Felix, Bishop Of Urgell

FELICE, bishop of URGEL. — He held office at Urgel (ca. 782) in the Marca Hispanica and died in 818. Together with Elipando, he was the principal advocate of Adoptionism, which he defended with great erudition and zeal. Judged at the Council of Regensburg in 792, convened by Charlemagne, he publicly renounced his errors, which shortly afterward he abjured once again in Rome before Pope Hadrian I.

Having nevertheless fallen back into the same errors, he wrote a highly learned work, now lost, which was subsequently refuted by Alcuin, Paulinus of Aquileia, and Agobard of Lyon. At a synod held in Rome in 798, Leo III pronounced the anathema against F. A public disputation between F. and Alcuin before Charlemagne (October 798) led F. to acknowledge his heresy. He then addressed to his colleagues at Urgel a Confessio fidei, in which he exhorted them to the Catholic faith. The Liber de variis quaestionibus adversus fudaeos ac ceteros infidelus seu qualibus haereticos, previously and falsely attributed to s. Isidore of Seville, has recently been identified as a work of F.

BIBL.: Edition by A. C. Vega and A. E. Anspach, Liber de variis quaestionibus..., (Scriptores ecclesiastici hispano-latina veteris et medii aevi), El Escorial 1940; Z. Garcia Villada, Historia eclesiastica de España, III, Madrid 1936, pp. 58–105; J. Madoz, Una obra de F. de U., falsamente adjudicada a s. Isidoro de Sevilla, in Estudios eclesiásticos, 23 (1940), pp. 147–68. Giuseppe Madoz
Cite this article

“FELICE, VESCOVO DI URGEL.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. V (1950), p. 689. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/felice-vescovo-di-urgel.