ON ST. VICTOR CONFESSOR AND BISHOP OF VITA IN AFRICA,
After the beginning of the 6th century.
HISTORICO-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
Victor, confessor and bishop of Vita in Africa (St.)
BY G. C.
§ I. The Saint's lawful cult, and the error concerning his true see corrected.
Since for the most part at the beginning of our Commentaries we have been accustomed to vindicate the lawful title of sanctity for those Although our Chifflet whose Acts we illustrate, we judged that this must be done here so much the more, because some seem to doubt of the immemorial cult of this Saint of today. Wherefore let us first hear our Peter Francis Chifflet, who in his Elucidations on the History of the Vandal Persecution, chapter 16, thus discourses of the cult of the writer: There remains a question of no light moment, he says, concerning the apotheosis of our Victor, of which I say only this, that I have found no sufficiently
firm testimony of antiquity by which to prop it. I know that in some ancient codices the Work on the African persecution is ascribed to holy Victor the bishop. But this title is from the copyists, in whose hands there is no authority to inscribe anyone in the canon of the Saints. My conjecture indeed is that he passed his life in holiness in Sardinia, when he was primate of Byzacena, and that he was buried there among so many other heroes, whether newcomers or natives, concerning whom James Pinto has collected many things in the Work On Christ Crucified, book 3, title 4, place 12. But at the beginning of the eighth century after Christ, and in the year 720 (as Pinto reckons), when the Saracens were devastating Sardinia, the tombs of so many Saints were so disturbed that of the greatest part of them no certain traces remain, and so neither of Victor of Vita. Nor are there any Martyrologies of the ancients, so far as I know, or ancient tablets of churches, which give credit to his being inscribed in the calendars of the Saints… In this silence therefore of all antiquity we leave it to the sacred Congregation of Rites to weigh whether Victor, bishop either of Vita or of Utica, author of the Work on the African persecution under Genseric and Huneric, kings of the Vandals, can be reckoned duly vindicated and enrolled in the canon of the Saints.
[2] Theoderic Ruinart the Benedictine, who afterwards in the year 1694 at Paris published the same History of the Vandal Persecution and illustrated it with notes, and Ruinart the Benedictine almost agrees with this reasoning of Chifflet, when in the preface to that Work, number 7, he writes thus: Of greater moment perhaps will another question seem to some, which the same Chifflet raises, namely whether Victor, the writer of this History, was ever enrolled among the Saints, or endowed with any public cult. That he ought certainly to be numbered among those holy confessors who under the persecution of the tyrant Huneric contended for the defense of the Catholic faith, no one, as I think, will deny. Nay, in the old manuscript codices he is everywhere called holy Victor. But this was the formula of the ancients, by which this title was given to ecclesiastical authors, especially to bishops. More to the purpose is what is read on that matter in today's Roman Martyrology, where on the twenty-third day of the month of August these things are had: At Utica in Africa, of blessed Victor the bishop; which Victor Baronius in his notes on this place advises to be that very man who is famous for having written the history of the Vandal persecution. But Lucas Holstenius in his Animadversions on the Roman Martyrology rightly complains that these words were added by more recent men, which in fact can nowhere be found in the ancient codices.
[3] doubt of the immemorial cult of this Saint, The first who gave occasion for inscribing the name of that Victor in the sacred calendars seems to have been Peter de Natalibus, as Chifflet conjectures: for he on the twentieth of April praises Victor, bishop of Carthage, who, he says, flourished in sanctity and learning under the emperor Anastasius, and attributes to him all the little works which Gennadius in his Catalogue, chapter 77, records as published by Victor, bishop of Cartenna. Maurolico the abbot, following Peter, on the same day celebrates Victor, bishop of Carthage, a most learned man, who was renowned under the emperor Anastasius, the catalogue of Works being omitted. Peter Galesinius has it a little differently, namely At Utica in Africa, of holy Victor bishop and confessor, and in his annotations he praises several African Victors to whom that eulogy might apply. But Ferrari in his General Catalogue of the Saints who are not found in the Roman Martyrology has only In Africa, of holy Victor the bishop, whom nevertheless in his notes he advises to be no other than Victor of Utica, who wrote the History of the Vandal persecution. From all which it is plain that the memory of our Victor was obscure among the ancients, and that his name never had a place in the sacred calendars; which he has in common with several other men most famous for sanctity and learning. Nor is it lawful for us from wholly uncertain and doubtful monuments to procure the name for our Victor, who deserves solid and true praises for so excellent a Work published by him; whose illustrious virtues, as the Cologne doctors say who saw to the edition of the Library of the Fathers, and whose piety, erudition, and zeal for religion, may be discerned drawn to the life in this Work of his. Thus they, who nevertheless both confess that this writer of the African History is called holy in the ancient codices, of which title it will be useful to make mention below.
