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The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Fathers & the Creeds
Chromatius of Aquileia
died c. 406Patristic
Bishop of Italy's fourth city and the hub of a circle that held Jerome, Rufinus and Ambrose.
Pictured: the era he stood in — The First Council of Nicaea — Vasily Surikov (1876), public domain
Summary
- Lived died c. 406.
- Stood in The Fathers & the Creeds (AD 313–600).
- Hangs on The Fathers.
- Tradition: Patristic / Western.
The life
Aquileia, at the head of the Adriatic, was the fourth city of Italy in the fourth century, a port, a mint, an imperial residence, and a major church. Chromatius grew up there in a devout household. His father died young, and he was raised with his brother and sisters by a formidable mother; Jerome, who knew the family, praised the whole house. He was ordained a priest and, in 388, became bishop.
He stood at the center of a remarkable circle of friends. Jerome had studied at Aquileia as a young man. Rufinus of Aquileia was from the region. Ambrose of Milan was a colleague and ally. Chromatius supported Jerome's work with money and with pressure, urging him to translate and expound Scripture, and Jerome dedicated several of his books to him.
When Jerome and Rufinus, once close friends, fell out savagely over Origen and spent years attacking each other in print, Chromatius wrote to both of them and tried to stop it. He failed, but he tried, and both men respected him to the end.
He took a harder risk over John Chrysostom. When Chrysostom was deposed and exiled from Constantinople in 404, Chromatius wrote in his defense to the Eastern emperor Arcadius and pressed the Western emperor Honorius to intervene, and Chrysostom wrote back to him from exile in gratitude. Speaking for a condemned bishop against an imperial court was not a safe use of a bishop's standing.
He was also a preacher, and this is where his reputation was rebuilt in modern times. For centuries only a handful of his sermons were known. In the twentieth century scholars identified around sixty of his homilies and a large commentary on Matthew that had been circulating anonymously or under other men's names. They show a bishop teaching a real congregation, clear, pastoral, saturated in Scripture, given to explaining rather than impressing.
He rebuilt and enlarged the basilica at Aquileia; parts of its mosaic floor survive today.
He died about 407, a few years before the city was destroyed by Attila's Huns. His people scattered into the lagoons, and their descendants built Venice.
Sources: Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermons and Tractates on Matthew (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 9A); Jerome's prefaces and letters; John Chrysostom, Letters; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "Chromatius".
What was happening while he lived8 moments · AD 313–600
- 335Athanasius is exiled for the first timeThe bishop of Alexandria, who had been at Nicaea as a young deacon, was banished to Trier in Germany after a rigged synod. Four more exiles followed; he spent roughly seventeen of his forty-five years as bishop away from his city.
- 367Athanasius's Easter letter lists the twenty-sevenHis thirty-ninth Festal Letter names exactly the twenty-seven books of the New Testament we use today, the earliest surviving list that matches ours. Councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) confirmed the same list in the West.
- 380Nicene Christianity becomes the empire's official religionThe Edict of Thessalonica, issued by Theodosius I, commanded all his subjects to hold the faith of Nicaea. Legal protection had become legal privilege, and pressure on everyone else.
- 381The Council of ConstantinopleAround a hundred and fifty bishops confirmed Nicaea and expanded its article on the Holy Spirit, who "proceeds from the Father" and "together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified." This 381 text is the creed most churches actually recite as the Nicene Creed.
- 386Augustine converts in a Milan gardenA thirty-one-year-old professor of rhetoric, weeping under a fig tree, heard a child's voice chanting "take up and read," opened Paul's letter to the Romans, and stopped running. His mother Monica had prayed for him for years; Bishop Ambrose's preaching had already broken his objections.
- c. 397–400Augustine writes the *Confessions*He told his whole story, theft, ambition, a long affair, a slow surrender, as one long prayer addressed to God. Nothing quite like it had been written before, and it invented the spiritual autobiography.
- c. 405Jerome finishes translating the Old Testament from HebrewCommissioned by Bishop Damasus in 382, Jerome worked for decades in Bethlehem, learning Hebrew so he could go behind the Greek to the original. His Latin Bible, later called the Vulgate, was the Bible of the West for a thousand years.
- 410Rome is sacked; Augustine begins *The City of God*Alaric's Goths took the eternal city, and pagans blamed the Christians for abandoning the old gods. Augustine answered across thirteen years (413–426) with a book about two cities, one built on love of self, one on love of God, and only one of them permanent.
In their own words
“The herdsmen fled at the sight of the divine power and reported to the town what had happened. The people entreated the Lord to depart from their district. This may symbolize the leaders of the Jews or the priests of idols, who, dispensing the food …”
TRACTATE ON MATTHEW 43.5 · on Matthew 8:33
“Those tending the pigs ran off into the town and reported all this, including the account of the demon-possessed men.”
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Chromatius of Aquileia at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Friend of Jerome and Rufinus, who paid for Bible translation out of his own pocket.
Hangs on The Fathers: The men who carried the faith out of the apostles' hands, and wrote down what they had received.
Standing beside himThe Fathers & the Creeds · 130 on this stretch of wall
Exiled five separate times for refusing to say the Son was anything less than God, they called it Athanasius against the world.
Made a Roman emperor stand outside the church door until he repented of a massacre.
Heard 'sell what you have' read aloud in church, walked into the Egyptian desert, and started monasticism.
A brilliant, restless sinner whose mother prayed for him thirty years; his Confessions still read like a man talking straight to God.
Built an entire town for the sick and the poor outside his city, and wrote the rule Eastern monks still live by.
Preached five sermons in a tiny borrowed chapel that settled how the whole church speaks about the Trinity.