St. Fulgentius of Ruspe

St. Fulgentius of Ruspe was born about 462 or 467 at Telepte in the Roman province of Byzacena in North Africa, of a noble family, and after serving as a public official renounced the world to become a monk. He was made bishop of Ruspe about 507, in a time when Catholic Africa lay under the rule of the Arian Vandals, who denied the true divinity of Christ and persecuted the Catholic faith.

For his defense of the faith he was twice exiled by the Arian kings to the island of Sardinia, where he continued to write and to guide his fellow exiles. The most learned African theologian of his generation and a faithful disciple of St. Augustine, he wrote extensively in defense of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity against the Arians and of the primacy of grace against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, so that he was sometimes called "the abbreviated Augustine." Restored at last to his see, he died about 527 or 533, and is venerated as a saint, his memory kept on 1 January.