[4] nevertheless, following others, we enroll him among the Saints, Tillemont, volume 16 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 598, greatly praises the aforesaid History of St. Victor of Vita, in which the author's piety, his fervor for the Catholic faith, and his other virtues shine forth, and on account of all these he judges that he is most deservedly commemorated among other holy bishops in the Roman Martyrology on the twenty-third day of August. Willingly in this matter we follow Tillemont's judgment, which agrees with the opinion of the most eminent Baronius, who in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 484, number 128, writes thus: Down to this time, namely to the death of Huneric, Victor carried his history of the Vandal persecution. Further, Victor himself, a partaker of the sufferings, famous for his constant confession, is found reported in the Roman Martyrology with the title of sanctity. Here we observe in passing that this most eminent Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church does not hint that he himself was the first to report the name of today's St. Victor into the Roman Martyrology. Nay, even if we freely granted that the name of our St. Victor was first inscribed in the Roman Martyrology in the age of this most eminent man, who would persuade himself that the most pious and learned Baronius did this without the express consent of the Roman Pontiff, and that a matter of such moment was lightly committed to execution without severe discussion?
[5] Who moreover would easily believe that the name of this uncertain Saint was to be left in the Roman Martyrology after the strict decree and by certain arguments, which Pope Urban VIII issued in the year 1625 concerning the public cult of the Saints? Yet this St. Victor is announced in the Roman Martyrology to this very day, and namely in the edition of the year 1630, to which the following decree is prefixed: The present Martyrology, again diligently reviewed, enlarged, and emended, the sacred Congregation of Rites, by order of our most holy lord Pope Urban VIII, has ordered to be printed by Andrew Brogiotti, printer of the Chamber and of the Vatican, and has forbidden it to be printed hereafter by others in any places whatsoever, except after the model of this one printed at Rome, with nothing at all added, taken away, or changed. The twenty-third day of March, 1630. Were then Urban VIII and the sacred Congregation of Rites at that time so unmindful of the constitution issued five years before as to leave a man of doubtful sanctity in the Roman Martyrology? Would those censors not have corrected, in a reviewed and emended Martyrology of the Church, an error which pertained to the very substance of lawful veneration, if Baronius only thirty or forty years before had rashly inserted this Victor with the title of saint into the ecclesiastical calendars on his own authority alone?
[6] Wherefore we do not doubt that Pope Urban VIII judged drawn from the decree of Pope Urban VIII, that this public title of saint was not opposed to his decree, and did not wish that Saint to be comprehended in the general constitution which in the Roman Bullarium of Laertius Cherubinus, volume 4, page 300, he restricts and explains, declaring that by the above-written he does not wish, nor intend, to prejudice in anything those who either by the common consent of the Church, or by an immemorial course of time (that is, from a hundred years elapsed before this decree, as the same Pontiff afterwards declared) or by the writings of the Fathers and of holy men, or by the knowledge and toleration of the Apostolic See or of the Ordinary through a very long time, are honored. Hence it follows that some one of the aforesaid exceptions has place in today's St. Victor: for who but rashly will suspect that Urban VIII left that Victor with the title of saint in the Roman Martyrology contrary to his own constitution?
