Saints
“The Golden-Worded”
Bishop of Ravenna · Preacher of short sermons
Bishop of Ravenna when it was the seat of the Western emperors, called the Golden-Worded for his preaching. He kept his sermons deliberately short, saying that the hearers' attention was a thing to be spent carefully, and nearly two hundred of them survive.
His life
Peter was born about the year 380 at Imola in Italy and was ordained deacon there. About 433 he was made bishop of Ravenna, which had become the residence of the Western emperors and so one of the chief sees of Italy.
He was above all a preacher. The surviving sermons are brief by the standards of the age, and he says himself that he cut them short so that his hearers would not tire, preferring that they carry away a little with attention than a great deal without it. For the manner of them he was given the name Chrysologus, the golden-worded, an answer in the Latin West to Chrysostom in the East.
He wrote to Eutyches, who had been condemned at Constantinople, urging him to submit to the judgement of the Church and to look to Rome; the letter survives and was read with approval at the Council of Chalcedon.
He reposed about the year 450 at Imola, the town of his birth. His memory is kept on the fourth of December.
Holy St. Peter Chrysologus, pray to God for us.