23 JULY – SAINT APOLLINARIS (Bishop and Martyr)

Apollinaris is believed to have come from Antioch with Saint Peter and to have been appointed by him as the first Bishop of Ravenna. He converted many to the faith of Christ, for which he was seized by the priests of the idols and severely beaten. At his prayer a nobleman named Boniface who had long been dumb, recovered the power of speech, and his daughter was delivered from an unclean spirit. On this account a fresh sedition was raised against Apollinaris. He was beaten with rods and made to walk bare-foot over burning coals. But as the fire did him no injury, he was driven from the city. Sometimes he hid in the house of certain Christians, and then went to Aemilia. Here he raised from the dead the daughter of Rufinus, a patrician whose whole family thereupon believed in Christ. The prefect was greatly angered by this conversion and, sending for Apollinaris, he sternly commanded him to give over propagating the faith of Christ in the city. But as Apollinaris paid no attention to his commands, he was tortured on the rack, boiling water was poured on his wounds and his mouth was bruised and broken with a stone. Finally, he was loaded with irons and shut up in prison. Four days afterwards he was put onboard a ship and sent into exile, but the boat was wrecked and Apollinaris arrived in Mysia, from where he passed to the banks of the Danube and into Thrace. In the temple of Serapis the demon refused to utter his oracles so long as the disciple of the Apostle Peter remained there. Search was made for some time, and then Apollinaris was discovered and commanded to depart by sea. He returned to Ravenna, but on the accusation of the same priests of the idols he was placed in the custody of a centurion. As this man, however, worshipped Christ in secret, Apollinaris was allowed to escape by night. When this became known, he was pursued and overtaken by the guards, who loaded him with blows and left him for dead. He died from the effects of the torture and fatigue in about 79 AD during the reign of Vespasian. Apollinaris was styled a martyr because he sacrificed himself as a living victim for the true faith by the continual martyrdom which he endured for the 29 consecutive years. He was buried at Classis, near Ravenna.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Ravenna, the mother of cities, invites us today to honour the martyr bishop whose labours did more for her lasting renown than did the favour of emperors and kings. From the midst of her ancient monuments, the rival of Rome, though now fallen, points proudly to her unbroken chain of Pontiffs which she can trace back to the Vicar of the Man-God through Apollinaris. This great Saint has been praised by Fathers and Doctors of the Universal Church, his sons and successors. Would to God that the noble city had remembered what she owed to Saint Peter.

Apollinaris had left family and fatherland, and all he possessed to follow the Prince of the Apostles. One day the master said to the disciple: “Why do you stay here with us? Behold you are instructed in all that Jesus did. Rise up, receive the Holy Ghost, and go to that city which knows Him not.” And blessing him, he kissed him and sent him away. Such sublime scenes of separation, often witnessed in those early days, and many a time since repeated, show by their heroic simplicity the grandeur of the Church.

Apollinaris sped to the sacrifice. Christ, says Saint Peter Chrysologus, hastened to meet his martyr, the martyr pressed on towards His King. But the Church, anxious to keep this support of her infancy, intervened to defer, not the struggle, but the crown, and for twenty-nine years, adds Saint Peter Damian, his martyrdom was prolonged through such innumerable torments, that the labours of Apollinaris alone were sufficient testimony of the faith for those regions which had no other witness to blood. According to the traditions of the Church he so powerfully established, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove directly and visibly designated each of the twelve successors of Apollinaris, up to the age of peace.

Venantius Fortunatus, coming from Ravenna to our Northern lands, has taught us to salute from afar your glorious tomb. Answer us by the wish you framed during the days of your mortal life: May the peace of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, rest upon you! Peace, the perfect gift, the first greeting of an Apostle, the consummation of all grace: how you appreciated it, how jealous of it you were for your sons, even after you had quitted this Earth! By it you obtained from the God of peace and love that miraculous intervention which pointed out for so long a time, the bishops who were to succeed you in your See. You yourself appeared one day to the Roman Pontiff, showing him Peter Chrysologus as the elect of Peter and of Apollinaris. And later on, knowing that the cloister was to be the home of the Divine peace banished from the rest of the world, you came twice in person to bid Romuald obey the call of grace, and go and people the desert. How comes it that more than one of your successors, no longer, alas! designated by the Divine Dove, should have become intoxicated with earthly favours, and so soon have forgotten the lessons left by you to your Church? Was it not sufficient honour for that Church, the Daughter of Rome, to occupy among her illustrious sisters the first place at her mother’s side? For surely the Gospel sung on this feast for now [thirteen] centuries, and perhaps more, ought to have been a safeguard against the deplorable excesses which hastened her fall. Rome, warned by sinister indications, seems to have foreseen the sacrilegious ambition of a Guibert, when she fixed her choice on this passage of the sacred text: There was also a strife amongst the disciples, which of them should seem to be the greater (Luke xxii. 24‒30). And what more significant, and at the same time more touching commentary could have been given to this Gospel than the words of Saint Peter himself in the Epistle: “The ancients therefore that are among you, I beseech, who am myself also an ancient, to feed the flock of God, not as lording it over the clergy, but being models to them of disinterestedness and love; and let all insinuate humility one to another, for God resists the proud, but to the humble He gives grace” (1 Peter v. 1‒11). Pray, O Apollinaris, that both pastor and flocks throughout the Church may now at least profit by these apostolic and Divine teachings, so that we may all one day have a place at the eternal banquet, where our Lord invites His own to sit down with Peter and with you in His Kingdom.