[7] And so that Pontiff judged that this Historiographer of the Vandal persecution had been reported into the catalogue of the Saints deservedly, for one or more of these reasons. we vindicate this title for him. So too judged the sacred Congregation of Rites and all the successors of Urban VIII, who after various corrections of the Roman Martyrology have hitherto left our St. Victor in his possession. Add that this pious Writer is found in ancient manuscript codices with the epithet of holy. But although the copyists have not the power of enrolling anyone in the number of the Saints, as our Chifflet above advises, yet that expression of the old copyists indicates the common opinion of their time concerning the sanctity of Victor. But when Ruinart asserts that this title of sanctity was wont to be given to ecclesiastical writers and especially to bishops, he proposes too generally an axiom which often fails: for Jerome, Gennadius of Marseilles, Isidore of Seville, and Ildefonsus of Toledo in their Catalogues of illustrious men rather often omit this title, and scarcely give it even to those writers and bishops who certainly have been honored from immemorial time in the Catholic Church. Nothing certain therefore can be inferred from this fallacious rule against the sanctity of our Victor. Now we seem to have vindicated the due title of saint for this Historian of the African persecution abundantly and more than enough, and therefore we proceed to another question.
[8] The error of those is corrected, We do not greatly wonder that on this day in the Roman Martyrology the memory at Utica in Africa, of blessed Victor the bishop is announced, although here there has evidently been an error in assigning the place: for for a century and a half many, even learned men, thought that today's St. Victor was bishop of Utica in Africa at that time when the Arian Vandals were fiercely persecuting the Catholics. But the first to detect this error was our Chifflet, and in the Elucidations on the History of the Vandal Persecution, chapter 7, he demonstrated that this St. Victor was then set over the church of Vita in Africa. Ruinart followed Chifflet, and in the preface to the same History, number 4, confirms his opinion in these words: Further, that the author of this History was a certain African bishop by the name of Victor no one has ever called into doubt. But concerning his see there was not one opinion among all: for the published books, some present Victor of Utica, others of Vita. Yet the opinion of those who called him of Utica seemed to have prevailed even among learned men, since the city of Utica was better known to all than that of Vita, which almost no one knew.
[9] who wrongly called this Prelate of Utica But after it was ascertained from the African Notitia that Victor, bishop of Vita, flourished in Africa in the times of the Vandal persecution, at which season the bishop of Utica was called not Victor but Florentinus, as is plain from the same Notitia, then everyone assented that Victor, the author of this illustrious Work, must be called of Vita. Nor shouldst thou say that, Florentinus of Utica having died in exile in Corsica, Victor was perhaps substituted for him, who wrote out this history: for these are mere conjectures, which can by no means prevail over the authority of the manuscript codices; especially since it seems established that in these tumults no others were substituted for the bishops then deceased. Further, those who intruded Victor of Utica for Victor of Vita committed this from ignorance of the see of Vita, in whose place they substituted Utica, known to themselves,
suspecting that a corruption had crept into the ancient copies; but by the very affinity of words by which they thought others had been deluded, they deluded themselves. Deservedly therefore has the History of the African persecution been restored by Peter Francis Chifflet, presbyter of the Society of Jesus, to Victor, bishop of Vita, as its true and lawful author. Which opinion of that learned man we not only embrace, but judge that it can be defended by arguments so certain and undoubted that we reckon no one will ever hereafter gainsay it: for this the unanimous consent of all the manuscript codices requires of us, of which not even one, at least of those which have hitherto been seen, presents Victor of Utica as the author of that Work. Then from divers manuscript codices he proves this constant appellation of St. Victor of Vita, and in the following number suspects that Reinhard Lorich was the first of all who at Cologne in the year 1537 published the aforesaid History of the Vandal Persecution under the name of Victor of Utica, and led others into error.
