The Donatist schism

Disciplinary · 311 — unsettled · regional

Whether a church whose bishops had handed over the scriptures under persecution was still the church, and whether the sacraments of an unworthy minister are anything at all. Africa had two hierarchies for a century.

How it ended. Answered in the West by the rule that the sacrament is not the minister's — which ended the argument without ending the schism.

How it ran

311 — The Donatist schism begins (where it began). The contested consecration at Carthage.

What was at issue

Baptism outside the Church is void what was at issue
The sacrament is not the minister’s what was at issue

Who stood in it

Augustine of Hippo a principal

After The Christian Tradition 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) · Pelikan, vol. 1, ch. 5.