Selected Works

The Life of the Blessed Bishop Fulgentius

THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED BISHOP FULGENTIUS Introduction The question of the authorship of The Life of the Blessed Bishop Fulgentius remains a matter of dispute. No manuscript of the work indicates the Carthaginian deacon Ferrandus as the author. Yet this was the hypothesis of the seventeenth-century Jesuit scholar and editor of Fulgentius, Pierre-François Chifflet,1 who brought the name of Ferrandus forward in this connection. His suggestion has been taken for granted by the great majority of scholars since then. However, Antonino Isola,2 a recent translator of the Life into Italian, takes a more hesitant view to the extent that he lists the author as Pseudo-Ferrandus. Isola grants that Ferrandus in Carthage was a correspondent of Fulgentius but does not see that there was that much close association between the two men. In the prologue to the Life, the author indicates that he was a monk in Fulgentius’s monastery in Sardinia during the second period of exile. Is this true of Ferrandus? Evidence in favor of Ferrandus’s authorship includes the statement made by Ferrandus himself at the end of a letter to Abbot Eugippius in Italy, apparently not long after the death of Fulgentius, of his desire to spread the knowledge of Fulgentius’s exemplary life and work. One can only conclude that while Ferrandus’s authorship continues to be widely accepted, the question has not yet been definitively resolved. The Life itself is episodic, giving a series of vignettes. The emphasis appears to be more of Fulgentius the monk than of Fulgentius the bishop or theologian. His devotion to asceticism is stressed though, like other western monks, he is not in competition with the Egyptians or Syrians in this field. The lesson of the episode with the Arian priest Felix near Sicca is that Fulgentius participated in the suffering of the martyrs. (chap. 6–7). The comments on his ability to combine the life of the monk with that of the bishop (chap.15) recall similar points made about Martin of Tours. But, unlike that life and those of most other holy men, the miraculous has almost no role to play here. Hence the comments in chapter 23 on his ‘moral miracles’. Chapter 25 is devoted to listing some of his writings. 3 1. On Chifflet, see Bernard de Vregille, “Pierre-François Chifflet, S.J., découvreur et éditeur des Péres (1592–1682),” in Les Péres de l’Église au XVIIe siècle, E. Bury and B. Meunier (Paris: Cerf, 1993) 237–51. 2. Antonio Isola, trans., Pseudo Ferrando di Cartagine: Vita di San Fulgenzio, Collana di Testi Patristici 65 (Roma: Città Nuova, 1987), 5–8. Perhaps the aspect of the Life which most strikes the contemporary reader is the apparent restlessness of soul that Fulgentius exhibits. After having rejected the world for the ascetic life, he moves from one monastery to another, founds his own monastery, attempts to travel to Egypt to find even greater ascetic challenges. Even after being made a bishop and spending a great deal of his time in exile, he attempts at the end to go off to a monastery again. Yet, despite this restlessness, his writings manifest an orderly and rather prosaic mind. If Ferrandus did not write this Life, the author may well have been one of those who lived in the monastery with him in Africa as well as in Sardinia. It has been said that one of the purposes of the work was to remind the new bishop of Ruspe, Felicianus, to whom the Life is dedicated , of the privileges of the local monks. This is the first translation of the Life into English. The critical edition of Lapeyre3 (1929) has been used, but, as more recent authors have pointed out, much still needs to be done for a more complete critical edition. Prologue oly father felicianus,4 every faithful expositor of the New Testament in whom Christ speaks, in order to convince others more easily that he is to be believed because of his example, puts the greatest effort into doing good works, and, whatever he tells others must be done, he first does himself. To no purpose does he exert himself to teach wisely if he does not live blamelessly. To Hthe teachers of the Catholic Church, two things are deemed necessary: a holy life and sound doctrine. A good life commends the one who...