[10] Finally Pagi in the historico-chronological Critica on the Ecclesiastical Annals of the most eminent Baronius, at the year 484, number 21, defends the same opinion of Chifflet and Ruinart, instead of of Vita and has contracted their arguments in this manner: Baronius, by an error then common, calls Victor of Vita, the author of the five books on the African persecution, Victor bishop of Utica in the Proconsular province. But Chifflet in the place praised, chapter 7, shows that it is certain that Victor was bishop of Vita, which city of the province of Byzacena, being unknown to more recent copyists, they, suspecting a corruption in the ancient copies and deluded by the affinity of names and words, put back Utica for Vita. In a manuscript codex of the Carthusian house of Portes, of good repute, at the very beginning of the Work Chifflet read: Here begins the prologue to the History of the African persecution, published by holy Victor, bishop of the country of Vita. The same have I read in two manuscripts, of which one is kept in the Colbertine library, the other in the library of the monastery of St. Martin des Champs, situated in the city of Paris.
[11] To these add that in the little book of the Notitia of the bishops of Africa surnamed him. who endured the persecution under Huneric, in the Catalogue of the bishops of the Proconsular province, there is read: Florentinus of Utica; but in the index of the prelates of the province of Byzacena it is thus written: Victor of Vita does not appear. Wherefore the church of Utica belonged to the province of Carthage, but that of Vita to Byzacena, and at the time of the African persecution our Victor was bishop of Vita, Florentinus of Utica. From these things the distinction of both those African sees is abundantly manifest, and the origin of the erroneous confusion is easily detected. But now another controversy must be briefly discussed, which thirty years ago a certain French writer began to raise, namely whether this St. Victor of Vita seems to be distinguished from another bishop of the same see and the same name.
§ II. Who that Saint was, what he did, when and where he died.
At Paris in the year 1708 there appeared a French dissertation whose anonymous author contends Against the opinion of a certain anonymous Frenchman that Victor, bishop of Vita, who in the year 484 was not present at the Carthaginian conference, ought to be distinguished from another Victor of Vita, who succeeded the former in the see and wrote the History of the Vandal Persecution, as is reported in the Trévoux Journal for the year 1709, article 52, that is, page 677 and following. The anonymous author in this hypothesis asserts that Victor, the historian of the Vandal persecution, was only raised to the see of Vita in the year 487, when Gunthamund, king of the Vandals and successor of the deceased Huneric, in some fashion restored peace to the Catholic Africans. The author chiefly proves this new opinion of his in this manner: the historian of the Vandal persecution often indicates that he was present at those things which happened at Carthage and elsewhere under the persecutor Huneric. But it is not likely that a bishop of Vita would in so perilous a time have deserted his own church and stayed in another's diocese; therefore two Victors, bishops of Vita, must be distinguished, of whom one succeeded the other. This is the chief argument of the new system, which, even though we confess it is not to be despised, yet for the reasons now to be brought forward we do not dare to embrace.
[13] we think it more probable, In the first place, the writer of the Vandal history in the month of June of the year 481, in which St. Eugenius was raised to the see of Carthage by the ardor of the people, heard the decree of King Huneric recited, and with the other bishops resisted the election of a bishop of Carthage under so shameful a condition, as he himself in book 2 of his History, number 2, in the Ruinart edition, testifies in these words: And when that edict was read to the whole church in our presence, on the fourteenth of the Kalends of July, we began to groan, murmuring, because for men meditating the wiles of evils a persecution was being prepared for the future; and thus we are proved to have said to the legate: "If it is so, with these perilous conditions interposed, this church is not pleased to have a bishop. Christ governs it, who has always deigned to govern it." Which suggestion the legate neglected to accept. At the same time the people also, as then came to pass, blazed up like fire, whose outcry was intolerable, which could by no reason be quieted. Since this historian distinguishes himself from the people, it becomes to us quite likely that he was then bishop of Vita. Moreover he rather often indicates that he stood familiarly by other bishops, as we shall see through the course of this Commentary.
