Victor bishop of Capua, apart from his writings is known only by his epitaph, which states that he died in Apr. 554, after an episcopate of about 13 years from Feb. 541 (Ughelli, vi. 306).
Writings.—I. He is best known from his connexion with the Codex Fuldensis (F), after the C. Amiatinus the most ancient and valuable MS. of the Vulgate, transcribed by his direction and afterwards corrected by him. The MS. is remarkable for containing the Gospels in the form of a Harmony. In his preface he relates that a MS. without a title had come into his hands containing a single Gospel composed of the four. Inquiring into its authorship, he concludes, though with some doubt, that it was identical with the works of Tatianus (Y), which by a blunder he calls Diapente instead of Diatessaron. So little was known till 1876 of the Diatessaron that it was generally supposed that Victor was mistaken. It was known that the Diatessaron began with John i. 1, whereas F begins with the preface from Luke. But Mösinger’s ed. in 1876 of Aucher’s Latin trans. of the Armenian version of Ephraim Syrus’s Commentary on the Diatessaron (E), followed by Zahn’s Forschungen zur Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons, i. (Z), made known the contents and arrangements of the Diatessaron sufficiently to show that the archetype of F was formed by taking Y and substituting for each Syriac fragment in Tatian’s mosaic the corresponding fragment from the Vulgate, the adapter occasionally altering the order and inserting passages missing in Y. The discrepancies between the index and text in F shew that it underwent further changes after assuming a Latin shape, but it is impossible to say how far the differences between it and Y proceed from such subsequent alterations or are due to the original adapter. The date of the adaptation is uncertain, the limits being 383**, the date of the Vulgate being brought out, and 545, the date of F. The discrepancies between index and text demand a date considerably before the latter limit, but it must have been made after the Vulgate had become well known and popular, which was not till long after it appeared. The most probable date, therefore, seems to be midway between the limits, or the second half of 5th cent., say c. 470. The notices in Gennadius (de Vir. Ill.). who wrote during this period, collected by Zahn (312, 313), shew that either the author was a Syriac scholar or was acquainted with one; pilgrimages from the West to Egypt and Palestine were then frequent. To substitute in Tatian’s mosaic the proper fragments of the Vulgate would require a much less thorough knowledge of Syriac than an independent translation would imply.

**There are differences between the (F) Latin and Jerome’s Latin, so the composition could predate Jerome’s. D. R. Smith. Translator.

http://www.ccel.org/w/wace/biodict/htm/iii.xxii.xvi.htm

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