Fulgentius was born to a noble Roman family in the African province after the Vandal conquest. He served as a civil treasurer in his youth, then renounced his career and entered monastic life. Persecuted under the Arian Vandal king Thrasamund for his Catholic faith, he was consecrated bishop of Ruspe in 507 and almost immediately exiled to Sardinia along with many other African bishops.
From his exile he carried on a wide-ranging theological correspondence — defending the Augustinian doctrine of grace, divine predestination, and the Christological orthodoxy of Chalcedon. His treatises De Fide ad Petrum and De Veritate Praedestinationis are among the most important early defenses of Augustinian theology.
Recalled briefly from exile around 515 to debate Thrasamund in person, he was so eloquent that the king re-exiled him to keep him from making more converts. After Thrasamund's death in 523 he was permanently restored to his see, where he ruled for ten more years until his death in 533.