Hierarch 5th century

Petronius of Verona

died c. 450

Also known as Petronius, Bishop of Verona

Bishop of Verona in Italy and confessor (c. 450)

Feast Day

September 6

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Commemorated as

Saint Petronius, Bishop of Verona

Life

Petronius of Verona was a bishop of Verona in northern Italy, honored as a confessor of the Church and commemorated on September 6. The historical record of his life is sparse: very little is preserved of his origins, family, or the particulars of his episcopate, and his memory rests chiefly on his recognition within the local episcopal succession and on his commemoration among the Latin saints venerated as Orthodox from the period before the schism.

His repose is placed around the year 450, situating his ministry in the first half of the 5th century, an age when the sees of the Po Valley — Verona, Bologna, Ravenna, and their neighbors — were consolidating their pastoral and charitable institutions. As a confessor rather than a martyr, Petronius is remembered for fidelity in his office and for pastoral care, including attention to the poor and the sick, rather than for a death under persecution.

Petronius of Verona is to be distinguished from the more widely known Saint Petronius, Bishop of Bologna, who was consecrated about 432 and died before 450. The two figures are easily confused, and the sources themselves register this ambiguity. The writer Gennadius ascribed a sermon delivered on the anniversary of a bishop's ordination to a 'Bishop Petronius of Verona,' but scholars have disputed whether this attribution belongs to the Veronese bishop or rather to Petronius of Bologna; the matter remains unresolved.

Contributions & Legacy

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Identity and the Sources

The list of the bishops of Verona records a Petronius in the episcopal succession, dated by one reckoning to around the early 5th century, but supplies no further biographical detail. His commemoration as a confessor on September 6 comes through the tradition of the Latin saints of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Rome, which preserves a number of such early Italian hierarchs whose individual lives are otherwise thinly documented.

Much of the scholarly discussion surrounding the name attaches not to Verona but to Bologna. A sermon, 'In die ordinationis vel Natale episcopi,' was attributed by Gennadius to a Bishop Petronius of Verona; later scholarship, including the argument of Czapla, has held that the reference is in fact to Petronius of Bologna, though this reassignment is acknowledged as not certain. Other writings once linked to the name — a treatise on the monks of Egypt and a work 'De ordinatione episcopi' — have been reassigned by scholars to Rufinus of Aquileia and to an earlier Petronius, illustrating how readily the figures bearing this name have been conflated.

Sources: Latin Saints of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Rome