-five Donatist bishops sided with Maximianus over Primian,Shira L. Lander, Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2016) p148. causing a split in the Donatist ranks. He was accused of readmitting the Claudianist faction back to the Donatist movement.Alban Butler, The lives of the fathers, martyrs, and other principal saints (1821), p480. Three years of proceedings in the Roman civil courts saw Primian retake Maximianist-held basilicas in Musti, Assuras and Membressa.Shira L. Lander, Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2016) p148. A number of the bishops split with Primian to follow Maximianus, forming their own short-lived schism.
Primian attended the Council of Bagai, at which he is said to have taunted his opponents.Primianus, Donatist bp. of Carthage at Christian Classics Library]. He also attended the Council of Carthage (411),Alban Butler, The lives of the fathers, martyrs, and other principal saints (1821), p484. where he made comment condemning the actions of Cyprian, the Donatist bishop of Tubursica, for immorality.Augustine. contra. Petil. iii. 34, 40.See also Dr. Sparrow Simpson, St. Augustine, and African Church Divisions (1910), p 52.
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