Quodvultdeus of Carthage

Saint Quodvultdeus (Latin for what God wills) was bishop of Carthage in the fifth century, a church writer and a correspondent of Blessed Augustine. Driven out by the Vandals, he died in exile at Naples in 454.

He was born at the end of the fourth century, in Africa, almost certainly at Carthage. Around 421, according to tradition, he was ordained deacon by Augustine, who was his spiritual teacher. Several letters of Augustine to him survive, and he wrote two to Augustine, asking him to compose a book on heresies; Augustine then wrote De haeresibus and dedicated it to him. A German scholar, Kappelmacher, argued that the deacon of these letters is not the same as the bishop. From 434 or 435 until the end of his life he bore the title of bishop of Carthage, which he kept in exile as well.

When the Vandals of Gaiseric, followers of Arianism, took Carthage in 439, Quodvultdeus refused to accept the Arian faith. With the clergy who remained faithful, among them Bishop Gaudiosus of Abitina, he was put on ships without oars and sails, or, by tradition, leaky ones, which nevertheless reached Naples. At Naples he wrote the Book of the Promises and Predictions of God, took part in the struggle against Pelagianism and, tradition says, brought dozens of Arian Goths to the true faith. His sermons were long preserved under Augustine's name; only in the twentieth century was it shown that twelve or thirteen of them are his, among them those on the Creed, Against Jews, Pagans and Arians, On the Barbarian Time and Against the Five Heresies. The Book of Promises was attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine as early as the sixth century. In his sermons he reproved Christians who preferred circus spectacles to the example of the saints and martyrs, and he saw the calamities of his land as a punishment from God.

He fell asleep in 454 at Naples and was buried in the catacombs of San Gennaro at Capodimonte; his portrait appears in a mosaic in the Gallery of the Bishops. He is commemorated on 19 February, and in the archdiocese of Tunis on 8 February.