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Apiarius

Apiarius was a priest of Sicca Veneria in the Roman province of Proconsular Africa whose two appeals to the bishop of Rome, about AD 418 and again in the 420s, became a test of how far Rome could intervene in the affairs of the North African church. Deposed by his own bishop, he took his case to Pope Zosimus, who ordered him restored on the strength of canons he believed came from the Council of Nicaea. The African bishops found that the canons actually belonged to the Council of Sardica. When Apiarius was later deposed again and appealed to Pope Celestine I, an African council heard his confession of guilt and asked Rome to stop receiving appeals from Africa.

Background

Sicca Veneria, the modern town of El Kef in northwestern Tunisia, was an inland city of the province governed from Carthage. In the early fifth century the African church was large, well organized, and used to settling its affairs through regular councils of bishops, usually held at Carthage under the presidency of its bishop, Aurelius. The same years saw the African bishops working closely with Rome against Pelagianism, so relations between the two churches were close, though not without tension.

The bishop of Sicca at the time was Urbanus, who had been a member of Augustine's monastic community at Hippo before becoming a bishop. Urbanus excommunicated Apiarius and removed him from the priesthood. The sources do not preserve the exact charges in this first case, only that the misconduct was serious enough to warrant deposition.

The first appeal

Rather than accept the judgment or seek a hearing before an African council, Apiarius traveled to Rome and appealed to Pope Zosimus (417–418). Zosimus took up his cause. In 418 he sent a delegation to Africa, led by Faustinus, bishop of Potentia in Italy, together with two Roman presbyters, Philip and Asellus. They carried written instructions that required Apiarius to be restored and that asserted Rome's right to hear appeals. Zosimus also threatened Urbanus with excommunication unless he reversed his action.

To support these claims, the instructions cited canons that Zosimus described as decrees of the Council of Nicaea (325). One allowed a deposed bishop to appeal to the bishop of Rome, who could order a new hearing; another allowed priests and deacons to appeal from their own bishop to neighboring bishops. The African bishops did not recognize these rules. Their own copy of the Nicene canons, brought back from the council by Bishop Caecilian of Carthage, contained nothing of the kind. African councils had in fact already forbidden lower clergy to carry appeals "overseas," directing them instead to African councils or to the primates of their own provinces.

The search for the Nicene canons

Zosimus died at the end of 418, and the matter came before a large council at Carthage in May 419, during the pontificate of Boniface I. Augustine was among the bishops present. The council agreed to observe the disputed rules for the time being, as a gesture of goodwill, while the question of their origin was checked. The Africans wrote to the churches of the East, to Cyril of Alexandria and to Atticus of Constantinople, asking for authentic copies of the Nicene decrees. The copies that came back confirmed the African text: the canons Rome had quoted were not among them.

The disputed rules were real canons, but they came from the Council of Sardica (Serdica, the modern Sofia), a Western council held about 343. In Roman collections the Sardican canons appear to have followed the Nicene canons without a clear division, which would explain how Zosimus came to cite them as Nicene. Sardica had never been received in Africa, so the Africans did not regard its canons as binding on them.

Meanwhile the case of Apiarius himself was settled. He admitted his faults and asked pardon, and he was restored to communion and to the priesthood. He was not, however, allowed to return to Sicca; he was permitted to serve elsewhere, and a letter from the council informed Boniface of the outcome and of the African position on the canons.

The second appeal

Apiarius next served at Tabraca, the modern Tabarka on the northern coast of Tunisia. There he was again accused of grave misconduct and was again excommunicated. Once more he went to Rome, this time to Pope Celestine I (422–432), who received him into communion and sent him back to Africa with Faustinus, the same legate who had argued Rome's case several years earlier.

A council at Carthage, held about 424 or 425, took up the matter. Faustinus pressed for Apiarius's restoration, but during the proceedings Apiarius broke down and confessed to the charges against him. His case collapsed, and he drops from the historical record.

The council then wrote to Celestine. The bishops addressed him with respect, but they asked him not to admit to communion those whom the African church had excommunicated, and not to receive appeals from Africa so readily. Pointing to the Nicene principle that disputes should be settled in the province where they arose, they argued that local councils were competent to judge their own cases. They also asked that Rome no longer send its own clergy to enforce its decisions in Africa, since no council had authorized such a practice.

Significance

Apiarius himself was a minor figure, but his case is one of the best documented early disputes over the authority of the Roman see. It shows the African church acknowledging the honored place of Rome while resisting appellate jurisdiction over its clergy, and it shows Rome making that claim on the basis of canons that turned out to be Sardican rather than Nicene. The canons assembled by the African councils of these years, including the council of 419, were preserved as a collection of African church law that was later received in the Greek East.

Historians have read the episode in different ways. Writers who question the universal jurisdiction of the pope, including Protestant and Gallican authors, have often cited it as evidence that the early African church did not accept such jurisdiction. Roman Catholic historians have tended to stress the deference the Africans showed to Rome and the fact that they did not deny the Roman bishop's leading place in the church. Both readings agree on the main facts: the Africans insisted on settling their own disciplinary cases, and the canons Zosimus relied on did not come from Nicaea.

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“Apiarius.” BiblicalTraining Encyclopedia. BiblicalTraining.org. Accessed October 31, 2026. https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/apiarius.