Saint Fulgentius

Doctor of the Church, Bishop (462-533)
Fest January 1
Fabius Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius was born in the year 462 of illustrious and Catholic parents, at Telepte (modern-day Medinet-el-Kedima), Tunisia, in North Africa. His grandfather, Gordianus, a senator of Carthage, was despoiled of his possessions by the invader Genseric and banished to Italy; his two sons returned after his death, and though their house in Carthage had been made over to Arian priests, they recovered some property in Byzacene.

St.Fulgentius’s father, Claudius, died when he was still quite young. His mother, Mariana taught him to speak Greek and Latin. An excellent student of languages and of various other practical disciplines he became particularly fluent with Greek, speaking it like a native. His biographer says that at an early age he committed the entire works of Homer to memory.
As he grew older, he governed his house wisely in subjection to his mother. For the conduct of his family’s affairs he quickly gained wide public respect. This reputation helped him to acquire at an early age a post as a procurator of Byzacena, which gave him the duty of collecting taxes for the government of the Vandals in northern Africa.

His religious studies helped him to see the vanity of the world. He quickly grew tired of the material life and elevation in the world’s esteem was distasteful to him.

At the age of twenty-two, having read St. Augustine’s treatise on the Psalms, he resolved to embrace monastic life, and began to prepare for it by mental prayer, fasting, and other penances practiced in secret. Around the year 499 he set out to join the hermits of the Thebaid in Egypt but changed his mind once he learned of the influence of monophysitism on Egyptian monasticism from Eulalius, bishop of Syracuse. He applied to Faustus, a bishop who had been forced from his diocese by the Vandal king Huneric and later set up a monastery at Byzacena. The fervent appeal of the young man won his admission from Faustus, to whom he was already well known. When he was accepted into a monastery his mother hoped to change his mind, she clamored with tears at the door of the monastery to see her son, but he remained firm and did not accept to see her.
He renounced all his worldly goods on behalf of his mother and younger brother.

After six years of peace, his monastery was attacked by Arian heretics. Faustus, St. Fulgentius and the other monks were driven out, destitute, into the desert. He entered another monastery on his Superior’s advice. The abbot there, Felix, gave St. Fulgentius the duty of managing the temporal affairs of the monastery, while he managed the spiritual affairs.
The two of them worked well together, and so in 499, during another wave of persecution they were attacked by barbarians and both fled for Sicca Veneria. A local Arian priest had them arrested and tortured after learning the pair were preaching the catholic Chalcedonian teaching regarding the two natures of Jesus. He sought no vengeance when authorities offered him support if he would enter a complaint.

St. Fulgentius and his Superior, who was with him, decided to build another monastery; a new retreat was started at Idida in Mauretania.
He soon left Felix, having conceived an ardent desire to visit the monasteries of Egypt. He hoped to be no longer superior, and to be able to keep yet stricter abstinence, took ship at Carthage for Alexandria with a companion named Redemptus. On his arrival at Syracuse, the holy bishop of that city, Eulalius, told him: “The lands to which you wish to travel are separated from the communion of Peter by a heretical quarrel.”
St. Fulgentius therefore stopped a few months with Eulalius, and then sought further advice from an exiled bishop of his own province, who was living as a monk on a tiny island off the coast of Sicily. He was recommended to return to his own monastery, but “not to forget the Apostles.” In consequence, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he prayed at the tombs of the apostles. His visit coincided with a formal address to the people by king Theodoric, which confirmed St. Fulgentius in his low esteem for the earthly vanities of this world. In the year 500 he returned to Africa, where a nobleman of Byzacene gave him fertile land on which he established a new monastery to live in an isolated cell. Here he worked, read, and contemplated. He was an accomplished scribe and could make fans of palm leaves.

