VICTORINUS, Bishop of Poetovium (Ptuj). - He occupied the see of Poetovium (in Styria, Upper Pannonia) toward the end of the 3rd century, and died in 304 as a martyr in the persecution of Diocletian.

According to St. Jerome (De viris ill., 74), he wrote commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and Revelation, as well as a work Adversus omnes haereses. Of so vast a literary output, the commentary on Revelation has been preserved, whose original text is found only in cod. Ottob. lat. 3288 A of the Vatican Library, while the other manuscripts contain the recension (and transformation) of the original text made by St. Jerome, who softened the millenarianism of V.'s editio with the spiritualist exegesis of Tyconius. V. knew Greek and made use of the works of Papias, Origen, Irenaeus and Hippolytus. St. Jerome's recension was reworked again in later centuries. Another work of V. is the treatise De fabrica mundi, which discusses the week of creation and also has a millenarian character. The work Adversus omnes haereses which St. Jerome attributes to V. is, according to Ed. Schwartz, the translation made by V. of a Greek anti-heretical book, which would have been written in Rome under Pope Zephyrinus. The Latin text has been preserved in chapters 46-53 of Tertullian's De praescriptione haereticorum. But this hypothesis is very fragile.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: the critical edition of J. Hausleiter in CSEL, XLIX. The text in Migne is incomplete. On V. cf. J. Hausleiter, Victorinus, in Reulenzpbl. f. protest. Theol. u. Kirche, XX, 614-19; Ed. Schwartz, Zwei Predigten Hippolyt, in Sitzungsber. Bayer. Akad., 1936, III, and P. Nautin, Hippolyte contre les hérésies, Paris 1949 passim. On the doubtful works of V. cf. E. Dekkers, Clavis patrum latinorum, Steenbrugge 1951, nos. 87-93. On the coincidences between V. and the Didascalia cf. K. Koll, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, II. Der Osten, Tübingen 1829, pp. 212 ff., 219. On V.'s dependence on Origen see E. Benz, Marius Victorinus, Stuttgart 1932, p. 23 ff.

Erik Peterson

@incollection{ec12_vittorino_vescovo_di_pettau_po, author = {Peterson, Erik}, title = {Vittorino, vescovo di pettau (poetovium)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1548--1549}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/vittorino-vescovo-di-pettau-poetovium} }

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Victorinus, Bishop of Poetovium (Ptuj)

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