ASCARICO. — Bishop of the Asturias in the second half of the 8th century. He addressed an acrostic to a certain TUSEREDO on the uncertainty of eternal salvation, composed from lines taken from the final verses of Prudentius’ Hamartigenia. To the same person he also wrote a letter to inquire about the state in which the dead rose at the death of Jesus (Mt 27:51–53). Ascario also turned, in 785, to ELIPANDUS of Toledo for information regarding his doctrine on the relationship between the Son and the Father. It seems that he was thereby won over to Adoptionism (q.v.).
BIBL.: L’arco di G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christiane urbis Romae, II, 11, Rome 1888, p. 295; the correspondence with Tuseredo in PL 99, 1231–40. For relations with Elipandus: PL 66, 893 sqq., esp. 918, and the Codex Carolinus edited by Gundlach in MGH, Epist., III, Berlin 1892, p. 637. Cf. also A. Lambert, s.V. in DHG, IV, cols. 581–84. Antonio Ferrua