The Sardinian Church 179
century, when the church was under Gregory the Great, the monastic move-
ment appeared to be deeply rooted in Carales and in Turris, where a female
branch is mentioned for the first time.
Fulgentius and his colleagues were instrumental in the development of
the Sardinian church. These exiles brought with them a hierarchical cohesion
around their primate and councils, which offered the young local churches an
organizational model that was well structured, with rules and suitable practic-
es for the relationship between suffragans and their metropolitan.6 Fulgentius
and his colleagues contributed to the foundation of two new dioceses (the one
at Fausiana, near Olbia, and the other at Tharros, on the opposite side of the
island), the veneration of certain African martyrs, and the adoption of some
typical construction methods and funeral rites.7
Due to the presence of more than a hundred exiled African bishops, in the
early sixth century Sardinia drew “the admiration and sympathy of Christianity,”
beginning with Pope Symmachus (498–514), who was a Sardinian native.8
Every year he sent money and vestments to the exiles, who, in turn, helped
him to overcome the internal dissent of his see by means of Rome’s power-
ful African colony. Fulgentius’s literary activity concerned the aforemen-
tioned problem of the Trinity, which had become a burning issue again,
as a result of the militant Arianism of the Vandals and the Pelagian contro-
versy, which Augustine had already faced, and which the Scythian monks
resurrected.9
6 Lapeyre, Vie de Saint Fulgence de Ruspe.
7 Raimondo Zucca, “Johannes Tarrensis episcopus nella Epistola Ferrandi diaconi ad
Fulgentium episcopum de V quaestionibus? Contributo alla storia della diocesi di Tharros
(Sardinia),” Sandalion 21/22 (2001), pp. 113–136; Antonio Piras, “Fulgentius von Ruspe epist. 13,
3: Thapsensis oder Tharrensis,” in Miscellanea di Studi in onore del Cardinale Mario Francesco
Pompedda, ed. Tonino Cabizzosu (Cagliari, 2002), pp. 156–160.
8 Enrico Besta, La Sardegna medioevale (Bologna, 1996 [1909]), p. 9.
9 Georges Folliet, “Fulgence de Ruspe témoin privilegié de l’influence d’Augustin en Sardaigne,”
in L’Africa romana: atti del VI Convegno di studio, Sassari, 16–18 dicembre 1988, ed. Attilio
Mastino (Sassari, 1989), pp. 561–569; Letizia Pani Ermini, “L’antichità cristiana in Sardegna
attraverso le testimonianze archeologiche,” in Archeologia paleocristiana e altomedievale
in Sardegna: studi e ricerche recenti. Seminario di studi, eds. Maria Crespellani and Paola
Bucarelli (Cagliari, 1988).