Saint Stephen I and the Letter

Imagine that you are an active Christian, participating in an illegal religion, in the mid third century of the common era.  You have been arrested for being a Christian.  You are brought before the magistrate for a crime that is understood to be not only an offence against true religion but also against the state which officially promotes it.  You are a traitor to the gods and to your empire, so not a good position.  Three options are presented to you.  You may either surrender some distinctly Christian document (this is long before the New Testament is compiled, so you have a wide variety of writings from which to choose) or you may go to the little altar in the magistrate's court and sacrifice to the god of the day or Caesar as god.  Then you will be asked to formally denounce your faith and, when you do, you are issued the Brevis, a letter to carry with you that says don't molest this person who has renounced the Christian religion.  Your third alternative: death.

What do you do?  You may choose to be martytred.  You could also renounce, with your fingers crossed, and sacrifice, knowing that the god to whom you offer doesn't exist or is a mere human.  Choosing the latter, you may live to carry on your Christian ministry.  Choose the former and you prematurely depart this life.  Many persons in your position will choose to sacrifice, get the letter, and persevere in Christian practice.  Those who have not, and are alive, will call you traditor, traitor.

The question quickly arose as to whether a traditor's personal ministry was affected by his or her acquisition of the letter.  A group, who came to be called Donatists, held that the action nullified previously received sacraments, so, for example, a lay traditor had to be re-baptised, re-confirmed. Ordained traditores were to be re-ordained and, until they were, sacraments administered by them considered invalid.  A traditor's Mass was no good.

Stephen I (not to be confused with the first-century Protomartyr) in 254 became the 22nd bishop of Rome in succession from Peter and Paul  and defended our Catholic Faith from the Donatists.  He rightly maintained that received teaching clearly tells us that the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and ordination are permanent and unrepeatable.  One can rely on the ministrations of the faithful, as sacraments are objectively effective.  "Let that be observed which the Tradition has handed down," Stephen said.  But the controversy continued and Stephen was martyred -- murdered at the altar --  whilst saying Mass during the later Emperor Valerian's persecution.

The rest of the story:  Miltraides, a subsequent bishop of Rome, investigated and ruled against the Donatists in 313.  But the heresy persisted in North Africa [by the "Numidian Bishops"] until the Christians there were wiped out by Muslims in the eighth century!