MILZIADE, POPE, saint. – The Liber Pontificalis states that he was of African origin. His pontificate, using the data supplied by the Catalogo Liberiano and the Liber Pontificalis, but correcting their errors, can be dated from 2 July 311 to 10 (11) January 314, thus precisely to the years that witnessed Constantine’s victory over Maxentius and the Edict of Milan, the end of the persecutions, and the triumph of Christianity.
Already in April 311, Galerius had promulgated the Edict of Toleration (Lactantius, De mort. persecut., 34), which Maxentius too, although he had not signed it, applied extensively, restoring to M., through the urban prefecture, the property confiscated from the Roman Church at the beginning of the persecution (St. Augustine, Brevic. Collat., III, 18, 34).
M. soon had to deal with the Donatist schism. Since the dissidents had requested the bishops of Gaul as judges from Constantine, the Emperor commissioned the Pope, by letter, to examine the controversy (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., X, 5). In October 313, M. held a council, attended by three Gallic and fifteen Italian bishops, in the palace donated to him by Fausta, in domum Faustae in Laterano; it recognized the regularity of the election and the validity of the ordination of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage, while condemning Donatus, who had succeeded the usurper Majorinus in the see of Carthage (Optatus of Milevis, De schismate donat., I, 23-24; St. Augustine, Brevic. Collat., III, 12, 24 and III, 17, 32). The Donatists never forgave M. this judgment, and toward the end of the fourth century accused him of having handed over the Scriptures and offered incense during the persecution of Diocletian, or at least of indirect “tradition,” inasmuch as he had retained in the clergy, and sent to receive the restitution of the confiscated property, two clerics guilty of “tradition”; St. Augustine demonstrated that these accusations were unfounded (St. Augustine, De unico baptismo, 27; Brevic. Collat., III, 18, 34-46).
The Liber Pontificalis attributes disciplinary and liturgical decrees to him: the prohibition of fasting on Sunday and Thursday, and the introduction of the practice of bringing to the various urban churches a particle of the Eucharist consecrated by the Pope (“fermentum”). Other decrees are attributed to him by Pseudo-Isidore. M. was buried in the Cemetery of Callistus, and his name was entered in the Depositiio episcoporum under 10 January.