Capreolus of Carthage, Saint

CAPREOLUS OF CARTHAGE, Saint. - From 430 until the year of his death, July 437, he was archbishop of Carthage. Three letters of his are remembered, arranged here in chronological order:

1st Letter to Theodosius II, emperor of the East, who in 431 convoked the bishops to the Council of Ephesus, to examine there especially the theories spread by Nestorius. Theodosius also wrote to St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, to beg him to take part in Ephesus, and sent, as bearer of the letter, a certain Ebagnius, who, having arrived at Carthage, learned from C. that Augustine was dead. Having then received a letter from C. for the emperor, he returned to Constantinople. Of this letter only a fragment has come down to us, cited by Fulgentius Ferrandus, from which one may infer that C. begged the emperor to be pleased to keep the cause of the Pelagians as already judged and not to permit the debate on questions already settled to be reopened.

2nd Letter to the Council of Ephesus. Having learned of the convoca-

CAPREOLO CARTAGINESE -- CAPRIOLO DOMENICO

tion of the Council, C. would have wanted to gather all the bishops, his suffragans, and send an official delegation to Ephesus; but he could not do so, both for lack of time and even more because of the upheavals produced by the invasion of the Vandals. He then sent to Ephesus his deacon Bessula, with this letter, in which, having made his excuses for his absence and that of the other bishops of Africa, he begs the Fathers of the Council to oppose vigorously those who wished to introduce into the Church errors already condemned, not to tolerate that the discussion of questions already judged be resumed, but instead to maintain unshaken and immutable what had been defined by the Holy Fathers. The letter, read in full Council, received general approval and was inserted into the acts both in the original Latin and in the Greek translation.

3rd Letter to Vitalis and Tonantius (or Constantius?): two laymen, it seems, Spaniards, who had turned to C. to ask him for explanations on certain points of Catholic doctrine with regard to the Nestorian controversy. C. replies that Nestorius had been condemned shortly before at Ephesus; then he demonstrates solidly, with numerous citations from Holy Scripture, that in Jesus Christ one must recognize two natures and only one person; finally he exhorts them to the reading of the sacred books and those of the Doctors of the Church, in which was found what the true faith obliges one to believe.

The Sermo de tempore barbarico, which Tillemont, later refuted by Bardenhewer, attributed to C., has been reclaimed, by Morin, for the Carthaginian deacon Quodvultdeus.

The name of C. was inserted into the catalogue of saints in the calendar of the Church of Carthage.

Graziella Miot