[14] that there was only one Victor of Vita, Wherefore the argument of the anonymous author proposed above does not yet move us to admit two Victors, bishops of Vita, of whom the latter, the historian, immediately succeeded the former, unknown one: for a single St. Victor of Vita could have left his diocese for various and just reasons; for instance, because he foresaw the certain danger of captivity or of exile if he had remained in his own diocese. But since he was not safe in his own church from the Arian enemies, perhaps the holy man wished to travel through, unknown and hidden, those provinces of Africa in which the storm of the persecution was raging more fiercely, that he might confirm the Catholics in the faith and bring help to the harassed confessors of Christ. And that he did this very thing diligently and piously we shall show afterwards. In the ancient Notitia of the prelates of Africa, in Ruinart, page 131, we read expressly that Victor of Vita did not appear in the year 484 at the Carthaginian conference. Certainly this absence of his agrees excellently with the History of the Vandal Persecution, in which St. Victor makes no word of his own presence there, although he was accustomed to express it in other things done. And so with Tillemont in the Ecclesiastical Monuments, volume 16, page 597, we think it probable that St. Victor of Vita must be numbered among those twenty-eight prelates of Africa who fled secretly.
[15] Something similar the most learned Emanuel Schelstrate hints, when in the African Church, dissertation 4, chapter 4, number 4, he writes thus: and that he was the writer of the Vandal History, It stands rather often in the Notitia that some bishops were relegated HERE, and at the end, after the enumeration of all: HERE RELEGATED, TO THE NUMBER OF THREE HUNDRED AND TWO. But since Victor of Vita does not appear, but remained hidden in some place of Africa, I should think that by the HERE Africa itself is to be understood, which Huneric ordered to be received for cultivating the fields by the right of tenancy, on behalf of those who had not sworn; but the rest, who swore that Hilderic would succeed after the death of Huneric, were ordered to be relegated to the island of Corsica, that they might cut timber to be of use for the lord's ships. So Victor of Vita himself in book 3 On the Vandal Persecution, from which also it is established that more than 324 holy men of the orthodox, as Marcellinus Comes says, were relegated and put to flight: for there were at that time three hundred and forty-eight bishops who had come to Carthage, of whom 302 dwelt on the land outside their own cities, scattered through the provinces of Africa; but forty-six had been compelled to cut wood in Corsica. And if to these thou add the twenty-eight who had escaped, one who suffered and one confessor, with the eighty-eight who had ended their lives before the assembly of Carthage, they will make up the number of four hundred and sixty-six bishops holding sees in all Africa in the year 484. On account of these agreements we admit only one St. Victor of Vita, and him the writer of the Vandal persecution, some of whose deeds we shall now excerpt from his writings.
[16] Our St. Victor seems to have been a careful and cautious investigator of the miracles from which we draw out which in the time of Genseric, the Arian king, were wrought in Africa through the merits of the saints, since on the occasion of holy Maxima in the History of the Vandal Persecution, book 1, number 10, he writes thus: This miracle is both celebrated by the voice of all, and he to whom the guardianship belonged testified to us with an oath that it was so. In the following number of the same book he has these things concerning other martyrs of his time: Where to this present day our Lord Jesus Christ does not cease to work mighty marvels; for the late blessed Faustus, bishop of Buronis, attested to us that a certain blind woman was given light, where he himself was present.
[17] But with how great charity our Saint cherished and consoled the confessors of Christ his piety, who in the persecution of the Vandals were experiencing their cruel hatreds may be drawn out from the following examples. First, he undauntedly visited Valerianus, a bishop and an old man of eighty, whom Genseric had punished with a barbarous exile, as he himself in book 1 of his History, number 12, relates in this manner: Then also holy Valerianus, bishop of the city of Abbenza, when he had manfully contended that he would not hand over the divine Sacraments, was ordered to be driven out of the city alone; and it was thus enjoined, that no one should let him dwell either in house or in field; who for a long time lay naked [] on the public highway under the open sky. And he was more than eighty years old, whom we then, unworthy, deserved to greet in such an exile.*
[18] Then about the year 483 St. Victor accompanied innumerable confessors of Christ charity whom King Huneric had condemned to a most foul exile, and vainly attempted to soften the punishment of Bishop Felix, as he reports in book 2 of the same History, number 8, in these words: But with what rivers of tears shall I follow it, when he destined bishops, presbyters, deacons, and other members of the church — that is, four thousand nine hundred and seventy-six — to the exile of the desert? Among whom were very many gouty men, others deprived of temporal light on account of their many years. In whose number was blessed Felix, bishop of Abbir, having now forty-four years in the episcopate, who, stricken with the disease of paralysis, neither felt anything nor spoke at all: concerning whom we, thinking especially that he could not be carried by a beast, suggested that the king be asked by his own men that he would at least order him, about to die shortly, to be at Carthage, because he could by no means be brought to the exile. To whom the tyrant is said to have spoken thus with fury: "If he cannot sit on an animal, let untamed oxen be yoked, which, by dragging him bound with ropes, may bring him where I have commanded." Whom, bound crosswise upon a mule like some trunk of wood, we carried the whole journey.
