Liberatus of Carthage

Liberatus of Carthage was a deacon of the Christian Church in Africa in the 6th century.

Liberatus was a prominent representative of the African communities. In the years 534 and 535 he took part in the delegations of the African parishes to Pope John II . He later participated in the three-chapter dispute that Emperor Justinian I had started with his conviction of three theologians (540). In 550 Liberatus accompanied his bishop Reparatus to Constantinople , who tried in vain to persuade the emperor to withdraw the judgment.

Like many of his countrymen, Liberatus was a staunch opponent of Pope Vigilius , who gave in to the emperor in the three chapters dispute. After his death (555) he wrote the Breviarium causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum between 560 and 566 , a summary of the heresies of the Nestorians and Eutychians from the 5th century to his time. In addition to the church history of Socrates Scholastikos , Sozomenos and Theodoret , which he used in the Latin translation of Cassiodorus, he used the acts of the church synods and letters from various clergymen. Therefore his presentation is of great source value for the church history of late antiquity, especially in the area of ​​his own lifetime .

The breviary was handed down together with numerous letters on a similar subject in the so-called Collectio Sangermanensis , which dates back to the 7th or 8th century. The oldest surviving manuscripts (Parisinus Latinus 12098, Vindobonensis 397) date from the Carolingian period. In the late 12th and 13th centuries, numerous copies of lower quality were made. The Editio princeps produced Petrus Crabbe ( Conciliorum omnium tam generalium quam particularium . Volume 2, Cologne 1538). The edition by Laurentius Surius ( Conciliorum omnium tum generalium tum provincialium , Volume 2, Cologne 1567) was also based on the Codex Vindobonensis for the first time. The first edition, which exclusively contained the Breviarium des Liberatus, was published in 1675 by Jean Garnier , who at the same time wrote the first detailed commentary on it and used four different manuscripts, including the two oldest. Garnier's edition remained in use into the 20th century. It was the basis for the imprint in Mignes Patrologia Latina (PL 68, 969-1052 [Paris 1866]).

The authoritative edition today comes from Eduard Schwartz , who published the Breviarium in 1936 as part of his Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum project (ACO 2.5, 98–141).

literature

• Volker Henning Drecoll , Mischa Meier (ed.): The 'Breviarium' of the Liberatus of Carthage . Berlin / New York 2010 (= Journal for Ancient Christianity . Volume 14, Issue 1 (June 2010), pp. 3–269)