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Against the Donatists
St Optatus of Milevis, tr. Vassall-Phillips, 1917
Book 1, 16. The Quarrel of Lucilla Against Caecilian
No one is unaware that the Schism, after the consecration of Caecilian, was effected at Carthage through a certain mischief-making woman named Lucilla. When the Church was still in tranquillity, before her Peace had been disturbed by the storms of persecution, this woman could not put up with the rebuke which she received from the archdeacon Caecilian. It was said that she kissed a bone of some martyr or other----if he was a martyr----before she received the spiritual Food and Drink. Having then been corrected for thus touching----before she touched the Sacred Chalice----the bone of a dead man (if he was a martyr, at least he had not yet been acknowledged as such1), she went away in confusion, full of wrath. This was the woman upon whom, whilst she was angry and afraid that she might fall under the discipline of the Church, on a sudden, the storm of persecution broke.
Notes
- necdum vindicati. Catholics in Africa were strictly forbidden to honour with religious worship any martyrs who had not been recognised as such (id est canonised = vindicati). There were some, who in a fit of fanatical enthusiasm had surrendered voluntarily to the persecutors, thus bringing death upon themselves. Those who had been guilty of this practice, which the Church never tolerated, far from being considered martyrs, were looked upon by Catholics as disobedient and self-destroyers.