Victor Vitensis

Who is Victor Vitensis?

Victor Vitensis was an African bishop of the Province of Byzacena. His importance rests on his Historia persecutionis Africanae Provinciae, temporibus Geiserici et Hunirici regum Wandalorum. This is mainly a contemporary narrative of the cruelties practised against the orthodox Christians of Northern Africa by the Arian Vandals.

Formerly divided into five books, this work is now usually edited in three, of which the first, dealing with the reign of Geiseric, is derived from the accounts of others, while the second and third, covering the reign of Huneric, are a strictly contemporary account of events, of which the author was in the main an eyewitness. At times he exaggerates, but he records little that did not happen.

Victor throws much light on social and religious conditions in Carthage and on the African liturgy of the period. His history contains many documents not otherwise accessible, e.g. the Confession of Faith drawn up for the orthodox bishops by Eugenius of Carthage and presented to Huneric at the conference of Catholic and Arian bishops in 484. Two documents: a Passio beatissimorum martyrum qui apud Carthaginem passi sunt sub impio rege Hunerico and a Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae, formerly appended to all the manuscripts and now incorporated in the printed editions, are probably not Victor's. The former may be the work of one of his contemporaries. The latter is a list of the Catholic bishops who were summoned to the 484 conference and their Episcopal sees in the Latin provinces of North Africa, arranged according to provinces in this order: Proconsularis, Numidia, Byzacena, Mauretania Caesariensis, Mauretania Sitifensis, Tripolitana, Sardinia.