VIGILANTIUS c. 400), the presbyter, celebrated as the author of a work, no longer extant, against superstitious practices, which called forth one of the most violent and scurrilous of Jerome's polemical treatises, was born about 37o at Calagurris (Cazeres or perhaps Saint Bertrand de Comminges, Haute Garonne), where his father kept a "statio" or inn on the great Roman road from Aquitania to Spain. Sulpicius Severus sent him in 395 with letters to Paulinus of Nola. On his return to Severus in Gaul he was ordained, and set out for Palestine, where he was received by Jerome at Bethlehem. Vigilantius was dragged into the dispute then raging about Origen, in which he did not see eye to eye with Jerome. About 403, some years after his return
from the East, Vigilantius wrote his work against superstitious practices, in which he argued against relic worship, as also against the vigils in the basilicas of the martyrs, the rejection of earthly goods and the attribution of special virtue to the unmarried state, especially in the case of the clergy. All that is known of the work is through Jerome's treatise Contra Vigilantium, or, as that controversialist would seem to prefer saying, "Contra Dormitan tium." The influence of Vigilantius long remained potent both in France and Spain, as is proved by the polemical tract of Faustus of Rhegium (d. c. 490).