 About This BishopRegnal dates: Unknown
Regnal length: 28 years, 1 month, 4 days
Profession before consecration: Unknown
Father: Unknown
Birth place: Antioch
Burial place: Unknown
Distinctive features: Sanctity and mildness
Key players: St. Peter himself, Rufus the Patrician
| Episcopal StatsMiracles performed: Many (footprints in stone, blind man healed, sick people cured, demons cast out)
Dead revived: One (the daughter of Rufus the Patrician)
People converted: Many (baptisms along the shores of Corinth and the Danube, plus a pagan temple in Ravenna razed by prayer)
Priests ordained: Many
Precious objects donated: Unknown
Churches built: Unknown
Martyred: Yes (plus torture)
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| Interesting fact: In the middle of his sojourn in Ravenna, Apollinaris was imprisoned just outside the city, and then exiled for three years. As a captive, he traveled to Illyrica, Pannonia and Thrace prior to continuing his conversion mission in Ravenna. |
Apollinaris was sent by St. Peter himself to convert Ravenna, and it seems Apollinaris was an excellent choice. In addition to bringing down Ravenna’s pagan Temple of Apollo with prayer, Apollinaris converted many pagans, ordained many priests and died a martyr in Ravenna during Vespasian’s persecutions. Apollinaris’ martyrdom gave Ravenna’s newly converted Christian population a patron saint around whom they could rally.
Notable in Agnellus’ version of the life of St. Apollinaris are the echoes of miracles Agnellus ascribed to St. Peter. In the opening lines of the life of Apollinaris, Agnellus mentions two instances in which St. Peter’s touch alone melted solid rock, leaving imprints of the holy man’s body in the rock itself. Agnellus tells us that Apollinaris, too, left imprints of his feet where he stood in prayer in a basilica in Ravenna.
The echo is important not only because it further sanctifies Apollinaris but because Agnellus underscores Apollinaris’ inheritance from St. Peter while simultaneously demonstrating his ability to rival St. Peter’s miraculous touch. Agnellus’ need to justify Ravenna’s independence from Rome asserts itself immediately in his descriptions of the very first bishop in Ravenna.
Apollinaris’ life also provides the foundational topoi which Agnellus uses for standard hagiographical miracles–healing the sick and blind, cleansing lepers, bringing the dead back to life. I would argue that these topoi can then be used to help differentiate between standard hagiographic miracles and less formulaic, but far more meaningful, instances of divine intervention in significant conflicts between later bishops and their Roman and Byzantine contemporaries.
Works cited: Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, or The Book of the Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, ch 1-2.
