Possidius of Calama

Saint Possidius of Calama was bishop of Calama in Numidia in North Africa, a friend, disciple and biographer of Blessed Augustine, and reposed in Apulia in Italy around 437. He is commemorated on 16 May.

He belonged to the clergy of Augustine's monastery and speaks of his unbroken friendship with him for forty years. He was raised to the episcopate around 397 and, following Augustine's example, founded a monastery at Calama, an area much disturbed by factions. At a council at Carthage he challenged Crispinus, the Donatist bishop of Calama, to a public discussion, which Crispinus refused. In 404 a party of Donatists dragged him out of his house, beat him and threatened his life, and extremists set fire to a house where he was visiting; Crispinus was condemned for heresy and fined, but at Possidius's intercession the fine was not exacted. In 408 he nearly lost his life in a riot stirred up by pagans at Calama.

In 407 he served with Augustine and five other bishops on a committee, in 409 he was one of four bishops sent to Italy to obtain the emperor's protection against the Donatists, and in 411 one of the seven bishops chosen to represent the Catholic party at the conference with the Donatists. In 416 he attended the Council of Milevum, where fifty-⁠nine Numidian bishops wrote to Pope Innocent I asking him to act against Pelagianism, and he joined Augustine and three others in a further letter on the same subject. When the Vandals invaded Africa he fled to Hippo and was present at Augustine's death in 430. In 437, according to Prosper, the Arian Vandal king Gaiseric persecuted him and two other bishops and expelled them from their sees, and Possidius died in Apulia shortly afterward.

He wrote the Life of Saint Augustine, composed before the capture of Carthage in 439, and a list of his works. Pope Clement X confirmed devotion to him on 19 August 1672.