Peter Chrysologus

Peter Chrysologus, whose later epithet means “golden-worded,” was bishop of Ravenna in the fifth century and was afterward numbered among the Doctors of the Church. He was born at Imola (the ancient Forum Cornelii) in the Roman province of Aemilia in northern Italy. Contemporary records do not preserve the year of his birth; later estimates have ranged from the late fourth to the early fifth century. He received his education in his native city and was ordained deacon by Cornelius, bishop of Imola. Beyond these points, almost nothing can be established about his youth from sources close to his own time.

The principal narrative of his elevation to the episcopate comes from much later Ravennate tradition, especially the ninth-century Liber pontificalis of Agnellus of Ravenna. According to that account, when the see of Ravenna became vacant the local church sent a delegation to Rome, among them the deacon Peter, to obtain confirmation of their chosen candidate. Pope Sixtus III instead designated Peter himself, after a vision in which the apostle Peter and Saint Apollinaris, the legendary founder of the church of Ravenna, indicated the deacon as the one chosen by God. Whatever the historical kernel of the story, Peter was bishop of Ravenna by about 433. Ravenna was then the residence of the Western imperial court, and the bishopric carried both pastoral and political weight in a capital that stood at the meeting point of Roman administration, Gothic settlement, and theological controversy.

Peter’s surviving sermons—some 176 homilies generally accepted as authentic in modern critical editions—are short, rhetorically polished addresses on the liturgical seasons, the Creed, the mystery of the Incarnation, and Christian morals. They defend Nicene orthodoxy against Arianism and other Christological errors and repeatedly stress communion with the Roman see. In 449 he wrote to the Constantinopolitan archimandrite Eutyches, who had appealed to him, urging submission to the judgment of Pope Leo rather than continued controversy; the letter is an important witness to fifth-century Western views of Roman authority. As bishop he collaborated with the empress Galla Placidia in the building and decoration of churches in the imperial capital. He promoted the cult of Saint Apollinaris and exercised pastoral care in a city that was at once an imperial seat and a frontier of orthodoxy.

Toward the close of his life Peter returned to Imola. Tradition places his death there about the year 450, often associated with 31 July, and his burial in the church of Saint Cassian. His relics have remained associated with Imola, whose cathedral is dedicated to San Cassiano. The Latin Church long observed his feast on 4 December; in the calendar reform of 1969 it was moved to 30 July. In 1729 Pope Benedict XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in recognition of the doctrinal and homiletic value of his sermons. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and is honored as a patron of Imola.