Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/November 2
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Saint Victorinus of Poetovio (died 303 or 304) was a Catholic ecclesiastical writer who flourished about 270, and who was martyred during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. A Bishop of Poetovio (modern Ptuj in Slovenia; German: Pettau) in Pannonia, Victorinus is also known as Victorinus Petavionensis, Poetovionensis or Victorinus of Ptuj or in some old literature Victorinus of Pettau.
Born probably in Greece on the confines of the Eastern and Western Empires or in Poetovio with rather mixed population, due to its military character, Victorinus spoke Greek better than Latin, which explains why, in St. Jerome's opinion, his works written in the latter tongue were more remarkable for their matter than for their style. He was the first theologian to use Latin for his exegesis. Like many of his contemporaries he shared the errors of the Millenarians, and for this reason his works were ranked with the apocrypha in the decree, later attributed to Pope Gelasius I.
According to St. Jerome, who gives him an honourable place in his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers, Victorinus composed commentaries on various books of Holy Scripture, such as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Ecclesiastes, the Canticle of Canticles, St. Matthew, and the Apocalypse, besides treatises against the heresies of his time.
All his works have disappeared save his Commentary on Apocalypse and short tract On the construction of the world (De fabrica mundi). It is agreed among scholars, that these texts are really a remnant of his works. The Migne edition, in Patrologia Latina V (1844) 301-44, is considered no more reliable, since the discovery of an important codex by Haussleiter (edition in CSEL 49, 1916), the reference however is to be taken rather from the new critical edition by M. Dulaey in SCh 421 (1997). It is incorrect to regard him as the author of two poems, "De Jesu Christo" and "De Pascha", which are included in the collection of Fabricius.
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