Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Liberatus Diaconus

Liberatus (7) Diaconus, archdeacon of Carthage, a Latin writer on the Nestorian and Eutychian heresies, an account of which he wrote entitled, Breviarium Causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum, in which he records some circumstances of his life. He visited Rome in the pontificate of John II. on the affair of the Acoemetae order of monks (c. 20). In 535 he was deputed to Rome, with the bps. Caius and Peter, by the council of Carthage, to consult John II. as to how conforming Arian bishops should be received. They arrived about the time of the pope's death (he was buried May 27, 535), and his successor Agapetus (consecrated June 3, 535) replied to the synod by the three envoys (Mansi, viii. 849) Liberatus was an ardent defender of the Three Chapters, and undertook many journeys in that cause. On his return home he composed his Breviarum, so named as being an abridgment in 24 chapters of a history which, beginning with the ordination of Nestorius in 428, reached to the meeting of the fifth synod in 553. The work was probably written c. 560. Liberatus intimates in his preface that he collected his materials from the Ecclesiastical History which had been recently translated from the Greek into Latin (as Garnier thinks, the Historia Tripartitia of Cassiodorus), from the Acts of the councils, and from episcopal letters. The Breviarum was ed. with copious notes and dissertations by Garnier in 1675 (8vo, Paris), and this ed. is

reprinted by Migne (Patr. Lat. lxviii. 969). Accounts of Liberatus will be found in Dupin (Eccl. Wr. t. i. p. 558, ed. 1722), Ceillier (xi. 303), Cave (i. 527), Fabric. (Bibl. Lat. t. iv. p. 272, ed. Mansi, 1754).

[C.H.]