CORNELIO. — Roman centurion stationed at Caesarea in Palestine, converted to Christianity through God’s direct intervention and admitted to baptism by St. Peter (Act. 10:1–11:8). An angel appears to C. and commands him to send messengers to Simon Peter, at Joppa (Act. 10:1–8). Peter has a symbolic vision and, while he hesitates over how to interpret it, the envoys of C. arrive and report to him what had happened at Caesarea. The Holy Spirit removes all uncertainty from Peter’s mind (Act. 10:9–23). At Caesarea, he listens to C.’s account, instructs him in the faith, and, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, manifested through the gift of tongues, has him and his household baptized (Act. 10:24–48). Before the community of Jerusalem, Peter justifies having admitted C. and his household into the Church without first subjecting them to the Mosaic observances (Act. 11:1–18).
The narrative of the Acts is rich in details and in those repetitions typical of Semitic storytelling, which, while revealing the source from which the writer draws, also give us a sense of the importance that the event holds for the history of the primitive Church. It concerns, in fact, a decisive turning point, brought about through the manifest intervention of God. With the centurion C., that pagan world which the Jews regarded with cordial contempt, and which they never admitted to a position of equality in religious life, even when—as in C.’s case—it consisted of those who sincerely wished to draw near to the people of God, began officially to enter the Church.
C. was one of those “devotees” of the true God (Act. 10:2), of whom there were various degrees; but proselyte (v.) in the strict sense. It is more likely that he was distinguished from other pagans simply by his probity of life and his well-known sympathy toward the religion of Israel (Act. 10:22). That he belonged to the Gens Cornelia is also rendered doubtful by his modest rank as a centurion. He may have been merely a descendant of freedmen. L. Cornelius Sulla emancipated more than ten thousand slaves at one time, who consequently took his nomen gentile (Appian, I, 100).
C. was a centurion in a cohort that St. Luke calls “Italic.” The presence of such a cohort in Palestine at the time of these events (around 40 A.D.) has been much debated. A Cohors II italica was in Syria between 69 and 157 A.D. (cf. E. Jacquier, Les Actes des Apôtres, Paris 1926, p. 312), but its presence in the preceding period is not positively attested. Nevertheless, the silence of the sources does not prove that this cohort, or a detachment of it, was not already stationed at Caesarea before 69; besides, as R. J. Knowling rightly observed (The Acts of the Apostles, in The Expositor’s Greek Testament, II, 3rd ed., London 1904, p. 250), a centurion of the “Italic” cohort might have been at Caesarea on some unspecified service. Roman officers were at times commissioned by Rome’s socii to train their own soldiers.
St. Jerome (Adv. Iovinianum, I, 39: PL 23, 277) seems to regard him as the founder of the ethnic-Christian Church of Caesarea; whereas the Constit. Apost., VII, 46 (PG 1, 1049) make him the second bishop of that city, successor to Zacchaeus. Another tradition (PG 114, 1293–1312) makes him bishop of Skepsis in Mysia, where he is said to have died a holy death after confessing the faith of Christ. His feast is celebrated on 2 February according to the Roman Martyrology, and on 13 September according to the Greek menologia.
Teodorico da Castel San Pietro
ICONOGRAPHY. — Some iconographers have called one of the soldiers who, in early Christian sculpture from the end of the 3rd century onward, are depicted near the spring that St. Peter, like Moses, causes to gush forth from the rock, by the name of C. Characterized as Roman soldiers by the cloak they wear and the round cap (pileus pannonicus), they usually drink from the spring, taking up the water with their hands. They are recognized as that C., « centurio cohortis quae dicitur Italica », with his companions, who, according to the Act. 10:24 ff., having met the Apostle, allowed themselves to be baptized. Drinking the water of the spring was, among the first Christians, an expression equivalent to « being baptized ». The iconographic scene thus represents Baptism, and C. as the first representative of the Gentiles baptized by St. Peter. It must be observed, however, that not all scholars agree with this identification: some, in fact, continue to see in the figures near the spring simply Jews.