Parmenian

, 1875). Julian's decree of 362 allowed Parmenian to return to Carthage. Optatus of Milevis, the anti-Donatist polemicist and contemporary of Parmenian, calls him peregrinus, meaning that he was probably not a native of Africa. He may have come from Spain or Gaul. Whatever his origin, Parmenian succeeded Donatus as Donatist bishop of Carthage around the year 350. He was banished from the city in 358. He returned in 362 under the decree of Julian that allowed exiled bishops to return to their sees. About this time, if not earlier, he published a work in five parts defending Donatism (Adversus ecclesiam traditorum), to which the treatise of Optatus is a reply. In about 372, he wrote a book against Ticonius. At an unknown year during his episcopacy, he oversaw a council of Donatist bishops that made an important proclamation about the rebaptism of traditores. Parmenian died and was succeeded by Primian in about the year 392. ==Theology and later influence==

Parmenian's most influential work was written in about 362 and entitled Adversus ecclesiam traditorum ("Against the church of the traditores"). James Alexander considers this imagery a development of the theologies of Tertullian and Cyprian, of which Parmenian "emerges as the conserver... [and] Optatus, by contrast, as the innovator." ==Evaluation==

W. H. C. Frend argues that Parmenian was a capable and formidable bishop of his see, even if his influence and reputation eventually ceased to be recognized with the end of the Donatist schism. Frend writes that Parmenian's authority was "never seriously challenged" during his long term as bishop. According to George M. Ella, the resulting lack of unity in the North African Christian community was a contributing factor to the ease with which the Islamic conquest of the area succeeded in the late 600s: "the blood of the Donatists had become the seed of Islam." ==Notes and references==