St. Sylvester’s Day
When I was Assist. Pastor at St. Martin’s in Winona MN. from 1967-1970, the New Year’s Eve service was named for St. Sylvester. Who was St. Sylvester, I wondered. I went to school with a guy named Sylvester. I was familiar with Sylvester the cat of cartoon fame. Of course the internet wasn’t even on the horizon. However, even with the internet there are more legends than facts about Sylvester who became a saint.
In 313 Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan granting Christians the same rights as those practicing any other religion. This occurred only a few years after the severe persecutions of Diocletian and Galerius that lasted from 306-311.
Sylvester became pope in 314. His pontificate lasted until his death on December 31, 335.
What we do know is that he used the freedom granted by Constantine to build several churches in Rome. In 325, he sent two legates to the Church council in Nicaea, which was called to deal with the Arian controversy. An over simplified view is that Arius taught that Jesus was the son of God, but not the Son of God. (Perhaps it was out of the condemnation of Arius, that Dan Brown created the fiction in his book the Divinci Code, which it was at the Council of Nicaea that Christ was first called the Son of God and this at the insistence of Constantine. There was plenty of politics at the council without creating something out of whole cloth. But I digress).
Out of the Council of Nicaea we now have the Nicene Creed which emphasizes that Jesus is then Son of God. However, according to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, there is no record of Sylvester formally confirming the signature of his legates to the acts of the council.
In my high school church history textbook there is a print of a painting by Raphael (d. 1520) of Pope Sylvester baptizing Constantine in the Vatican. Sylvester did build the first church on the site we call the Vatican. However, Constantine was not baptized until he was on his deathbed in 337. Sylvester died in 335. Furthermore, Constantine removed the capital from Rome and rebuilt the city of Byzantium renaming it, Constantinople, making it the capital of the Roman Empire. Added to the legend that Sylvester baptized Constantine is the story that he was cured of leprosy.
Even after 399 words I still don’t know why we honored Sylvester on New Year’s Eve.
The Collect for the Day
Eternal God, we commit to Your mercy and forgiveness the year now ending and commend to Your blessing and love the times yet to come. In the New Year, abide among us with Your Holy Spirit that we may always trust in the saving name of our Lord Jesus Christ, one God, now and forever.
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