Boniface of Carthage

Boniface of Carthage was a deacon and received the crown of martyrdom in the persecution launched by the Arian Vandal king Huneric, in 483 or 484. He was one of seven brothers arrested together with Abbot Liberatus, who led a monastery near Capsa (now Gafsa, in Tunisia): the others were the subdeacons Servus and Rusticus, the monks Rogatus and Septimus, and the young Maximus.

Their story is told in the Passion of the Seven Monks and in the History of the Persecution of the Province of Africa by Victor of Vita. Brought to Carthage, they were tortured to make them accept Arianism. When they refused, they were nailed to wooden boards on a ship prepared for carrying timber, and the ship was set on fire. The ship would not burn, so they were killed with blows of oars. Their memorial is absent from the Calendar of Carthage; medieval martyrologies had them on 16 or 17 August, and after the Second Vatican Council the Roman Martyrology moved them to 2 July, in the Western calendar (new style). A saint of the undivided Church, venerated chiefly in the West.