St. Victorinus of Pettau

Little is known of his life beyond what St Jerome records: that he was bishop of Pettau in Pannonia, that he knew Greek better than Latin, and that he suffered martyrdom. The year of his birth is nowhere given, and the year of his death is placed about 304, in the persecution under Diocletian.

He is the first Latin writer known to have written commentaries on the books of Scripture. Most are lost. What survives entire is his commentary on the Apocalypse, which makes him the earliest interpreter of that book whose work we can still read.

His reading is millenarian in places, expecting a literal reign of a thousand years upon the earth. He writes before the Church had settled its mind on the question, and the later tradition did not follow him there. St Jerome, who valued him, revised the commentary to remove those passages, and both forms have come down to us.

He is honored as a martyr, and his memory is kept on the second of November. He is included here because he speaks in this library, and a reader who meets him at the Apocalypse is entitled to know both what he was and where the Church did not follow him.