FACUNDUS OF ERATINA. - African bishop of the 5th century. What is known of him is closely connected with the role he played in the Three Chapters controversy, of which he was one of the most vigorous and tenacious defenders, employing his gifts as a forceful polemicist and a profound connoisseur of Greek and Latin Fathers.
Bishop of Hermiana in Byzacena (Africa), he went to Constantinople when the controversy was raging, and there, at the invitation of other bishops, wrote between 546 and 548 his major work: *Pro defensione Trium Capitulorum Concilii Chalcedonensis libri XII ad Iustinianum imperatorem*. Convinced that the emperor—by accepting the proposition that one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh, and moreover the divine maternity of the Virgin and the union of the two natures in Christ—was in the true Faith, he seeks to demonstrate that the opponents of the Three Chapters, Eutychians and Origenists, were using the controversy as a pretext to undermine the authority of the Council of Chalcedon, and vigorously defends the men and writings under attack, dwelling at length on Theodore of Mopsuestia and Ibas of Edessa, while Theodore of Cyrus is only briefly mentioned. To this end, he insists on certain principles: the duty of bishops to instruct princes in the Faith and of princes to submit to the authority of bishops in matters of Faith and morals; the irreformability of decisions taken by a council; the illegality of proceedings against the dead, over whom the Church has no jurisdiction; the injustice of condemning a person for an occasional mistake and of branding as a heretic one who was not pertinently in error. Before this work was completed, Pope Vigilius arrived in Constantinople and demanded from seventy bishops a written report on the controversy. F. drew up in seven days a summary of the work he had at hand, running to more than 3,000 lines, which was lost. When, with the *Judicatum* of 11 April 548, Vigilius condemned the Three Chapters—a condemnation confirmed, after strong clashes between the Pope and Justinian, by the Council of Constantinople in 553—F., with the majority of the African episcopate, broke communion with the Eastern bishops and with the Pope. He maintained this position around 571, while in hiding to escape imperial persecution, in the *Liber contra Mocianum scholasticum*, appealing to historical precedents, and in even harsher terms in the *Epistola Fidei catholicae in defensione Trium Capitulorum*, where he attributes to his adversaries full blame for disturbing the peace of the Church and reaffirms his refusal to