Saint Peter Chrysologus

Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Feast Day

July 30

Life

380–450

Doctor of the Church

1729

Born

Imola, Roman Italy

Saint Peter, surnamed Chrysologus (the Golden-Worded) by his contemporaries for the eloquence of his preaching, was born at Imola in the late fourth century, traditionally about 380. He was educated by Cornelius, Bishop of Imola, and ordained deacon. About 433, on a journey to Rome with Bishop Cornelius, he was, according to a tradition recorded in the eighth-century Liber Pontificalis of Ravenna by Agnellus, designated Archbishop of Ravenna by Pope Saint Sixtus III in a vision shown to the pontiff, and consecrated to that see.

Ravenna was at this time the imperial capital of the Western Roman Empire under the Empress Galla Placidia, regent for her young son Valentinian III, and a major Christian center. Peter Chrysologus carried out an extensive program of catechesis and Church-building, including the original octagonal baptistery of Saint John (the Battistero degli Ortodossi, with its celebrated mosaics of the Baptism of Christ).

What survives of his episcopal teaching is a collection of one hundred and seventy-six (sometimes numbered one hundred and eighty-three) short sermons, the Sermones, the largest extant homiletic corpus of the early fifth-century Latin West. They are concise, vivid, doctrinally rigorous, and rich in scriptural typology; especially celebrated are his sermons on the Annunciation, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Mother of God, and on his predecessor Saint Apollinaris. He preached against the residual Arianism of the Goths and the rising Monophysitism, and his letter to Eutyches (preserved among the writings of Pope Saint Leo the Great) endorsed the Roman position later canonized at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

According to Agnellus, Peter Chrysologus retired to Imola, his birthplace, in his last years and died there on July 31, about 450. Pope Benedict XIII declared him a Doctor of the Universal Church on February 10, 1729. The Memorial in the General Roman Calendar is observed on July 30 (the eve of his death) to leave July 31 to Saint Ignatius of Loyola.