Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/391

 Frumentius. [, 3.]

Fulgentius (3), Fabius Claudius Gordianus, bp. of Ruspe, b. 468, d. 533. His life was mostly spent in the provinces of N.W. Africa ruled by the Vandal kings, Genseric, Hunneric, and Thrasimund, and he suffered from their persecutions. The writings of Fulgentius himself, a biographical memoir prefixed to his works and addressed to bp. Felicianus, his successor, supposed to be by Ferrandus, a deacon of Carthage, and a treatise de Persecutione Vandalica, by Victor Vitensis in 487 (Migne, Patr. Lat. t. lviii.), are the principal sources of information for the Vandal persecution in Africa. Every refinement of cruelty seems to have been visited upon the presbyters, bishops, and virgins of the N. African church during the reigns of Genseric and Hunneric. At the first incursion of the Vandals the whole country was desolated, houses of prayer and basilicas razed, neither age nor sex spared, the tombs of the martyrs rifled for treasure, bishops banished from their sees, virgins basely used, and every effort made to alienate the people from the Catholic faith. At the commencement of Hunneric's reign (Victor, lib. ii.) a gleam of sunshine cheered the church, during which the vacant see of Carthage was filled by Eugenius, whose extraordinary virtues are duly recorded by his biographers. His popularity excited the rage and animosity of the conquerors, who forbade their own people to enter his church. Those who disobeyed were submitted to torture; some were blinded, and many died of the inhuman treatment. Women were scalped, stripped, and paraded through the streets. Victor says, "We knew many of these." Nor did the orthodox alone suffer. Jocundus, the Arian patriarch, was burned alive, and Manicheans were hunted down like wild beasts. At the end of his 2nd year Hunneric refused all position in the court or executive to any but Arians, and banished to Sardinia all who refused to conform; heavy pecuniary fines were imposed whenever a bishop was ordained; many Christian women died under inhuman cruelties, and many were crippled for life. In 486 the bishops and priests were exiled into the desert, and in his 8th year Hunneric issued an edict, still preserved (ib. iii.), summoning the Homoousians to renounce their faith, fixing a date for their submission and for their churches to be destroyed, books burned, and pastors banished. The consequences of this edict are detailed with horrible circumstantiality by Victor, and even Gibbon considers them inhumanly severe. The cruelties of the Diocletian persecution were equalled, if not surpassed, by these efforts to extirpate the Homoousian faith. Gordian, the grandfather of Fulgentius, a senator of Carthage, was exiled by Genseric. His two sons returned home during an interval of grace to find their property in the hands of Arian priests. Not being allowed to remain at Carthage, they settled at Telepte in the province of Byzacene. One of them, Claudius, married Maria Anna, a Christian lady, who gave birth in 468 to Fulgentius. His mother was careful that he should study the Greek language, and would not allow him to read Roman literature until he had committed to memory the greater part of the poems of Homer and of the plays of Menander. He displayed great talent for business and much versatility. His fine character recommended him to the court, and he was appointed fiscal procurator of the province. But after perusing Augustine's comment on Ps. xxxvi. (xxxvii. Heb.), he was attracted by the "pleasures of a mind at peace with God, which fears nothing but sin." Hunneric having banished the bishops to the neighbouring deserts, young Fulgentius began to retire from society and devote himself to prayer and various austerities. One of these exiled bishops,, had formed a little monastery not far from Telepte, to which Fulgentius betook himself. Owing to the persecution, and at the advice of Faustus, Fulgentius removed to another small monastery, under abbat Felix, between whom and Fulgentius sprang up an enduring friendship. They divided the superintendence of the monastery between them, Fulgentius undertaking the duties of teacher. Troubles from an incursion of the Numidians compelled them to settle at Sicca Veneria or Siccensis (Vita, c. ix.). An Arian presbyter in the neighbourhood, alarmed at the influence exercised by the saintly Felix and Fulgentius, laid a plot to rob and torture them. The little company again migrated to Ididi in Mauritania, and here Fulgentius, reading the Institutiones Cassiani, resolved to go to Egypt and the Thebaid to follow a more severe rule of mortification. At Syracuse he was kindly received by bp. Eulalius, who discouraged his going to the Thebaid, as it was separated by a "perfidious heresy and schism from the communion of St. Peter," i.e. the Monophysite doctrine and the schism to which that led in the Egyptian church after the council of Chalcedon, 451. The advice was followed, and for some months he resided near Syracuse. In 500 he visited Rome, was present at the gorgeous reception given to Theodoric, and that year returned to Africa. He received from Sylvester, primarius of Byzacene, a site for a spacious monastery which was at once crowded; thence he retired to a lonely island, which lacked wood, drinkable water, and access to the mainland. Here he occupied himself with manual toil and spiritual exercises. Felix, having discovered his retreat, persuaded Faustus to ordain Fulgentius a presbyter, and, under pain of excommunication, to compel a return to his monastery. This was shortly after the death of Hunneric and accession of Thrasimund, who, though an Arian, was more liberal than his predecessors (Gibbon, Smith's ed. vol. iv. c. 37). The little seaport of Ruspe, on a projecting spur of the coast near the Syrtis Parva, had remained without a bishop, and desired Fulgentius, who was taken by force from his cell to Victor the primate of Byzacene and consecrated as its bishop in 508, when 40 years old. He made no change in his costume or daily regimen. His first demand from his people was a site for a monastery, and his old friend Felix was summoned to preside over it. But Thrasimund dismissed Fulgentius and other newly elected bishops to Sardinia. Here, in the name of the 60 exiles, he wrote important letters on questions of theological and ecclesiastical importance.