CONCERNING SAINT DEOGRATIAS, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE IN AFRICA.
ABOUT THE YEAR 456.
Commentary Deogratias, Bishop of Carthage in Africa (S.)
BHL Number: 2137
[1] Carthage, the most famous metropolis of Africa, was captured by Geiseric, King of the Vandals, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of November, in the year 439, and S. Quodvultdeus the Bishop, together with his Clergy, was set adrift in a broken ship, arrived at Naples, and rested in a holy end as a Confessor, as will be told more fully on October 26. Thereafter the Church of Carthage was without a Bishop for about fourteen years, until the year 453, He is created Bishop around the year 453, when S. Deogratias was created Bishop. Concerning him, Victor, Bishop of Utica—or rather of Vita—in book 1 of his History of the African Persecution under the Vandal Kings, has the following.
[2] "After these things, it came about, at the supplication of the Emperor Valentinian, that a Bishop was ordained for the Church of Carthage, after a long silence of desolation, by the name of Deogratias. Wherefore, if anyone should endeavor to recount gradually the things that the Lord accomplished through him, words would begin to fail sooner than he would be able to explain anything. When, therefore, that Bishop had been established, it came to pass, with sins pressing, that Geiseric captured Rome, the once most noble and famous city, he assists the captives brought from Rome to Carthage in the year 455: in the fifteenth year of his reign. And at the same time he carried off thence the riches of many kings together with captive peoples. When that multitude of captives reached the African shore, with the Vandals and Moors dividing the enormous quantity of people, as is the custom of barbarians, husbands were separated from wives and children from parents. Immediately the man full of and dear to God strove to sell all the vessels of the ministry, whether gold or silver, and to purchase freedom from barbarian servitude, he spends the vessels of the Church, so that married couples might remain united and children be restored to their parents. And because no places sufficed to contain so great a multitude, he assigned two basilicas, named and spacious—those of Faustus and *Varius—with beds and straw, determining how much each person should receive daily according to their condition. And since unfamiliarity with sea travel and the cruelty of captivity had afflicted many, there was no small number of sick among them, whom the blessed Bishop, like a devoted nurse, visited constantly with physicians, accompanied by food, so that, with the vein examined, whatever each one needed might be given in his presence. Nor did he rest from this work of mercy during the nighttime hours, but went running through the individual beds, inquiring how each person was faring. So entirely had he devoted himself to this labor that he spared neither his weary limbs nor his now decrepit old age. For which reason the Arians, inflamed with envy, very often wished to kill him by many stratagems—which, I believe, the Lord foresaw, and quickly willed to free his sparrow from the hands of the hawks. The captives of the city so mourned his passing that they then thought themselves all the more delivered into the hands of the
barbarians, when he went to heaven. he dies, He held the priesthood for three years, and the people, attentive with love and longing for him, might have seized the limbs of his worthy body, had he not, by prudent counsel, while the multitude was occupied in prayer as is the custom, been buried without their knowledge. he is buried: These things Victor, a contemporary author, wrote in the year 487 or in the years immediately following. Rome was captured by Geiseric in the year 455, so that it appears S. Deogratias lived at least until the following year 456.
[3] He has been inscribed in the tables of the Roman Martyrology under this March 22, in these words: "In the same place"—that is, at Carthage—"S. Deogratias, Bishop of Carthage, he is inscribed in the sacred calendars. who redeemed very many captives led from the City by the Vandals, and, celebrated for other holy works, rested in the Lord." Constantinus Ghinius adorns him with a longer encomium in his Birthdays of the Canonical Saints. Bishop Brautius published this distich in his Poetical Martyrology:
Those once bought by Christ's blood, the shepherd Deogratias Often redeemed from the foe with silver.
Annotation* others read: he granted the temples of the New ones,