[19] his feeling of compassion toward the afflicted, In the same place, in the following number, he goes on to describe the journey of the glorious exiles in this manner: They are gathered
all together into the cities of Sicca and Lares, that the Moors, meeting them there, might lead those handed over to them to the desert. Therefore two Counts, coming upon them, with damnable subtlety began to deal with the confessors of God in flattering speeches: "What does it seem to you," they say, "that you should be so obstinate, and by no means obey the commands of our lord, you who could be honorable in the sight of the king, if you would hasten to do his will?" When at once they cried out with a mighty shout and said: "We are Christians, we are Catholics, we confess inviolably the Trinity, one God," they are shut up in a custody indeed more severe, but still more spacious, where opportunity was given us to enter, and to make a word of admonition to the brethren, and to celebrate the divine mysteries. Opportunely indeed our Saint in so perilous a temptation strengthened those generous confessors of Christ with a word of exhortation and with the divine mysteries. But from this manner of speaking we gather not improbably that St. Victor was then endowed with the episcopal dignity, although this lay hidden from the Arians.
[20] and his other virtues. Finally, after other examples of Catholic fortitude, the holy Historian in the same place, number 10, vividly depicts how those steadfast confessors of Christ were thrust down into a narrow and most foul place, and how he nonetheless found access to them: The confessors of Christ are tossed one upon another, he says, the narrowness cramping them, one upon another, like swarms of locusts, and, to speak properly, like most precious grains of wheat. In which crowding no means allowed of withdrawing for the natural office; but under pressing necessity they made a place of dung and urine there, so that the stench and horror of it then surpassed all kinds of punishments: to whom at one time, a huge bribe having been given to the Moors, while the Vandals slept, we were scarcely admitted to enter secretly; and we, entering, began to sink up to the knees as in a whirlpool of mud. After these things our Saint, the consoler of the wretched, was forbidden to accompany the glorious exiles further as they departed thence, and returned to Carthage, where he heard the deceitful edict of King Huneric, by which he summoned all the Catholic bishops for the following year, that they might render an account of their faith. But he himself did not come to that Carthaginian conference, because perhaps he had presaged its unhappy outcome, which experience afterwards confirmed.
[21] What our St. Victor did meanwhile, where he lay hidden, In the year 487 he wrote this History, whether he departed from Africa, we do not know. We know only that in the year of Christ 487 he wrote the History of the Vandal Persecution, as he indicates at the beginning of his Work in these words: It is now, as is clear, the sixtieth year since that cruel and savage people of the Vandal nation reached the borders of wretched Africa, crossing over by an easy passage through the straits of the sea, where between Spain and Africa this great and spacious water has cramped itself within a narrow bound of twelve miles. From these words our Chifflet in the Elucidations on the first Little Work, chapter 4, rightly discourses thus: The time in which this History was written the author indicated at the very beginning of the Work as the sixtieth year since the Vandals had crossed into Africa from Spain. Further, since this passage is noted by Prosper in the Chronicle in the consulship of Hierius and Ardabur, that is, in the year of the Christian era four hundred and twenty-seven, adding sixty to this number, the year of this Work's elaboration will come out as four hundred and eighty-seven. Ruinart in the Preface to the same Work, number 8, agrees with Chifflet about this epoch.
