CRESCONIUS. – An African Donatist teacher who undertook to defend the Donatist bishop Petilianus against St Augustine in a lengthy letter addressed to him (c. 402), in which he revealed himself as a good writer and polemicist but poorly versed in theology and Holy Scripture.
St Augustine replied to him in 406 with the four books Contra Cresconium, in which he has preserved, in quotations, the greater part of Cresconius’s work (PL 43, 445; CSEL, LII). Cf. P. Monceaux, Hist. littéraire de l'Afrique chrétienne, VI, Paris 1922, p. 87, from which Moricea, II, p. 745.