MENSURIUS, bishop of Carthage. — He governed his Church during the difficult years from the Diocletian persecution (303) to the disastrous rule of Maxentius in Africa (311). He was a man of character, skilled in overcoming the inevitable difficulties of the moment: to the consul Anullinus he delivered some heretical books, in place of the Scriptures requested.
He energetically curbed certain excesses in the exaltation of martyrdom. After the persecution, the rigorists of the Church in Carthage and Numidia accused him of laxity and of having delivered sacred books. He died in 311, during a return journey from Rome, where Maxentius had summoned him for having refused to deliver the deacon Felix who had offended him.
BIBL.: L. Duchesne, Le dossier du donatisme, in Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire, 10 (1890), p. 589 sq.; H. Leclercq, L'Afrique chrétienne, Paris 1904; The sources (St. Optatus, Zosimus, St. Augustine) are collected and studied by P. Monceaux, Histoire de l'Afrique chrétienne, IV, Paris 1913 and by H. von Soden, Urkunden zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Donatismus (Kleine Texte, 122), Bonn 1913.