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By Vicente Fischer de Miranda Rodrigues

In the early fourth century, a violent religious controversy erupted in Roman North Africa, dividing the Christian community into Catholics and Donatists for more than a century. During this period, Christians fought over their past, over basilicas and, more importantly, over the legacy of the martyrs.

Condemned by church authorities and persecuted by emperors, the Donatists nevertheless remained devoted. Their rivals saw the unwavering commitment of the Donatists to their cause as a sign of religious fanaticism. However, the Donatists claimed to follow the example of the martyrs, casting themselves as the true heirs of the holy martyrs while branding their Catholic rivals as descendants of the traditores: Christians who had caved to Roman pressure during the persecutions. 

This wasn’t a theological dispute. Both sides told martyr stories, celebrated martyr anniversaries, and held up martyrs as the gold standard of Christian devotion. But they drew radically different conclusions from the same tradition. For Catholics, the martyrs were a source of unity. For Donatists, they were a battle cry.

This project asks what that conflict reveals about how radical religious commitment worked in late antiquity, not simply as a set of beliefs, but as something lived in the body, felt in the gut, and passed down through vivid storytelling. At the center of this study is a thorough analysis of the martyr narratives celebrated by the Donatists. The argument is that martyr narratives didn’t simply describe strong religious devotion - they cultivated it.