FACONDO OF HERMIANA. - African bishop of the 6th century. What is known of him is closely connected with the part he played in the question of the Three Chapters, of which he was one of the most strenuous and tenacious defenders, employing in it his gifts as a vigorous polemicist and a profound connoisseur of the Greek and Latin Fathers.
Bishop of Hermiane in Byzacena in Africa, he went to Constantinople when the controversy was at its height, and there, invited by other bishops, he wrote between 546 and 548 his major work: Pro defensione Trium Capitulorum Concilii Chalcedonensis libri XII ad Iustinianum imperatorem. Having acknowledged that the emperor — by accepting the proposition that one of the Trinitarian Persons suffered in the flesh, and furthermore the divine maternity of the Virgin and the union of the two natures in Christ — is in the true Faith, he seeks to demonstrate that the opponents of the Three Chapters, Eutychians and Origenists, use the question as a pretext to undermine the authority of the Council of Chalcedon, and he energetically defends the incriminated men and writings, dwelling at length on Theodore of Mopsuestia and Hibas of Edessa, while Theodoret of Cyrrhus is only briefly mentioned. To this end he insists on certain principles: the duty of bishops to enlighten princes in the Faith and of the latter to submit to the authority of bishops in matters of Faith and morals; the irrefutability of decisions taken by a council; the illegality of a proceeding against the dead, over whom the Church has no jurisdiction; the injustice of the condemnation pronounced against a person for some occasional error and of the charge of heretic attributed to one who was not pertinacious in error. Before this work was completed, Pope Vigilius arrived in Constantinople, who requested from 70 bishops a written report on the question. F. drafted in seven days a summary of the work he had in hand, in more than 3000 lines, which has been lost. When, with the Indicatum 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 of 553 — F., with the majority of the African episcopate, separated himself from communion with the Eastern bishops and with the Pope. He maintained this point of view, around 571, while he was in hiding to escape imperial persecution, in the Liber contra Mocianum scholasticum, appealing to historical precedents, and in an even harsher tone in the Epistola Fidei catholicae in defensione Trium Capitulorum, where he attributes to the adversaries all the blame for having disturbed the peace of the Church and confirms his refusal to communicate with them. In this attitude F. persisted until his death.