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CHAPTER 7
The Sardinian Church
Raimondo Turtas1 Under Vandal Domination 1
By the end of the fifth century AD, the Sardinian church appears to have been
an autonomous ecclesiastical province and, thus, no longer subject to the
Roman metropolitan: under the domain of Carales (now Cagliari) were the
suffragan sees of Torres (Porto Torres), Senafer (perhaps near the episcopalis
insula of Cornus), Forum Traiani (Fordongianus), and Sulci (Sant’Antioco).
This was likely a result of the recent Vandal occupation of North Africa,
Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands (the first attempts began after the
memorable sack of Rome in 455) and maybe the intervention of Pope Hilarius
(461–468), a native of Sardinia.2 The Vandals were largely unsuccessful at con-
verting the Catholics to Arianism and so they persecuted Catholic bishops,
especially in Africa. Sardinia became a land of exile for Catholic bishops, ban-
ished by the Vandal king Thrasamund (496–523), from the early sixth century.
The most well known of these bishops was Fulgentius (468–533), with his
two monasteries in Carales, the one constituted by exiled bishops and clerics,
the other built by Fulgentius himself. He was born to a Carthaginian family in
1 Primary Sources: Victor is episcopi Vitensis Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae,
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 7, edited by Michael Petschenig (Vienna,
1881); Gennadii Massiliensis, De viris illustribus, PL 580 (Bernoulli, 1895), cols 979–112; Jean
Fraipont, ed., Sancti Fulgentii episcopi Ruspensis Opera (Turnhout, 1968); S. Fulgentii epis-
copi Ruspensis vita a quodam eius discipulo conscripta, PL 65 (Paris, 1847), cols 117B–150B.
Secondary Sources: Christian Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique (Paris, 1955), pp. 187–190; Pier
Giorgio Spanu, ed., Insulae Christi. Il Cristianesimo primitivo in Sardegna, Corsica e Baleari
(Oristano, 2002); Letizia Pani Ermini, “La Sardegna nel periodo vandalico,” in Storia dei Sardi
e della Sardegna, ed. Massimo Guidetti (Milan, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 297–327; Raimondo Turtas,
Storia della Chiesa in Sardegna dalle origini al Duemila (Rome, 1999); Attilio Mastino, “La
Sardegna cristiana in età tardo-antica,” in La Sardegna paleocristiana tra Eusebio e Gregorio
Magno: atti del convegno nazionale di studi, Cagliari, 10–12 ottobre 1996, eds Attilio Mastino,
Giovanna Sotgiu, and Natalino Spaccapelo (Cagliari, 1999), pp. 263–307; see also Gabriel-
Guillaume Lapeyre, ed., Vie de Saint Fulgence de Ruspe (Paris, 1929); and Antonio Isola, ed.,
Vita di San Fulgenzio (Rome, 1987).
2 Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique, p. 187.