The ancient city of Vita's location is identified with the ruins ofBeni-Derraj in modernTunisia. It was important enough in the lateRoman province ofByzacena[5] to become one of the manysuffragan sees of its capitalHadrumetum (modern (Sousse))'s Metropolitan Archbishorpic. Founded duringRoman times, it survived theVandal andByzantine rule, but ceased to function following theUmayyad conquest of 670AD.
Among thebishops of Vita is noted especiallyVictor (487–?), an ecclesiastical writer who witnessed the occupation ofRoman North Africa and the persecution of Catholics by the Vandals.[6][7]
Another well-known bishop of Vita was Pampiniano, a victim of theArian 487AD persecution byVandal kingGenseric and remembered by theRoman Martyrology on November 28.[8]
^Victor Vitensis.History of the Vandal Persecution. Translated by John Moorhead, (Translated Texts for Historians; 10). Liverpool, 1992.
^A. H. Merrills, "totum subuertere uoluerunt: ‘social martyrdom’ in the Historia persecutionis of Victor of Vita", in Christopher Kelly, Richard Flower, Michael Stuart Williams (eds),Unclassical Traditions. Vol. II: Perspectives from East and West in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011) (Cambridge Classical Journal; Supplemental Volume 35), 102-115.
^By Henri Irénée Marrou, André Mandouze, Anne-Marie La Bonnardière,Prosopographie de l'Afrique chrétienne (303–533) (Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982) p 1298
