Novatian and Novatianism

NOVATIAN AND NOVATIANISM. - Novatian was a Roman presbyter of the 3rd century, founder of the schismatic Church of the Novatians.

The exact form of the name is undoubtedly Novatianus, and not Novatus (Ναυατός) as Eusebius (Hist. eccl., VI, 43) and later Greek literature call him (alongside the forms Ναυατός or Ναβατός). The Novatians designated themselves as "the pure" (καθαροί = mundi), in opposition to the members of the Catholic Church stained by communion with sinners.

I. SOURCES

What survives is not without a certain passion; in particular the letters of Cornelius see in him nothing but "a monster of cunning and wickedness" (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 43, 6). The contemporary accounts are: 1) the collection of Cyprianic letters (Ep., 44-55; 59-61; 68; 69; 73) with letters of Cyprian, of Cornelius and of the Roman confessors. 2) The narrative of Eusebius, deriving from a collection of Roman letters, with substantial extracts from a letter of Cornelius to Fabius of Antioch (Hist. eccl., VI, 43, 4-22). 3) The letters of Dionysius of Alexandria, among them one to N. himself (Eusebius, ibid., 45). 4) The pseudo-Cyprianic treatise Ad Novatianum (ed. G. Hartel, CSEL, III, 3, pp. 52-69), composed by an African bishop (v. B. Capelle, in Bull. d'ancien littér. chrét. lat., 1924, n. 236). The later accounts are more important for knowledge of Novatianism than for that of N. (St. Ambrose, De paenitentia [PL 16, 465-524]; Pacian of Barcelona in the 3 letters to the Novatian deacon Sempronianus [PL 13, 1051-82]). In the East, Eusebius of Emesa, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and Chrysostom wrote against Novatianism. The history of the Novatian communities is described with a certain sympathy in the Historia ecclesiastica of Socrates (PG 67).

II. LIFE OF NOVATIAN AND NOVATIANISM

N. was a native of Rome or, at least, of Italy. Philostorgius (Hist. eccl., VIII, 15) calls him a native of Phrygia, on account of the tendency to establish a link between the doctrine of N. and the rigorism of the Phrygian prophecy (v. MONTANUS AND MONTANISM). His conversion took place in mature age; he was a man of great talent, thoroughly versed in sacred and profane letters, endowed above all with a perfect art of oratory, making (Cyprian [Ep., 55, 24; 60, 3]: «facundiae venenatae lacula contorquens»; Jerome [Ep., 36, 1]: «eloquentissimus vir»). Even the ironic expressions with which Cornelius presents N. to Fabius of Antioch (ὁ θνημόσιος, ὁ λημερότατος, ὁ θνηματοστής [Eusebius, loc. cit.]) attest the esteem enjoyed by N. in the Roman community. N. was also aware of his own cultural superiority (Cyprian, Ep., 55, 24), ambitious, of austere and unsociable character. Baptism had been conferred on him during a grave illness, by aspersion, without Confirmation (σφρενός) by the bishop. In the early Church there was considerable distrust of the Baptism of the «clinici»; nevertheless, on account of his exceptional qualities, N. was ordained «presbyter» by a Roman bishop (probably St. Fabian), overcoming the opposition of the clergy and of some laymen. In history N. appears for the first time at the time of the persecution of Decius. During the long vacancy of the Apostolic See from the death of Fabian (Jan. 250) to the election of Cornelius (March 251) he occupied a position of the first rank among the Roman clergy. It was N. who wrote two of the letters sent by the Roman presbyters to Carthage, concerning the delicate question of the «lapsi» (Ep., 30, 36 in the Cyprianic collection). N. then manifested his full agreement with the ideas of the primate of Africa (v. LAPSI). But when in March 251 a great majority elected Cornelius to the see of Rome, N., urged on also by the African agitator Novatus, placed himself at the head of a rigorist party of some presbyters and confessors and had himself consecrated bishop by three simple country bishops who, according to Cornelius, half drunk, ordained him at the tenth hour (Eusebius, op. cit., VI, 43, 8-9). The schism immediately proved very violent. N. devoted himself to a most active propaganda; rejected by St. Cyprian, he sought to win over particularly the Churches of the East. He had no success with Dionysius of Alexandria, who insistently invited him to return to unity: «One must endure everything rather than tear the Church of God» (v. Ch. L. Feltoe, The letters and other remains of Dionysius of Alexandria, Cambridge 1904, p. 62); but Fabius of Antioch, at a certain moment, must have inclined toward the schism (Eusebius, op. cit., VI, 44, 1). Dionysius, in the form of a consultation, tried to bring him back to a milder practice toward the lapsi and, after the death of Fabius, intervened personally at a council convoked at Antioch, in which peace was restored among the Churches of Asia, gravely disturbed by Novatian rigorism (Eusebius, op. cit., VII, 5, 1). Cornelius (v.) assembled, in the autumn of 251, some sixty bishops and many priests and deacons in a Roman council, in which N. was solemnly excommunicated, while reconciliation was assured to all the libellatici and, at least in danger of death, also to the sacrificati.