[22] But neither agrees with Cotelier concerning the place in which the holy Writer composed his History: although the place of its writing is uncertain, for Chifflet asserts that St. Victor wrote of the Vandal persecution at Constantinople. But Cotelier, in volume 3 of the Monuments of the Greek Church, in the notes to the Life of St. Sabas, disapproves this assertion, and rather reckons that our Saint wrote his History in old Epirus, which region was subject to the Vandals, at the time of his exile, and that on that occasion he dedicated it to a certain disciple of Diadochus, which Diadochus is said to have been bishop of Photice in that same province. Finally Ruinart, in the place of the Preface just cited, having reported the opinion of each, thus brings forward his own: But if it is permitted to use conjectures, it seems to me more likely that Victor composed his history in Africa; for he has many things here and there by which he hints that he was not staying in foreign regions when he wrote it. We do not wish to linger longer in examining these uncertain conjectures, since we can elicit nothing certain from them.
[23] More to the knowledge and glory of our Saint pertains the primacy of the province of Byzacena, and he was probably primate which our Chifflet in the Elucidations on the History of the Vandal Persecution, chapter 9, vindicates for him by the following reasoning: This very Victor, bishop of Vita, I have judged to have been afterwards primate of his own province of Byzacena, of whom there is mention in the Life of holy Fulgentius, who was ordered by him to be ordained bishop of Ruspe. Nor on empty indications: for (as we have explained at greater length in the piece to Ferrandus) in Africa, outside the proconsular province, whose head is Carthage, the first sees were various and shifting, and followed the senior bishop of each province; senior, I say, not in age, but in promotion or ordination; who therefore was wont to be designated by the appellation of the old man, so that he was called indiscriminately either the old man, or the primate of his province, or the bishop of the first see.
[24] of the province of Byzacena, Now I reason thus. The Notitia of Byzacena represents in all three bishops named Victor: him of Nara in the thirteenth place; him of Vita in the forty-sixth; in the hundred and first him of Gauvaris. In the year of Christ 487, in which Victor of Vita was writing, ten of the bishops of Byzacena had already been taken away, and those (as is more likely) the older and weaker; who, if they were the first ten which the Notitia reckons, from that it follows that Victor of Nara held the third place in the remaining series of bishops, he of Vita the thirty-sixth, he of Gauvaris the ninety-first. But now it is sufficiently established that by the mandate of Victor, primate of Byzacena, Fulgentius was ordained bishop for the people of Ruspe in the year of Christ 507, the twentieth year after four hundred and eighty-seven. Through these twenty years, therefore, it is far more probable that thirty-five of the bishops of Byzacena died, who might give place to Victor of Vita, than two, who might do so to him of Nara, or all of ninety, who might do so to Victor of Gauvaris. By which reasoning I conjecture that it is the same Victor, bishop of Vita, by whom the History of the African persecution was written, who twenty years later was also primate of Byzacena.
[25] and died an exile in Sardinia. Ruinart in the praised Preface, number 6, concludes from this opinion of Chifflet that the title of confession is due to him (namely to our St. Victor), not only because under Huneric he was harassed with the rest, or at any rate because by the violence of Thrasamund he was snatched from his see, but also because he departed from among the living as an exile for the faith of Christ: for it is gathered that Victor, primate of Byzacena, praised in the Life of Fulgentius, whoever he finally was, died an exile, because at that time when, the peace of the Church being restored, it was permitted to the bishops to return to their sees, not Victor but Liberatus held the primacy of the province of Byzacena. Tillemont in the Ecclesiastical Monuments, volume 16, pages 599 and 799, judges the same opinion of Chifflet very probable, and with others reckons that St. Victor of Vita was relegated to Sardinia in the year 507 or 508, and there died in exile before the year 517. We, on this hypothesis, have assigned his death above in the margin to after the beginning of the sixth century. These are the chief things which we have been able to gather concerning St. Victor of Vita.
AnnotationsOtherwise Gubernet*.
Otherwise nudo*.