PARMENIANO. — Donatist bishop of Carthage. S. Ottato (I, 5; III, 3) calls him “a foreigner” (peregrinus) and therefore not well informed about African matters; from another polemical passage (II, 7), it has been conjectured that P. was of Hispanic or Gallic birth. In any case, he was a bishop in the time of Giuliano l’Apostata and devoted himself to reorganizing the schismatic Church and winning it adherents, with an also highly intensive literary activity.
Indeed, around 362, he wrote a work in 5 books, or tractatus, against the Catholics, of which it is possible to reconstruct at least the
general outline through the refutation by s. Ottato. Its title may have been Adversus Ecclesiam traditorum (Monceaux), or perhaps (following its derivation from s. Cipriano) De catholica Ecclesia (or De Ecclesiae unitate) adversus traditores. The five books must have dealt with: Baptism, which P. praised, comparing it with the Flood and circumcision; the unity of the Church, according to the excessively rigorist conception of his sect; the Catholics, as traditores or their accomplices or connivers; again the Catholics, accusing them of having appealed to the civil authorities, which had employed force amid accusations of cruelty against the “workers for unity,” Paolo and Macario; and passages of Scripture that sounded like a condemnation of the Catholics (v. DONATISMO). In treating of the true Church, he enumerated its dotes, which it must possess as the bride of Christ: cathedra (that is, apostolic succession), angelus (of Baptism), Spiritus, fons, sigillum, altare; but he lumped together, without distinction, actual heretics and schismatics, considering their sacrifices equally sacrilegious.
There is no evidence that P. replied to s. Ottato’s refutation. Instead, he was deeply concerned about what a layman of his sect, Ticonio (v.), was saying and writing; to him he addressed an open letter reaffirming the now traditional principles of his sect, namely, the necessity of breaking off every relationship with sinners, even at the cost of isolating oneself from the universal Church. This letter, written around 378, came to the knowledge of s. Agostino after P.’s death, and he refuted it around 400 in the three books Contra epistolam Parmeniani.