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Biography

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Saint Pelinus (Italian: San Pelino; Latin: Pelinus) is venerated as a fourth-century bishop and martyr in the Roman Catholic Church. His cult is centered on Corfinio, the ancient Corfinium, in Abruzzo in central Italy, where a major Romanesque basilica is dedicated to him. According to the traditional account in the Passio Sancti Pelini, a hagiographical narrative of uncertain medieval date, he was born at Dyrrhachium (modern Durrës, Albania), then a city of the Roman province of Epirus Nova. No source records a year of birth. The same tradition holds that he was ordained priest and later became bishop of Brindisi in Apulia. Contemporary evidence for the birthplace and for a Brindisi episcopate is lacking; modern historians treat both details with caution.

The passio presents Pelinus as an opponent of pagan cults. During the reign of the emperor Julian, who sought to restore traditional Roman religion, Pelinus is said to have been arrested for Christian preaching and taken from southern Italy to Corfinium, a town of the Paeligni. There, according to the legend, he was tortured with leaded scourges and beheaded on 5 December 361. The year is conventional: it coincides with Julian’s becoming sole emperor after the death of Constantius II in November 361, and some notices simply place the martyrdom in the early 360s. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 5 December as a bishop and martyr at Corfinio.

Whatever the exact circumstances of his death, devotion to Pelinus took root at Corfinium. A church rose over the place associated with his tomb, and in the eleventh century this sanctuary was rebuilt as the present Basilica of San Pelino, also called the Cathedral of Valva, consecrated in 1075. It served as cathedral of the diocese of Valva until that see was united with Sulmona. Relics attributed to him have been venerated in the basilica for centuries. He is the principal patron of Corfinio. He was not the subject of a formal papal canonization; like most martyrs of late antiquity he was recognized through popular cult and eventual entry into the martyrology.

Scholarship has noted possible confusions in the medieval legend. Some researchers suggest that Pelinus may originally have been a local martyr or bishop of the Valva-Corfinium area rather than of Brindisi, and that the Apulian and Epirote elements could be later elaborations. Despite these uncertainties, his feast on 5 December has been stably observed in the region, and the basilica at Corfinio remains the principal monument of his cult. No religious order is associated with him, and the surviving sources do not record a spouse or children.

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