Apollinaris of Ravenna

Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna, known in Italian as Sant'Apollinare, is venerated as a martyr and as the first bishop of Ravenna. According to a tradition already attested in the fifth century by Saint Peter Chrysologus, bishop of Ravenna, Apollinaris was a native of Antioch in Syria and a disciple of the Apostle Peter, who consecrated him bishop and sent him to evangelize Ravenna in northern Italy. The principal narrative of his life is the Latin Passio Sancti Apollinaris, a text that modern historians regard as largely legendary and of relatively late composition. No contemporary first-century source mentions him, and the detailed episodes of miracles, conversions, and repeated expulsions from the city cannot be verified. Nonetheless, archaeological and liturgical evidence shows that a cult of Apollinaris at Classe (ancient Classis), the commercial port of Ravenna, was well established by late antiquity, and the see of Ravenna has from an early date claimed him as its founder and protobishop.

The legendary Passio describes Apollinaris as arriving in Ravenna and converting a substantial number of pagans, beginning with the household of a Roman military officer. His success is said to have aroused the opposition of local pagan priests and of imperial officials. He was repeatedly arrested, beaten, and driven into exile, yet each time he returned to resume preaching. Accounts speak of an episcopate lasting many years—sometimes given as twenty-six—during which he also evangelized in the surrounding region of Emilia and along the Adriatic. These stories, though not historically reliable in their particulars, reflect the later community's memory of a founding missionary who suffered for the faith.

Traditions concerning his death likewise vary. Some versions place his martyrdom under the emperor Nero, others under Vespasian, in the later first century. He is said to have been beaten and left for dead at Classis (modern Classe) and to have died of his wounds. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him as a bishop who, while spreading the unchanging faith of Christ, adorned the church of Classe near Ravenna by his glorious martyrdom. Because the Acts are not historically trustworthy, neither the precise year of his birth nor of his death can be established from reliable sources.

Devotion to Apollinaris centered on his tomb at Classe. In the sixth century the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe was erected over the site; its apse mosaic, among the finest of early Christian art, depicts the saint in a symbolic landscape. In the ninth century, when Adriatic pirates threatened the unprotected coastal basilica, the relics were translated for safety to Sant'Apollinare Nuovo inside the walls of Ravenna; some remains were later associated again with Classe. The cult spread north of the Alps, especially in the Rhineland, where Apollinaris became patron of Düsseldorf and was honored at Remagen and Burtscheid. He is the patron saint of Ravenna and of Emilia-Romagna and is invoked against epilepsy and gout. In the General Roman Calendar his optional memorial is kept on 20 July; before the calendar reform of 1969 the feast was observed on 23 July.