Faustinus the Presbyter
A presbyter of the city of Rome belonging to the rigorist Luciferian communion, the followers of Lucifer of Cagliari. With his fellow presbyter Marcellinus he addressed the Libellus Precum (Book of Prayers) to the emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius, and Arcadius, a petition recounting the sufferings of the Luciferians at the hands of Catholic bishops and asking for imperial protection. He also wrote On the Trinity (De Trinitate), an anti-Arian treatise, and a brief confession of faith presented to Theodosius.
Biography
Almost nothing is known of Faustinus beyond what his own writings disclose, and even his identity rests on them: he describes himself as a presbyter of the city of Rome, and he belonged to the Luciferian communion, the rigorist party that took its name from Lucifer of Cagliari and refused communion with bishops who had compromised with the Arian party after the Council of Ariminum.
With his fellow presbyter Marcellinus, Faustinus addressed the Libellus Precum, the Book of Prayers, to the emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius, and Arcadius around 383 to 384 AD. The petition recounts the sufferings of the Luciferians at the hands of Catholic bishops and asks for imperial protection. The emperors answered with a rescript granting the Luciferians relief, a document transmitted together with the petition.
Faustinus also wrote On the Trinity (De Trinitate), an anti-Arian treatise. The manuscripts differ over its dedication: it is addressed in the tradition to the empress Flacilla, while the text as transmitted in the copy edited here carries a dedication to Galla Placidia. The two addresses stand side by side in the sources and are not here reconciled.
A further short piece, a confession of faith, was presented by Faustinus to the emperor Theodosius. Apart from these works nothing of his life, his origin, or his death has come down.
Why Faustinus Matters
Faustinus is one of the few inside voices of the Luciferian movement whose writing survives. The party is known chiefly from its opponents and from the notices of later heresiologists, so a petition and a treatise composed from within it are unusual witnesses. The Libellus Precum in particular gives the Luciferian account of the years after the Council of Ariminum in the words of men who held to the rigorist position, rather than in the summaries of those who rejected it.
The Libellus is also a document of intra-Christian conflict. It sets out, as a formal complaint to the emperors, the treatment the Luciferians say they received from Catholic bishops, and it asks the imperial power to intervene on their behalf. As a record of one Christian communion appealing to the state against another in the decades after Ariminum, it preserves a perspective on the divisions of the fourth-century church that the standard narratives do not supply.
His On the Trinity shows Nicene argument being made at the level of a parish presbyter. It is not the work of a bishop or a school but of a Roman clergyman writing against the Arians, and it is useful as evidence of how the case for the Nicene faith was stated and defended below the level of the major controversialists.
Complete Works in English
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