Liberatus

Liberatus a deacon of the Church of Carthage, flourished in the 6th century. He was in Rome A.D. 533, when pope John II received the bishops sent by the emperor Justinian I to consult him on the heresies broached by the monks, designated Acoemetne (or, as Liberatus terms them, Acumici), who had imbibed Nestorian opinions. He was again at Rome in 535, having been sent the previous year, together with the bishops Caius and Petrus, by the synod held at Carthage under Reparatus, bishop of that see, to consult pope John II on the reception into the Church of those Arians who recanted their heresies. John was dead before the arrival of the African delegates; but they were received by pope Agapetus, his successor. When, in 552. Reparatus was banished by Justinian to Euchaida, or Eucayda. Liberatus accompanied him and probably remained with him till the bishop's death in 563. Nothing further is known of him. Liberatus is the author of a valuable contribution to ecclesiastical history, entitled Breviarium Caussae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum (from the ordination of Nestorius, A.D. 428, to the time of the fifth oecumenical [or second Constantinopolitan] council, A.D. 553). In this work he is charged with partiality to the Nestorians, or with following the Nestorians too implicitly. It is contained in most editions of the Concilia (volume 5, edit. Labbe; volume 6. edit. Coleti; volume 9, edit. Mansi). In those of Crabbe (volume 2, fol., Cologn., 1538 and 1551) are some subjoined passages derived from various extant sources illustrative of the history, which are omitted by subsequent editors. Hardouin omitted the Breviarium. It was separately published, with a revised text, and a learned preface and notes, and a dissertation, in the Bibliotheca Patrum of Galland, volume 12 (Venice, 1778, fol.). — Smith, Dict. of Greek and Roman Biograph, 2:777.