Fulgentius of Ruspe

The text hath but few words in it, in every state content.

But if that be true, which once Fulgentius said, that the most golden sentence is ever measured by brevity and suavity, then this is a most accomplished speech.

The text is like a precious jewel, little in quantity, but great in worth and value.

The main proposition I shall insist upon is this, that a gracious spirit is a contented spirit.

In Africa, it was true for St. Augustine.

And it was true for St. Fulgentius of Ruspei.

who was born in 467.

The only question for the historian, and it is not an easy one, is to decide how genuine this Hellenism was and how deep it went at different periods.

What dreams were his? What hopes? What aspirations? He was now in very truth following in the footsteps of the five friars who were his first inspiration.

He was in a land whose history was made glorious by Tertullian, St. Augustine, St. Fulgentius, great pontiffs, and learned doctors.

The day of its prosperity was over and gone.

its flourishing churches had fallen to decay and the arrogance of the infidel made it unsafe for a christian to pace the narrow streets of those white-walled cities unattended under an ever cloudless sky in the glare of the fierce sunshine and the heat of the desert dust anthony was stricken down with fever filippo of spain a young lay brother who had attached himself to his person watched with Anthony the whole winter.

That the work was originally divided into books, we had long known from ancient glossaries, and we learn, from the title of the Tranguriesian manuscript, that the fragments therein contained are excerpts from the 15th and 16th books.

An interpolation of Fulgentius, Paris 7975, attributes book 14 to the scene related in chapter 20 of the work as we have it, and the glossary of St. Benedict Floria Sensis cites the passage sed vodeo te tutum in illa herrare, quae troiae halosen ostendit, chapter 89, as from book 15.

As there is no reason to suppose that the chapters intervening between the end of the cena, chapter 79, and chapter 89 are out of place, it follows that this passage may have belonged to book 16, or even 17, but that it could not have belonged to book 15.

From the interpolation of Fulgentius, we may hazard the opinion that the beginning of the fragments, as we possess them, chapters 1 to 26, form part of book 14.

The dinner of Trimalchio probably formed a complete book, 15, and the continuations of the adventures of Encolpius, down to his meeting with Eumolpus, end of chapter 140, book 16.

The discomfiture of Eumolpus should have closed this book, but not the entire work, as the exit of the two principal characters is not fixed at the time our fragments come to an end.