It has been tempting for many historians of fourth century North Africa to view the Donatist Church as a patriarchal movement. However Donatism exhibited varied contours during its period of ascendancy in north Africa, and the female presence often led to tension, even schism, within itself. The purpose of this article is to discuss the Donatist movement through a gender perspective and to explain the role of the women who lived between the Great Persecution and the Conference of Carthage (411). In particular, the article examines Lucilla and other women of the Donatist movement.

The present essay, starting from a close examination of the available sources, intends to retrace the historical dynamics of the controversy between Stephen of Rome and Cyprian of Carthage about single baptism. The analysis highlights more clearly than other studies the need to justify, because of the urgent context of the schism of Novatian, the legitimacy of the different traditions of the Churches, something previously taken for granted. The difficulty of this enterprise, combined with the imponderable human factor, represented by the personalities of the protagonists, generates misunderstandings. A further factor is the decisive role played by Dionysius of Alexandria in resolving the conflict, which confirmed the preferential relationship between Rome and Alexandria.

The aim of this study is to analyse a passage of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione (vv. 278-292) which relates to insipientes, interpreted as those who do not accept that the rational observation of nature proves the existence of a unique creator God. Such a refusal is believed to make them worthy of eternal damnation. The resulting concept of sapientia involves both ratio and voluntas; it is also connected with gnoseology and soteriology. A similar concept can be found in the Aquitanian poetry of the fifth century and in the theology of the so-called Semipelagians. This similarity calls into question the traditional dating and the supposed area of origin of the Carmen.

Tertullian is an important participant in the early dialogue between Christian faith and Latin culture. The aim of this article is to provide some elements useful in reconstructing the idea of philosophia in the writings of this apologist, following a metaphilosophical approach. After briefly presenting the occurrences of philosophical terms (listed in the Appendix), the Author proposes that Tertullian conceives of philosophia as an erroneous form of knowledge, which is not capable of adequately dealing with reality. Considering Tertullian’s thought from a metaphilosophical perspective could therefore be conducive to better understanding and explaining his negative view of philosophy.

The attribution of De vocatione omnium gentium to Prosper of Aquitaine, from the 17th century, has been the object of multiple debates, the results of whichare consolidated in the introduction to the critical edition of the tractate found in CSEL 97 (OAW 2009) in which the manuscript tradition was represented by a forked crest. The editors have considered the variae lectiones as errors, which differentiate two lines of transmission, not incorporated into the text of the edition. The variae lectiones, however, according to the claims of Franco Gori, would be due, rather, to the intentional and intelligent interventions of a proofreader or an editor, perhaps by the author himself.