Apollinarius biography

He was found half-dead on the seashore, and kept in concealment by the Christians, but was captured again and compelled to walk on burning coals and a second time expelled. But he remained in the vicinity, and continued his work of evangelization. A third time he returned to Ravenna. Again he was captured, beaten and tortured, and flung into a dungeon, loaded with chains, to starve to death; but after four days he was put on board a ship and sent to Greece.

There the same course of preachings, miracles, and sufferings continued; and when his very presence caused the oracles to be silent, he was, after a cruel beating, sent back to Italy. By this time Vespasian was Emperor, and he, in answer to the complaints of the pagans, issued a decree of banishment against the Christians. Apollinaris was kept concealed for some time, but as he was passing out of the gates of the city, was set upon and savagely beaten, probably at Classisa suburb, but he lived for seven days, foretelling meantime that the persecutions would increase, but that the Church would ultimately triumph.

Popes Simmachus — and Honorius I — encouraged its spread to Rome, while the Frankish king Clovis dedicated a church to Apollinaris near Dijon. In Germany it probably spread thanks to the Benedictine and Camaldolese monasteries. The apollinarius biography General Roman Calendar devotes this day to Saint Bridget of Swedensince it is also the day she died and she is now better known in the West than Saint Apollinaris, being one of the patron saints of Europe.

In his opposition Apollinaris denied that Christ had a soul, thinking that His divine personality supplied the assumed human nature with that function. This error was condemned at a synod of Alexandria, which did not mention Apollinaris by name because of his strong opposition to Arianism, and he modified his teaching. Accepting the Semitic trichotomy of body-soul-spirit, he admitted that Christ had a soul, but denied He had a human spirit.

This doctrine was opposed in by basil of caesarea, who asked Pope damasus i to condemn it as heresy. In Rome censured Apollinaris's teaching, and he was condemned at the Council of constantinople i In gregory of nyssa wrote a refutation of Apollinaris called the Antirrheticus contra Apollinarem, that was directed against Apollinaris's Proof of the Incarnation.

Apollinarius biography

Most of Apollinaris's writings have disappeared. It was condemned by the First Council of Constantinople in He is best known, however, as a noted opponent of Arianism. It was alleged that the Apollinarian approach implied docetism : if the Godhead without constraint swayed the manhood, there was no possibility of a real human probation or of a real advance in Christ's manhood.

The position was accordingly condemned by several synods, in particular by the First Council of Constantinoplein