PETILIANUS. - Donatist bishop of Cirta (Constantine); he was a Catholic catechumen; but it is perhaps excessive to interpret the abreptum (from the Church) of St. Augustine (C. litt. Pet., II, 104, 239) in the sense of "baptized (Donatist) against his will."
He was one of the orators of the sect at the conference of Carthage in 411; he had addressed to his presbyters a polemical letter against the Catholic Church, of which St. Augustine first drafted a brief refutation, around 400, then, having obtained the full text, wrote a second one, reproducing P.'s text and rebutting his observations point by point; finally, when P. had replied, he composed (around 402) the third of the books Contra litteras Petiliani.
P. rejects the accusation of "rebaptizing" inasmuch as, he asserts, that of the Catholics is not true Baptism; they do not have valid Sacraments, even their prayers are vain, indeed they do not even have the right to call themselves Christians, because they persecute the Donatists. To these reproaches, and to the other arguments by now traditional in the sect, which he takes up again with great virulence, P. adds personal accusations and insinuations against St. Augustine, who also responded with the short treatise De unico baptismo around 410 to another writing on Baptism by P., in defense of which the grammarian Cresconius had meanwhile intervened.
Bibliography4 works
Alberto Pincherle