FACONDO DI ERMIANA. — African bishop of the sixth century. What is known about him is closely connected with the role he played in the question of the Three Chapters, of which he was one of the most vigorous and tenacious defenders, employing therein his gifts as a forceful controversialist and profound expert on the Greek and Latin Fathers.
Bishop of Ermiana in Africa’s Byzacena, he went to Constantinople when the controversy was raging, and there, at the invitation of other bishops, between 546 and 548 he wrote his major work: Pro defensione Trium Capitulorum Concilii Chalcedonensis libri XII ad Iustinianum imperatorem. Taking note that the emperor—by accepting the proposition that one of the Persons of the Trinity suffered in the flesh, as well as the divine motherhood 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 issue as a pretext for undermining the authority of the Council of Chalcedon, and he energetically defends the men and writings under indictment, dwelling at length on Teodoro di Mopsuestia and Hibà di Edessa, while Teodoreto di Ciro is mentioned only briefly. To this end, he insists on several principles: the duty of bishops to enlighten rulers in the Faith, and of rulers to submit to the authority of bishops in matters of Faith and morals; the irrevocability 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 some occasional error and of branding as a heretic one who was not persistent in error. Before this work was completed, Pope Vigilio arrived in Constantinople and requested from 70 bishops a written report on the matter. F. composed in seven days a summary of the work he had in hand, comprising more than 3000 lines, which was lost. When, with the Indicatum of 11 April 548, Vigilio condemned the Three Chapters—a condemnation confirmed, after the Pope’s sharp conflicts with Giustiniano, by the Council of Constantinople in 553—F., together with most of the African episcopate, broke communion with the Eastern bishops and with the Pope. He defended this position 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 his opponents all the blame for having disturbed the peace of the Church and confirms his refusal to communicate with them. F. persisted in this attitude until his death.