THE USE OF THE TERM “CATHOLIC” IN THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY

Paola Marone (Roma)

A letter written by Ignatius to Christians in Smyrna around 110 is the earliest surviving witness to the use of the term “Catholic”. Sometime in the first decade of the second century, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was condemned to death ad bestias, that is, by wild animals in the amphitheater. He was sent under guard with other prisoners to Rome for the games there, probably in the Flavian Amphitheater, what today we call the Colosseum. As his party made its way up the western coast of Asia Minor, he wrote to a string of Christian communities there after he had received visits from their envoys. When writing to the Christians of Smyrna, he remarked that the Eucharist should be celebrated only by the bishop or someone he delegates, for “wherever the bishop appears, let the whole community be gathered, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is ἡ καθολική ἐκκλησία”1. A generation later, in the same city, old bishop Polycarp was about to be martyred in the amphitheater. But the narrator of his martyrdom reported that when the police came to arrest him in a country house where he had taken refuge, since it was dinnertime, he ordered food and drink to be set out for them, while he went aside and prayed aloud for two hours. In his prayer, he remembered everyone he had ever encountered and ἡ καθολική ἐκκλησία throughout the world. The narrator finished the report of Polycarp’s martyrdom by concluding that now Polycarp is enjoying the glory of God and Jesus Christ, shepherd of ἡ καθολική ἐκκλησία throughout the world.

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Paola Marone – The Use of the Term Catholic' in the Donatist Controversy [Pomoerivm 6 (2007-2008)] by Patrologia Latina, Graeca et Orientalis on Scribd