Abstract
This study shows how the rise of the English separatist movement in the latesixteenth century was characterized by a polemical struggle over the applicability of the epithet of ‘Donatism.’ A pejorative slur, the Donatist label was often utilized during the early-modern period against dissident movements which refused to recognize the legitimacy of the established church. It was a perfect polemical weapon, serving to connect such rogue congregations with all the dangerous implications, both theological and political, of the ancient schism. But what was ‘Donatism’ in the context of Elizabethan England? What were its characteristics and subversive doctrines? In this article, I will examine the portrait of the ancient sect as painted by both the opponents of separatism and the early separatist leaders themselves in order to assess what aspects of the Donatist label resonated with the polemical presuppositions of each side.
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