St. Quodvultdeus

Feastday: October 26
Death: ~450

I was a bishop and confessor at Carthage, about 437 A.D. In 439 A.D. King Geiseric (Arian) grabbed thee city by conquest. He seized all Catholic churches, and the property of the wealthy, sending many into exile.
I was deported with my priests. Church goods were taken. The grace of God's wind sent us to Italy's coastline, at Naples. In adversity, we patiently ministered to the people there. When we died (Quodvultdeus, around 450 A.D.), the people proclaimed us as saints.

Italian-Tunisian saint

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This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (February 2016) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,491 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Quodvultdeus]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Quodvultdeus}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quodvultdeus (Latin for "what God wills", died c. 450 AD) was a fifth-century church father and bishop of Carthage who was exiled to Naples. He was known to have been living in Carthage around 407 and became a deacon in 421 AD. He corresponded with Augustine of Hippo, who served as Quodvultdeus' spiritual teacher. Augustine also dedicated some of his writings to Quodvultdeus.

Quodvultdeus was exiled when Carthage was captured by the Vandals led by King Genseric, who followed Arianism. Tradition states that he and other churchmen (such as Gaudiosus of Naples) were loaded onto leaky ships that landed at Naples around 439 AD and Quodvultdeus established himself in Italy. He would go on to convert dozens of Arian Goths to the Catholic Faith in his lifetime.

One of the mosaic burial portraits in the Galleria dei Vescovi in the Catacombs of San Gennaro depicts Quodvultdeus.

Writings

Opening page of a 9th-century manuscript of the Sermon against Jews, Pagans and Arians by Quodvultdeus, erroneously attributed to Augustine of Hippo (Bavarian State Library Clm 14098, f. 61v)

Twelve sermons by Quodvultdeus survive:

• Three De symbolo ("On the creed")
• Two De tempore barbarico ("On barbaric times")
• Two De accedentibus ad gratiam ("On the approach to grace")
• Adversus quinque haereses ("On five heresies")
• De cataclismo ("On the cataclysm")
• De ultima quarta feria ("On the last Wednesday")
• De cantico novo ("On the new song")
• Contra iudaeos, paganos et arrianos ("Against Jews, Pagans and Arians")

He also wrote:

• Liber promissionum et praedicatorum Dei ("Book of promises and predictions of God")