LUCIFER OF CAGLIARI. - Bishop of Cagliari, died according to St. Jerome (De viris ill., 95) around 370-71. Nothing is known of his life and education until 354, when he already appears as bishop of Cagliari and came to Rome, offering to Pope Liberius to go as ambassador to the emperor Constantius II to deal with the Arian question. The Pope accepted, and the fruit of the mission was the convocation at Milan of the Council of 355, at which almost all the bishops, pressed by threats and violence, subscribed to the condemnation of St. Athanasius, and only L., Eusebius of Vercelli and Dionysius of Milan were able to resist; they were therefore arrested and driven into exile. L. was assigned Germanicia in Syria as his place of residence, then was transferred to Eleutheropolis in Palestine and later to the Thebaid.
In 361, through the edict of Julian the Apostate, he was able to recover his freedom; but instead of returning to his see, he stayed for some time in the East, especially at Antioch, which was afflicted by dogmatic and disciplinary struggles, between the followers of the bishop Meletius and the faithful devoted to the memory of the bishop Eustathius. L. worsened the situation; by ordaining as bishop Paulinus, the head of the Eustathians, he refused to accept the decisions of the Council of Alexandria (362), which was inspired by a desire for peace, and he persisted in his intransigence toward the Arians and even toward the seminarians who had converted, even after his return to Cagliari. The last years of L.'s life are obscure, and it is difficult to say whether he died within the bosom of the Church or not. In Sardinia he is honored as a saint, and his feast is still celebrated today in the dioceses of Cagliari and Oristano with the Mass de Commune Doctorum.
During his exile between 356 and 361 L. composed a series of polemical pamphlets against the emperor Constantius, namely: Pro s. Athanasio or Quia absentem nemo debet iudicare nec damnare; De regibus apostaticis; De non parcendo in Deum delinquentibus; Moriendum esse pro Dei Filio; De non conveniendo cum haereticis. They are not rich in doctrinal content, and they also leave something to be desired in language and style, which are very careless; scriptural quotations abound, which makes reading them heavy; classical culture is also scanty. They are, however, very important both because they reveal the indomitable character of the author and, and principally, for the knowledge of the biblical text before the Vulgate prepared by St. Jerome. It seems that St. Athanasius praised them and translated them into Greek. L. also wrote some letters, but those known today are not all authentic or genuine.
L.'s rigorist ideas, with regard to those who had stained themselves with the errors of the Arians, were embraced by several bishops and ecclesiastics, so much so that after his death there is talk of a sect of Luciferians. It had a doctrinal baggage and was also very widespread. The principal sources for knowledge of it are the pamphlet of St. Jerome: Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi (PL 23, 163-92) for the doctrinal part, and the so-called Libellus precum (CSEL, XXXV, pp. 3-44) for the spread of the sect in the various regions. According to the Altercatio the Luciferians maintained that in the readmission of Arians to the Church, if they were bishops, they had to renounce every dignity and content themselves with the simple lay state. St. Augustine moreover reports (De haeres, 81) that he had read in an anonymous pamphlet that the Luciferians also believed that the soul is generated with the body by the parents. The report, however, is not certain. From the Libellus, then, written by the Luciferian priests Faustinus and Marcellinus and addressed to the emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius and Arcadius, to implore protection against the hostilities of the Catholics, it is known that, besides in Sardinia, the Luciferians were in Spain, where the most esteemed representatives were Gregory bishop of Elvira and a priest by the name of Vincent; at Trier, where the priest Bonosus was; at Oxyrhynchus, led by the bishop Heraclides, and at Eleutheropolis in Palestine, with the abbess Hermione and all her monastery. Also at Rome there existed a community of Luciferians presided over by a certain bishop Aurelius, whom Ephesius succeeded; to it belonged the two authors of the Libellus. After L.'s death his followers made themselves talked about for about another 20 years; they disappeared between the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th.
Bibliography8 works
Agostino Amore