St. Fulgentius’s reputation quickly spread, and he was several times offered the post of bishop of one of the dioceses which had been vacated through the actions of the Arian king Thrasamund. King Thrasamund (496-523), though not so cruel a persecutor as his predecessors, allowed no Catholic bishops to be elected in Africa. It was decided in 508 by such bishops as could manage to meet together that it was necessary to brave this law, and it was decreed that elections should take place quietly and simultaneously in all the vacant sees, before the government had time to take preventive measures. St. Fulgentius was nominated in several cities; but he had fled into hiding and could not be found. When he thought all the appointments had been made, he reappeared, but the seaport of Ruspe in Tunisia, where the election had been delayed through the ambition of a deacon of the place, promptly elected him; and against his will in 508 he was consecrated bishop of a town he had never seen. His obvious virtues made a strong impression on the people of his new diocese, but he was summoned to face new dangers, and was shortly afterwards banished by the Arian king, with some sixty other Catholic prelates, to Sardinia. Pope Symmachus knew of their plight and sent them annual provisions of food and money.

Though the youngest of the exiles, he turned a house in Cagliari into a monastery and became the spokesman of his brethren and the support of their orphaned flocks. By his books and letters, which are still extant, he confounded both Pelagian and Arian heresiarchs, and strengthened the Catholics in Africa and Gaul.

In 515, he returned to Africa, having been summoned there by king Thrasamund for a public debate with his Arian replacement. Thrasamund issued a series of ten questions as a challenge to the Catholic bishops. The reputation of St. Fulgentius was now so great that the king choose him to speak in the name of the rest. He submitted to the king a small but able work which we still possess under the title of “Contra Arianos liber unus, ad decem objectiones decem responsiones continens” (Ten answers to ten objections of the Arians).

The king, impressed by St. Fulgentius’ knowledge and learning, fearing social discord if these persuasive arguments fell into the hands of his Arian subjects, proposed further objections. He took the unfair and tyrannical course of having the new questions, which were expressed at great length, read aloud once to St. Fulgentius, who was not allowed to have a copy of them, but was expected to give direct answers. When the bishop pointed out that he could not even recollect the questions after hearing them but once, the king declared that he showed a want of confidence in his own case. St. Fulgentius was therefore obliged to write a larger work. Thrasamund’s respect for St. Fulgentius grew, leading him to allow St. Fulgentius to stay in Carthage, but after renewed complaints from the local Arian clergy he banished him back to Sardinia in 520. He was put on board a ship at night so the people of Carthage might not know of his departure. However, contrary winds obliged the vessel to remain several days in port, and nearly all the city was able to take leave of the holy bishop, and to receive Holy Communion from his hand. To a religious man who was weeping he privately prophesied his speedy return and the liberty of the African Church.
On the death in 523 of the Arian king Thrasamund and the accession of his catholic son Hilderic the bishops returned to their flocks. St. Fulgentius was welcomed amid the greatest joy, after eighteen years of exile. He labored with his fellow bishops in the synods as their chosen leader, and re-established discipline. The power and effectiveness of his preaching was so profound that his archbishop, Boniface of Carthage, wept openly every time he heard St. Fulgentius preach, and publicly thanked God for giving such a preacher to his church.

When he felt his end was near, a year before his death he was moved to great compunction of heart; he suddenly quitted all his work, and even his monastery, and sailed with a few companions to the island of Circe, where he gave himself to reading, prayer, and fasting in a monastery which he had previously caused to be constructed on a small rock. There he mortified his members and wept in the presence of God alone, as though he anticipated a speedy death. But complaints were made of his absence, and he returned to his labors. He shortly fell into a grievous sickness. In his sufferings he said ceaselessly: “O Lord, give me patience here, and forgiveness hereafter.” He refused, as too luxurious, the warm bath which the physicians recommended. He summoned his clergy and in the presence of the monks asked pardon for any want of sympathy or any undue severity he might have shown. He was sick for seventy days, continuing in prayer and retaining all his faculties to the last. His possessions he gave to the poor, and to those of his clergy who were in need. He died on 1 January, 533.
References and Excerpts

[1] “St. Fulgentius,” Midwest Augustinians. [Online]. Available: https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/st-fulgentius/. [Accessed: 27-Dec-2018].
[2] “Saint Fulgentius, Doctor of the Church, Bishop.” [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_fulgentius.html. [Accessed: 27-Dec-2018].
[3] “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Saint Fulgentius.” [Online]. Available: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06316a.htm. [Accessed: 27-Dec-2018].
[4] “St. Fulgentius of Ruspe,” Catholic.net. [Online]. Available: http://catholic.net/op/articles/1225/st-fulgentius-of-ruspe.html. [Accessed: 27-Dec-2018].