Ossius (Ossius) of Córdoba

OSIO (Ossius) di CORDOVA. — Born ca. 257, died ca. 358. He appears for the first time at the Council of Elvira (ca. 300), bishop of Cordova from 295; a confessor of the faith during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian in 303, he was able to display his glorious scars at Nicaea. From 313 he was an adviser to Constantine, perhaps playing a leading role in his conversion. Subsequently, his life became identified with the cause of orthodoxy against Arianism. Sent by Constantine to Alexandria (ca. 324), he convened a Council there which rejected the doctrine of Sabellius. There too the schism of Coluthus was condemned. More decisively, O. together with Constantine prepared the celebration of a general council at Nicaea that would definitively condemn Arius. O. directed its sessions as president, together with the Roman legates, promulgating in it the formula of homoousia as the touchstone of—

stanzo (355), who wanted to make him renounce the Nicene faith and condemn St. Atanasio. His energetic reply (356) earned him exile to Sirmium at the hands of the Emperor; and there, now a centenarian, worn out by hardship and exile under violence of every kind, he was finally forced to sign the second formula of Sirmium, which he himself soon retracted on his deathbed, as having been imposed by force; this is in fact attested by St. Atanasio: «In his testament he protested against the violence employed and hurled his anathemas against the Arian heresy, ordering that no one should follow it.» The Greek Church venerates him as a saint on 27 August.

His whole life was devoted to action. Nevertheless, he left, though brief, several writings, true literary gems. St. Isidoro di Siviglia attributes to him a letter to his sister, De laude virginitatis, in a serene style, and a treatise De interpretatione vestium sacerdotalium quae sunt in Veteri Testamento, whose ingenuity and acumen he praises; but nothing of these works has survived. St. Atanasio, on the other hand, transmitted in his Historia Arianorum, 44, the letter to Costanzo, an imperious monument to the fortitude of the great bishop and, at the same time, a decisive canon of the Church’s jurisdiction and immunity in the face of every abuse.