JOHN I, Pope, Saint. - Of Tuscan origin, he succeeded Pope Hormisdas in August 523 and died at Ravenna on 18 May 526. Following an inquiry of his,

Dionysius Exiguus, around Easter of 526, fixed the paschal cycle still in use today. G. restored the basilica of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, also called that of St. Petronilla, on the via Ardeatina. Toward the end of 525, G., though infirm, was summoned by King Theodoric to Ravenna, where he was ordered to undertake a legation to Constantinople, to ask the emperor Justin I for the revocation of the edict published the previous year, by which all the churches were taken from the Arians of Constantinople and access to public offices was forbidden them. Theodoric also demanded that the Pope ask the Emperor to grant the Arians converted to Catholicism permission to return to their faith, or rather the annulment of the conversions that he considered coerced. The legation, of which, besides the Pope, there were part senators and bishops, among them Ecclesius of Ravenna, reached Constantinople before Christmas 525 and was received triumphantly by the people and by the Emperor, since it was the first time that the Pope had gone to the eastern capital. Justin I, after paying homage to G. "as to St. Peter," was crowned by him anew. To avoid worse complications with Theodoric, the Emperor granted the restitution of certain churches to the Arians, but the return of the converts to Arianism was not even taken into consideration. On 19 April 526, G. solemnly celebrated the Easter liturgy in Latin according to the Roman rite and sat in the place of honor, before the patriarch himself. After Easter the legation set out again for Italy, but Theodoric, disappointed and irritated by the scant success obtained, as soon as G. and his companions reached Ravenna, placed them under strict surveillance. G., already ill and weary from the journey, died after a few days, perhaps as a result of maltreatment. For this he was at once venerated as a martyr; his body, buried at first outside the walls of Ravenna, was transported to Rome and laid in St. Peter's on 27 May, the day on which his feast is celebrated.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: Lib. Pont., I, pp. 275-78; Marcellinus, Chronicon, in MGH, Auct. antiq., XI, 1, p. 102; M. Rosi, L'ambasceria di papa G. I a Costantinopoli, secondo alcuni principali scrittori, in Archivio della Soc. rom. di storia patria, 21 (1898), pp. 567, 584; L. Duchesne, L'Eglise au VIe siècle, Paris 1925, pp. 74-77; B. Krusch, Ein Bericht der päpstlichen Kanzlei an Papst Johannes I. von 526 und die oxforder Handschrift Digby 63 von 814, in Papsttum und Kaisertum, Festschrift für P. Kehr, Munich 1926, pp. 48-58; O. Bertolini, Roma di fronte a Bisanzio e ai Longobardi, Bologna 1941, pp. 86, 91-93, 98, 170; H. Grisar, Roma alla fine del mondo antico, Rome 1943, pp. 41-43 and passim (see index).

Stanislao Majarelli

@incollection{ec6_giovanni_i_papa_santo, author = {Majarelli, Stanislao}, title = {Giovanni I, papa, santo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VI}, pages = {578--579}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/giovanni-i-papa-santo} }

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John I, Pope, Saint

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