On the events of the last years and on the death of N. there is no precise information. According to the testimony of Socrates (Hist. eccl., IV, 28: PG 67, 540), N. died a martyr under Valerian (257-58). The assertion of the Novatian deacon Sempronianus agrees with this, according to which Cyprian, in one of his letters, alluding to N. wrote: «praecessit me adversarius meus» (Pacian, Ep. II ad Symproniaeum: PL 13, 1062). From the first chapter of the De cibis Iudaicis it appears that N. lived for some time far from his community, probably in exile; such a death could have been considered as martyrdom.

III. DOGMATIC IMPORTANCE OF THE SCHISM OF NOVATIAN AND NOVATIANISM

Some have sought to see in the reconciliation of the lapsi by St. Cyprian and St. Cornelius a break with the ancient conception of the Church (a "Church of saints" that definitively excludes grave sinners), and N. would represent the protest of the primitive "Church of salvation" against the Church of the Sacraments and of priests (H. Koch). Certainly, as in the time of Tertullian, even in the middle of the 3rd century there were rigorist bishops who closed the Church entirely to the lapsi. But that these rigorist tendencies did not represent the ancient tradition is clear from the indisputable fact that St. Cyprian and the Roman confessors, moreover inclined to severity, and N. himself, at the beginning, admitted the possibility of the reconciliation of apostates. The question that so preoccupied St. Cyprian was not whether the ecclesiastical "venia" should be granted to the lapsi, but when it should be given. That is, both at Carthage and at Rome the principle of "paenitentia plena et iusta" held; peace would have been given, but the fruit of reconciliation could not be taken "crudo tempore" (Cyprian, Ep., 16, 2, and note the identical affirmation of N. in Ep., 36, 1). Therefore Cyprian and Cornelius are not the authors of a revolutionary change in penitential practice, and N. is not the advocate of ancient tradition: it was N. who changed. At the time of the persecution he rejected only the premature reconciliation of the lapsi and regarded their desire for ecclesiastical peace as the fulfillment of an evident duty (Ep., 30, 7); he consented to the reconciliation even of the dying who had not yet performed full penance; indeed, on this point, he, with the Roman clergy, showed the way to St. Cyprian. His schism therefore does not have its root in the penitential question. This had to justify his rebellion against St. Cornelius, caused by ambition and personal rivalry. Just as N. did not hesitate to ally himself, against Cornelius, with the African intriguer Novatus, leader of the laxists at Carthage, so he renounced his own initially moderate position, later denying the Church the right to pardon apostasy, even at the moment of death (Ep., 55, 28). St. Cyprian does not fail to note the inconsistency of N.; that while he cruelly rejects the lapsi, he tolerates in his communion the "fraudatores et moechi" (Ep., 55, 26). The later Novatians, more logical, in fact excluded from reconciliation also the other guilty of grave sins.

IV. THE WORKS AND THE DOCTRINE

Of N.'s literary legacy, which according to St. Jerome (De viris illustribus, 70) was quite considerable, the following are certainly authentic: two treatises, which in the manuscript tradition go under the name of Tertullian: De Trinitate (probably composed before the year 250) and De cibis iudaicis (written after the schism); two treatises, De spectaculis and De bono pudicitiae, which had found a place among the works of St. Cyprian; finally the two letters to St. Cyprian (Ep., 30, 36).

