Faustus of Milevi

FAUSTUS OF MILEVI. - African Manichaean bishop of the 4th century. Born in Africa, at Mileve, although with an almost purely literary education and quite limited even in this field, he acquired a certain eloquence that made him willingly listened to. Having become a bishop, he became one of the most prominent men of the sect. He lived for a long time in Rome.

With him Augustine had in 383, at Carthage, a conversation awaited with longing for nine years, but in vain he submitted his doubts to him, to which F. declared he did not know how to respond (Conf., V, 3, 3; 6, 10-12). Yet he seems to have preserved a good memory of him if later, at Milan, he will still hope for light from F. (Conf., VI, 11). Because he was a Manichaean, he was for some time relegated to an island. He wrote an apologetic-polemical work in which, popularizing Manichaeism, he repudiated the Old Testament and the Incarnation, and, as for the New Testament, maintained that the passages contrary to his doctrines were corrupted. St. Augustine opposed to him, around 400, when the adversary was already dead, the 33 books of the Contra Faustum Manicheanum, where he reports step by step his work, which in this way has come down to us almost entire, and refutes it extensively.

Michele Pellegrino