PARMENIANO. - Donatist bishop of Carthage. St. Optatus (I, 5; III, 3) calls him a “foreigner” (peregrinus) and thus not well informed about African affairs; from another polemical passage (II, 7) it has been conjectured that P. was of Spanish or Gallic birth. In any case, he was bishop in the time of Julian the Apostate and devoted himself to reorganizing the schismatic Church and winning adherents for it, with a very active literary output.
He wrote, in fact, around 362, a work in five books, or tractates, against Catholics, of which it is possible to reconstruct at least its general outline through the refutation by St. Optatus. The title may have been Adversus Ecclesiam traditorum (Monceaux) or perhaps, deriving from St. Cyprian, De catholica Ecclesia (or De Ecclesiae unitate) adversus traditores. The five books were to treat: of Baptism, which P. praised, comparing it to the Flood and to circumcision; of the unity of the Church, according to the excessively rigorous conception of his sect; of Catholics, as traditores or accomplices or conniving with them; again of Catholics, accusing them of having recourse to civil authority, which had employed force with accusations of cruelty against the “operators of unity,” Paul and Macarius; of passages of Scripture that condemned Catholics (v. DONATISM). When treating of the true Church, he enumerated the qualities it must possess as the spouse of Christ: cathedra (i.e., apostolic succession), angelus (of Baptism), Spiritus, fons, sigillum, altare; but he lumped together, without distinction, true heretics and schismatics, considering their sacrifices equally sacrilegious.
There is no evidence that P. replied to the refutation by St. Optatus. He did, however, take lively interest in what a layman of his sect, Ticonius (v.), was saying and writing, to whom he addressed an open letter reaffirming the now traditional principles of his sect, namely the necessity of breaking off all relations with sinners, even at the cost of isolating themselves from the universal Church. This letter, written about 378, came after P.’s death to the knowledge of St. Augustine, who refuted it around 400 in the three books Contra epistolam Parmeniani.