Victorinus
A Dictionary of Early Christian Biography [1]
Victorinus ( 4 ), St., of Pettau, bishop and martyr. He was apparently a Greek by birth, and (according to the repeated statement of Cassiodorus) a rhetorician before he became bp. of Pettau (Petavio) in Upper Pannonia. He is believed to have suffered martyrdom in Diocletian's persecution. St. Jerome (our chief authority concerning him) mentions him several times, and with respect even where his criticisms are adverse. He enumerates, among his works ( Catal. Script. Eccl. 74) commentaries on Gen., Ex., Lev., Is., Ezek., Hab., Eccles., Cant., Matt., and Rev., besides a treatise "adversus omnes haereses." Jerome occasionally cites the opinion of Victorinus ( in Eccles. iv. 13; in Ezech. xxvi. and elsewhere), but considered him to have been affected by the opinions of the Chiliasts or Millenarians (see Catal. Script. 18, and in Ezech. l.c. ). He also states that he borrowed extensively from Origen. In consequence, perhaps, of his Millennarian tendencies, or of his relations to Origen, his works were classed as "apocrypha" in the Decretum de Libris Recipiendis , which Baronius ( ad ann. 303) erroneously refers to a synod held under Gelasius. Little or nothing is left—nothing; indeed, which can be said to be his with any certainty. Poems are attributed to him with no authority better than that of Bede; while the two lines Bede quotes as his were clearly written by some one with a tolerable knowledge of Latin.
[H.A.W.]
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [2]
bishop OF PETTAU (Petavionensis), a town in ancient Pannonia, not of Poitiers, as Baromius states, lived about A.D. 290, and was an orator before he became a bishop. He was of Greek extraction, and was better acquainted with the Grecian than the Latin tongue. Of his works, a fragment, De Fabrica Mundi, was published by Cave (see below). Jerome says that Victorinus wrote commentaries on most of the books of the Old Test., and he is also credited with the authorship of a commentary on the Apocalypse. He died, according to the Roman martyrology, a martyr's death, under Diocletian, about 303. See Dupin, Nouvelle Bibl. des Auteurs Ecclis. (Paris, 1693), 1, 194.; Cave, Scriptorum Eccles. Hist. Lit. (Genev. 1693), p. 73 sq.; Max. Bibl. Vet. Patr. etc. (Lugd. 1677), vol. 3, where the commentary on the Apocalypse occurs, 4p. 414 sq.; Herzog, Real- Encyklop. s.v.
