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St. Philogonius of Antioch

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St. Philogonius of Antioch

Bishop of Antioch, Confessor

Philogonius passed from legal practice to the bishopric of Antioch. Butler draws on Chrysostom’s praise of his pastoral government and defence of the Catholic faith.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Earlier work: Legal advocate
Butler records his legal career before his calling to the bishopric of Antioch.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 20, “Saint Philogonius, Bishop of Antioch, Confessor,” pp. 320-322.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 20, “Saint Philogonius, Bishop of Antioch, Confessor,” pp. 320-322.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume XII (December), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; December 20, “Saint Philogonius, Bishop of Antioch, Confessor,” pp. 320-322.

Philogonius was trained in the law and became known for his eloquence and Christian life. Butler records his calling to the bishopric of Antioch, where the flourishing condition of the church became a witness to his pastoral care.

He defended the Catholic faith when the teaching of Arius began to disturb the Church. The notice also remembers the trials he endured as a confessor during persecution. His witness belongs to the period before the Council of Nicaea; it is not an assertion that he attended that council.

Butler’s principal source is the praise of Philogonius delivered by St. John Chrysostom at Antioch on his festival. That remembrance joins his public work as a bishop to the purity of life for which he had first been esteemed. The older notice’s precise episcopal chronology is left outside this condensed reading.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited pre-1962 source. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

The account does not make Philogonius a participant in the Council of Nicaea. Its detailed episcopal and death dates are not asserted.

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