FERRANDO. — African bishop, d. c. 546. He was a disciple of St. Fulgenzio of Ruspe, and when the latter was exiled, together with 60 other African bishops, by the Vandal king Trasamondo to Sardinia (c. 508), he followed him and, won over by his exhortations, embraced the religious life in a small monastery founded by Fulgenzio at Cagliari. Returning to Africa in 523, under King Ilderico, he became a deacon of the Church of Carthage.
He wrote: the Vita s. Fulgenzii, in which admiration and grateful affection for the master, together with its evident edifying purpose, do not diminish the value of the historical document, which is of the greatest importance for knowledge of Fulgenzio and of the African Church under Vandal rule. The Vita has come down anonymously: its attribution to F. is suggested by strong internal arguments, which few dispute; the Bresciatio canonum, which collects in 232 chapters, arranged by subject, the disciplinary norms in force in the Church, drawn from numerous Greek and African councils, dealing first with the clergy: bishops (1–84), priests (85–103), deacons (104–20), and other clerics (121–42), then with councils (143–44), crimes and the conduct to be observed toward heretics, Jews, and pagans (145–98), Baptism (199–205), Lent (206–10), and finally various subjects (211–32); Letters: 5 are notes of a personal nature; 2 submit questions to Fulgenzio, concerning a catechumen baptized when he was already unconscious and who died without having received the Eucharist (1), and concerning the Trinity and Jesus Christ; 5 are treatises in the form of letters: to Anatolio, on the two natures and the one person of Christ (3); to Eugipolo, on the same subject (4); to Severo of Constantinople, again on a Trinitarian and Christological subject (5); to Pelagio and Anatolio, deacons of Rome, on the question of the Three Chapters, whose condemnation F. declares himself opposed to, explicitly mentioning only Ibs of Edessa (6); and to Count Regino, in which, supposing that Fulgenzio had meanwhile died, he sets forth the duties of a Christian general (7).