The violence exercised and suffered by Christians in Roman Africa beginning with the Emperor Constans's attempt to bring the Donatists into Catholic unity in the late 340s and continuing through the death of Augustine in 430 provides the focus of this rich study. Its limits are determined by the availability of evidence—in the records of African episcopal councils and imperial legislation, the writings of Parmenian, Optatus, and Augustine, and the reports of extensive archeological research in Algeria and Tunisia. The length of the resulting publication attests to the exhaustive analysis rather than the quantity of the evidence. Brent D. Shaw's detailed knowledge of the Roman culture of Africa and the functioning of imperial government is at work throughout his interpretation of the strategies of the competing episcopal bodies as well as his explanations of their successes and failures. Although he often displays an understanding of religious motivations and theological justifications, Shaw consistently prefers political and social considerations. The resulting account of the objectives of the actors and the programs they pursued is fuller and more coherent than prior efforts, though often conjectural and not excluding alternate accounts.

A summary of major points Shaw establishes demonstrates the breath of the work. First, different forms of non-state violence must be distinguished: revolts against imperial rule; uprisings of coloni against landholders to secure economic objectives; and violence directed against the competing Christian parties or against practitioners of the traditional religion. Shaw shows that the Christian bishops usually avoided the first, opposed the second, but supported and occasionally directed the third. The Caecilianists secured imperial suppression of the Donatists by presenting religious violence directed against themselves as a danger to public order and, thus, a form of revolt. The level of violence was exaggerated by reporting the same incidents multiple times and in different forms.

Second, imperial decrees and court decisions regularly were enforced through the use of private force. Even when charged with enforcement, local officials—often religious traditionalists—were hesitant to become involved in sectarian conflicts that might lead to unrest or disorder. In taking possession of basilicas and income-producing properties awarded to them, therefore, both Caecilianist and Donatist bishops employed gangs of urban youths or farm workers.

Third, the betrayal of community solidarity was enforced by violence against deserters who joined the opposite side. Augustine's reports show that Donatist action often was directed against clergy who deserted that church to join the Caecilianists and at bishops—such as himself and Possidius of Calama—who urged such defections. Breaking social solidarity seems to have defined and replaced the earlier crime of traditio in the late fourth and early fifth centuries.

Fourth, the cult of martyrdom remained strong in both forms of African Christianity after the end of the Diocletian persecution, and even the mission of Paul and Macarius in the 340s (for which the Donatists held the Caecilianists responsible). The Donatists revised or constructed accounts of martyrdoms during the last decades of the fourth century to exploit this advantage. Shaw speculates that the pressure imposed by Theodosius and his sons may have been the catalyst for reported self-killings by Donatists through precipitation.

Much of the work of this study is accomplished by extending evidence to conclusions that parallel or are implied by those more directly substantiated. Shaw usually makes the extension clear by using the subjunctive or some other indicator. The plausibility of these conjectures varies but is always based on Shaw's broad knowledge of Roman Africa, his careful attention to evidence in other instances, and his success in finding evidence that Optatus and Augustine, for example, were reluctant to provide. The coherence of the narrative as a whole remains the best argument for its “constructed” elements. The formation of youth clubs that provided “muscle” for Christian bishops, for example, is implied only by the evidence for such organizations among imperial traditionalists (243–47). In some few instances, however, the interpretations appear less than plausible because of neglected theological or religious evidence. In the opening narrative of the engagement between Augustine and Emeritus in Caesarea in 419, for example, Shaw asserts that the action took place in what had been Emeritus's own basilica, from which he was forced by imperial pressure after the collatio in Carthage in 411. As Shaw certainly knows from the excavation reports, archeological evidence identifying the building is circumstantial and inadequate. The Catholic bishop (Deuterius) had his own basilica. Only the presence of “converted” Donatists in the congregation supports Shaw's conjecture of Augustine's intention (11–12). Similarly unsubstantiated interpretations of Augustine's ordination at Hippo contradict his first-person accounts. Nor would a scholar familiar with the development of Augustine's theology of grace be surprised by his attacks on Pelagius and interpret it as a quest for continued glory after the success of the Donatist conflict. (311–15, 385–90) These limitations take nothing from the value of this work.

The volume concludes with a series of eight appendices, five focused on chronological problems. The sixth (F) traces the scholarly interpretation of the circumcellions through the interplay of secular and religious perspectives. It provides background to the fine examination of their various roles in chapters 14–16, where the imperial decree of 412 that set penalties for various classes of dissidents is shown to be essential to their identification. The last (H) lists surviving sermons of African origin that cannot be reliably attributed to Augustine.

Shaw has constructed the sixteen chapters of this volume so that each can be used independently of the others (the final chapter provides a synthesis of the argument). Although this method required some repetition of exposition (and reference by page numbers to work done elsewhere in the book), it makes the large volume more useful.

In this extraordinarily rich, detailed, and documented account of sectarian conflict and imperial attempts to manage it, Shaw has the set a new and indispensible context for future study of religious development in Roman Africa.