VIGILANZIO. — Gallic priest, born at Calagurris at the foot of the Pyrenees, died after 406. In the year 394–95 he went with a letter from Paolino di Nola to Bethlehem to visit s. Girolamo (s. Girolamo, Ep., 58), who received him amicably. V. had a discussion with Pauliniano, Vincenzo, and Oceano (Girolamo, Ep., 61, 3; cf. 58, 11).
Having returned to the West, V. s. Girolamo was an Origenist and therefore a heretic. Girolamo protested against this calumny in a letter (Ep. 61) to V. (at the beginning of 396), alluding to the fact that V., as the son of an innkeeper, lacked suitable preparation for the study of theology. In the year 404 V. Aquitania, who in a book had attacked the veneration of the saints and of relics. Girolamo replied in the form of an invective (Ep., 109), and when, two years later (autumn 406), he had received V.’s books, he dictated the Contra Vigilantium in a single night (PL 23, 1, 354–68).
V. had not merely attacked abuses in the veneration of the saints, but had denied the efficacy of their intercession. He had also opposed asceticism and celibacy and advised against sending alms to the monks in Palestine. The final grounds of this controversy are unknown, because neither V.’s pamphlets nor the letter from s. Girolamo’s correspondents have been preserved. It appears that after s. Girolamo’s attack V. withdrew to his parish in Barcelona (or in Gaul?; cf. Gennadius, De vir. ill., XXXV: PL 58, 1078 B). Only Protestantism has accorded him a certain importance.