Sylvester I

Pope Sylvester I (also spelled Silvester) was bishop of Rome from 31 January 314 until his death on 31 December 335. His episcopate fell entirely within the reign of Constantine the Great and therefore within the first generation of the Church’s public existence after the Great Persecution. Contemporary evidence for his life is meager. The sixth-century Liber Pontificalis describes him as a Roman, the son of Rufinus, and thus places his origin in the city of Rome, but it supplies no year of birth, and none can be verified from earlier sources. He succeeded Miltiades and was followed by Mark.

The political and architectural transformation of the Roman church took place under Constantine rather than under any documented initiative of Sylvester himself. After the so-called Edict of Milan of 313, the emperor granted the Lateran palace to the bishop of Rome and began construction of the Basilica Constantiniana, later known as the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, as well as the Vatican basilica over the tomb of Peter, the basilica of Paul on the Ostian Way, and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Sylvester’s personal part in these works is not described by fourth-century authors. In 314 Constantine convened a council at Arles to address the Donatist schism in North Africa; the Roman see was represented by papal legates. In 325 the First Council of Nicaea, summoned by the emperor to deal with the Arian controversy, met without Sylvester present. He sent two Roman priests, Vitus and Vincentius, as his representatives, and he afterwards accepted and confirmed the council’s creed and canons. In this way the church of Rome was associated with the first ecumenical council even though its bishop did not travel to Bithynia.

Medieval legend, especially the Latin Actus Silvestri and the later Donation of Constantine, recast Sylvester as the man who baptized Constantine, healed him of leprosy, and received from him supreme temporal authority in the West. These narratives are not historical. Constantine received baptism only in 337, near Nicomedia, from Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, two years after Sylvester had died. The Donation is an eighth-century forgery. The legends nonetheless exercised great influence on medieval papal ideology and on the saint’s later cult.

Sylvester died in Rome on 31 December 335 and was interred in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria. His feast is observed on 31 December in the Latin church and on 2 January in the Byzantine tradition. He is commemorated in the Roman Canon of the Mass. In the eighth century relics associated with him were translated to the church of San Silvestro in Capite in Rome. Apart from the outline of his pontificate, the building activity of Constantine, and his formal participation through legates in the councils of Arles and Nicaea, almost nothing can be recovered of his character, writings, or daily governance. He remains one of the more poorly documented popes of the Constantinian age, known to history chiefly because of the momentous years in which he occupied the Roman see.