Quodvultdeus

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.¹ Augustine also dedicated some of his writings to Quodvultdeus.¹

Quodvultdeus was exiled when Carthage was captured by the Vandals led by King Gaiseric, 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.¹ He would go on to convert dozens of Arian Goths to the Catholic Christian faith during his lifetime.

One of the mosaic burial portraits in the Galleria dei Vescovi in the Catacombs of San Gennaro depicts Quodvultdeus.²

Writings

None of the surviving writings by Quodvultdeus were transmitted under his name. While Liber promissionum et praedicatorum Dei was attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine already in the 6th century, Quodvultdeus's sermons are known through Augustinian collections. In 1914 Germain Morin was the first to suppose that 12 sermons by Pseudo-Augustine were actually written by Quodvultdeus. In 1920 showed this hypothesis to be highly plausible.