FERRANDO. - African bishop, d. ca. 546. He was a disciple of St. FULGENZIO of Ruspe, and when the latter was exiled, along with some sixty other African bishops, by the Vandal king Trasamondo to Sardinia (ca. 508), Ferrando followed him and, won over by his exhortations, embraced the religious life in a small monastery founded by Fulgenzio in Cagliari. Returning to Africa in 523, under King Ilderic, he became deacon of the Church of Carthage.
He wrote: the *Life of St. Fulgenzio*, in which admiration and grateful affection for his master are evident, yet the edifying intent does not diminish the historical value of the document, which is of the greatest importance for the knowledge of Fulgenzio and of the African Church under Vandal rule. The *Life* has come down to us anonymously: the attribution to F. is suggested by valid internal arguments, which few contest; the *Breviatio canonum*, which gathers in 232 chapters, arranged by subject, the disciplinary norms then in force in the Church, drawn from numerous Greek and African councils, treating first of the clergy: bishops (1-84), priests (85-103), deacons (104-120), other clerics (121-142), then of councils (143-144), of crimes and conduct to be observed with heretics, Jews, and pagans (145-198), of Baptism (199-205), of Lent (206-210), and finally of various topics (211-232); Letters: 5 are brief notes of a personal nature; 2 submit to Fulgenzio questions, one on a catechumen baptized while already unconscious and who died without having received the Eucharist, the other on the Trinity and on Jesus Christ; 5 are treatises in the form of a letter: to Anatolius, on the two natures and the one person of Christ (3), to Eugippius, on the same subject (4), to Severus of Constantinople, again on Trinitarian and Christological matters (5), to Pelagius and Anatolius, deacons of Rome, on the question of the Three Chapters, to whose condemnation F. declares himself opposed, mentioning explicitly only that of Edessa (6), to Count Reginus, in which, supplementing Fulgenzio who had meanwhile died, he sets out the duties of a Christian general (7).