Facundus of Hermiane

Facundus was bishop of Hermiane, a town in the North African province of Byzacena, in the middle of the sixth century. He is remembered for refusing an emperor.

The quarrel is called the Three Chapters controversy, and it was Justinian's attempt to win back the churches of Egypt and Syria that had rejected the Council of Chalcedon. Justinian calculated that if he condemned three long-dead figures whom the anti-Chalcedonians hated, Theodore of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret against Cyril, and a letter of Ibas of Edessa, the offended parties might come back. In 543 or 544 he issued an edict condemning them and required the bishops of the empire to sign.

The Latin West revolted, and Facundus wrote the case against it. His In Defense of the Three Chapters, in twelve books, was presented to the emperor around 548. His argument was not chiefly about the three men's theology. It was about the authority of a council and the standing of the dead. Chalcedon had examined Ibas and received him. Theodoret had been received. Theodore had died in the peace of the church a hundred and thirty years before, and no man can be tried after his death when he cannot answer. If an emperor can reopen and reverse what a council settled, then nothing is settled, and Chalcedon itself is only as durable as the next imperial mood.

He was writing in Constantinople under pressure, watching Pope Vigilius bend, resist, bend again. Facundus did not sign. He went into hiding, was excommunicated, and lost his see. After the Second Council of Constantinople condemned the Three Chapters in 553 he kept writing, Against Mucianus, attacking those who had accepted the council, and a defense of his own position addressed to the catholic faithful.

He lost. The condemnation stood, the West eventually submitted, and the eastern churches did not come back anyway. Northern Italy went into schism over it for a century and a half.

His book survived, and it is a substantial piece of theological reasoning about how the church holds its own decisions, with long quotations from documents otherwise lost. He was still writing in 571. When and where he died is not recorded.

Sources: Facundus of Hermiane, Pro defensione trium capitulorum (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 90A); Victor of Tunnuna, Chronicle; The Acts of the Second Council of Constantinople, translated by Richard Price; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "Facundus".