Saint Sylvester I

Pope
(died 335)

Saint Sylvester I served as Bishop of Rome from 314 to 335, one of the longest pontificates in the history of the early Church, and his entire reign coincided with the new era opened by the conversion of the Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan. It was under Sylvester that the Church emerged from three centuries of persecution into a position of imperial favour, and the decisions made during his pontificate shaped the institutional form of the Church for centuries to come.

The great churches of Rome were built during Sylvester's pontificate with imperial support: the Lateran Basilica, Saint Peter's on the Vatican Hill, the basilica over the tomb of Paul on the Via Ostiense, and numerous other churches. The public face of Roman Christianity was created in these years, as the Church moved from the catacombs and private houses of the persecuted community into magnificent public buildings that proclaimed the faith to all who saw them.

The First Council of Nicaea was held in 325, during Sylvester's pontificate, called by Constantine to resolve the Arian controversy. Sylvester was too elderly to attend in person and was represented by two papal legates. The council, the most important in the early Church, defined the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father and established the date of Easter according to the Roman practice. Its creed, still recited by Catholics at Mass every Sunday, is the great monument of this pontificate.

A famous legend, the Donation of Constantine, claimed that Constantine had given Sylvester temporal sovereignty over the entire Western Empire. This document, shown by Lorenzo Valla in the fifteenth century to be a medieval forgery, nonetheless reflects the memory of the immense change in the Church's position that occurred under Sylvester. He died on December 31, 335, and his feast is celebrated on December 31st, the last day of the year.