The De spectaculis inculcates the prohibition against attending pagan theatrical performances; in the De bono pudicitiae N. extols the various degrees of chastity (virginity, continence in marriage, conjugal fidelity); the De cibis Iudaicis is a pastoral letter sent from exile to the Novatian community of Rome, to demonstrate that the time of the old law is over, that Christians are free from every prohibition concerning foods, with the exception of meat sacrificed to idols. The treatise devoted to the Trinitarian dogma exercised a notable influence on Western theology. In it N. shows himself indebted to Theophilus of Antioch, to Irenaeus, Hippolytus and particularly to Tertullian (Adversus Praxeam); one notes a perfect identity between the Verbum of Tertullian and the Sermo of N. While preserving some trace of the distinction between Logos endidithetos and Logos prophorikós, N. surpasses his master with the affirmation of the eternal birth of the Son; it is no longer the "procession" from the Father, at the creation of the world, that gives the Son the status of a distinct hypostasis. N. likewise rejects modalism (Sabellius) as well as adoptionism. The subordinationist note of his predecessors is not lacking in N. Only the Father is invisible; the Son has shown himself in the theophanies, is subordinate and inferior to the Father. The theology of the Holy Spirit in N. is more rudimentary. The Macedonians invoke his authority. It should be noted, however, that his asserted inferiority in relation to the Son seems to be of the same order as the subordination of the Son to the Father. The latter, source of the divine life, communicates it to the Son, who transmits it to the Holy Spirit.

V. THE NOVATIAN CHURCH

Novatianism spread as Montanism had 80 years earlier: N.'s postulates too appeared to many as a movement of spiritual renewal within the Church itself, and the penitential question could seem a purely disciplinary matter. To this was added N.'s propagandistic activity. "He sends to very many cities new apostles chosen by him," says St. Cyprian as early as 252 (Ep., 55, 24). Soon there were Novatian churches in almost the whole Empire, giving the schism an ecumenical character. Rigorism, in its later development, was further accentuated, and reconciliation was denied to all grave sinners. Thus for centuries a schismatic Church lived alongside the Catholic Church, which sustained with the Catholics the struggle and the persecutions of the Arian and Macedonian controversy. The sincere attachment of the Novatians to the homoousion procured for them the favor of the Catholic emperors. Constantine in the year 326 permitted them to possess churches and cemeteries. Whether the Emperor truly revoked this edict of toleration 10 years later is not certain (cf. I. Daniele, I documenti costantiniani della « Vita Constantini » di Eusebio di Cesarea, Rome 1938). The Council of Nicaea (can. 8) showed itself very conciliatory toward the Novatians; on returning to the Church, their ordinations would have been considered valid and their bishops authorized to receive the honors of their title. Theodosius I reconfirmed to the Novatians the use of their churches, because of their Trinitarian orthodoxy, proven in the religious dispute (383) in which the Novatian bishop Agelius and his lector Sisinnius had taken an important part (Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 10; PG 67, 584-93). But the emperors Honorius (year 412; Cod. Theod. de haeret., 52) and Theodosius II (ibid., 59) included the Novatians in the anti-heretical legislation. At Rome Innocent I (401-17) and Celestine I (422-32) took away their churches (Socrates, Hist. eccl., VII, 9 and 11); at Alexandria they were closed by Cyril (Socrates, ibid., VII, 7). But the sect seems to have been strong in the Eastern Church for quite some time still, because at the end of the 6th century the patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria composed against the Novatians a work in 6 books of which Photius has preserved extracts.

AD NOVATIANUM

A polemical writing of uncertain date (not 251), but certainly from the era of the Decian persecution. The author is unknown, the attribution to Sixtus II or to another Roman bishop is arbitrary, and not even the place of origin can be determined. The dependence in style on Cyprian suggests an African. It is not known whether it is a treatise or a sermon. The first interpretation, however, is suggested by the literary character of the beginning of the little work. Nothing new is learned about N. and his movement. Literary coincidences with Pacian are explained by Pacian's dependence on the author of ad Novatianum.

Erik Peterson