Saint Possidius of Calama

Possidius opens his book by saying what kind of book it is. He will write "the things that I have seen in him and heard from him," as he learned them "through so many years of loving fellowship," and he calls himself "the least of all His stewards." ³ He will not retell what Augustine had already written about himself in the Confessions. ³ What follows is a bishop's account of a bishop, with long stretches in the first person plural: we were at the table, we stood by, we prayed. ³

That is most of what is known of Possidius himself. The Martyrology remembers him as a disciple and faithful friend of Augustine who was present at his death and wrote his celebrated biography (translated here from the Italian). ¹ Bruno Silvestrini, an Augustinian writing for santiebeati.it, fills in the rest from the councils and letters of the African Church. ²

Butler calls him a native of proconsular Africa, educated under Augustine. ⁴ Silvestrini says he was formed as a Christian in the monastery Augustine had founded beside the church at Hippo and lived there for some years. ² Possidius himself says Augustine "furnished" bishops to the Church "from his monastery and clergy." ³

He was one of them. santiebeati's introduction and Butler date his election as bishop of Calama to about 397; Silvestrini puts it about 400. ²⁴ The town is Guelma, in modern Algeria. ¹ Butler says Possidius found the diocese "distracted by the factions both of heathens and Donatists." ⁴ With Alypius and Evodius, Silvestrini writes, he was one of Augustine's most trusted and capable lieutenants. ²

In the Life, Possidius tells how "one of the bishops he had furnished to the Church" was visiting his diocese of Calama and preaching against the Donatists when he fell into an ambush. ³ He escaped with his companions, but the animals and baggage were taken "and they left him grievously injured and wounded." ³ Possidius does not name the bishop. The diocese was his own, and Silvestrini says the Donatists subjected him to grave violence. ²³ Butler tells it differently: in 404 a party of Donatists "dragged him out of his house, beat him, and threatened his life." ⁴

What followed was a long legal contest. Crispinus, the Donatist bishop of Calama, denied before the proconsul that he was a heretic, and the two bishops of Calama met three times in public debate before he was condemned. ³ The Catholic bishop then asked the judge not to exact the fine of gold, and when an imperial order later imposed ten pounds of gold on Crispinus and the court, the Catholic bishops, "especially Augustine," had it withdrawn. ³

In 408 it was the pagans. On the pagan feast of the calends of June, Augustine wrote to Nectarius, a crowd danced past the church at Calama; the church was stoned three times and then set on fire, and one of the servants of God was killed. ⁴⁷ The bishop of Calama, who by Butler's account was Possidius, hid "in some crevice into which he forced himself with difficulty, and in which he lay folded double while he heard the voices of the ruffians seeking him to kill him." ⁷ Augustine went to Calama afterward to comfort the Christians and, at their request, heard the pagans too. ⁷ Butler says that by Possidius's intervention the punishment was limited to an imperial order to break their idols and forbid their festivals and sacrifices. ⁴

Silvestrini lists Possidius at the councils of Carthage against the Donatists in 403 and 407, at the Council of Milevis in 416 and at Carthage in 419, and on two official missions to the emperor in Italy, in 409 and 410. ² At the great conference of Catholic and Donatist bishops at Carthage in 411, santiebeati's introduction says, he was one of the six chosen from among 266 Catholic bishops to speak for all of them. ²

Butler adds that when relics of Saint Stephen came to Africa about 410, Possidius obtained a portion for Calama, and that Augustine records miracles worked there. ⁴

Benedict XVI dates the Vandal crossing into Africa to May 429, and the siege of Hippo to May or June 430. ⁵ Silvestrini says Calama was laid waste in 428 and Possidius took refuge at Hippo. ² Possidius says only, "We ourselves with other of our fellow-bishops from the neighboring regions took refuge in this city and remained in it during the whole time of the siege." ³ Benedict XVI calls his account of those months a "direct testimony." ⁵

He tells of Augustine at table, in the middle of the siege, asking God either to free the city, or to make his servants brave enough to bear his will, or to take him out of this world. ³ In the third month of the siege Augustine fell ill. ³⁵ He had the penitential psalms copied out and hung on the wall where he could read them from his bed, "and he wept freely and constantly." ³ Ten days before the end he asked to be left alone except when the doctors came or food was brought. ³ He died, Possidius writes, "while we stood by and watched and prayed," and he was buried "in our presence." ³ Butler says Augustine "died in his arms." ⁴

Augustine made no will, "because as a poor man of God he had nothing from which to make it," but asked that the library of the church be kept carefully for those who came after. ³ Possidius added to the Life a list of Augustine's writings. Benedict XVI says it counted at least 1,030, was drawn up while the Vandal invasion swept through Roman Africa, and was almost certainly based on the catalog of Augustine's own library. ⁶

Silvestrini says that after Hippo was burned Possidius returned to Calama for a short time, and that in 437 he was among the bishops who opposed the order of Genseric, the Vandal king, imposing the Arian faith, and was driven from his see. ² "After this," he writes, "we have no more news of him" (translated here from the Italian). ² Butler says only that he lived from 430 "in perpetual banishment from his flock," and reports that "the Italians say" he came to Italy and died at Mirandola. ⁴

The cult of Possidius and of Alypius, the two great heirs of Augustine's monastic legacy, was confirmed by Clement X by a brief of August 19, 1672, according to Silvestrini. ²

No source used here names a patronage for Saint Possidius beyond two towns. Butler says that Mirandola, and a town he calls Rhegio in Apulia, "honour him as patron." ⁴ This page records that and claims no more.

Saint Possidius's feast is May 16, the day the Roman Martyrology commemorates him. ¹ santiebeati says the Canons Regular and the Augustinians keep him that day together with Saint Alypius. ² Butler, writing in the nineteenth century, puts him on May 17 and says the regular canons kept his festival then. ⁴

His book ends with a request. He asks the reader to give thanks with him, and to pray "with me and for me," that as he lived with Augustine "on terms of intimate and delightful friendship, with no bitter disagreement, for almost forty years," he may go on imitating him and share the promises of God with him. ³

He was beaten on a road in his own diocese and, by Butler's account, hid from a mob in a crevice while it searched for him. ²³⁴⁷ What he chose to write about afterward was another man. ³

He wrote in a besieged city, with the countryside burned and the churches of Africa in ruins, and he made a list of books so that they would not be lost. ³⁶ Benedict XVI, reading him sixteen centuries later, borrowed his last word on Augustine: that in his writings the faithful "always find him alive." ⁵

Nothing is known of his own death. The last news of him is that he would not accept the Arian faith from a Vandal king, and lost his diocese for it. ²