Hierarch Optatus Mileve

Saint Optatus of Milevis was a fourth-century bishop of Milevum (Mila) in Roman Numidia, North Africa. Little is known of his early life; he emerges in history around 370 as a staunch defender of Catholic unity against the Donatist schism, which had split North African Christianity since the early 300s over the treatment of clergy who had lapsed under persecution. Between roughly 366 and 385 Optatus composed his major work, "Against the Donatists" in six (later seven) books, refuting the Donatist bishop Parmenian and articulating an early doctrine of the objective validity of sacraments independent of the minister's personal holiness — a position later developed by Augustine of Hippo, who called him a bishop "of blessed memory." Optatus is regarded as one of the important pre-Augustinian Latin Fathers on ecclesiology. He died sometime after 384 (the second edition of his treatise references Pope Siricius), traditionally placed around 387–397. His feast is kept on June 4 in the Roman Martyrology, and he appears in Orthodox lists of "pre-schism Western saints" compiled mainly by English-language Orthodox sources; however, the Orthodox Encyclopedia (pravenc.ru) notes he has no established veneration or commemoration date in the Russian Orthodox Church's official calendar.