SAINT SYLVESTER OF ROME

In the United States, Germany, and other countries, New Year’s Eve is often called Silvester. Who was this Sylvester and what his significance is in the Orthodox church memory.

1 Sylvester, in whose honor New Year’s celebrations are often named, is an ancient Christian saint. In him, the Church commemorates a great Christian bishop, temple builder, philanthropist, defender of the Orthodox faith, fighter against paganism, and wonderworker. Saint Sylvester was a Roman bishop in the first half of the fourth century. The counting of Roman popes begins with the Apostle Peter himself, so the fact that Sylvester was the 33rd pope in succession is a good reason for prayerful reflection. After all, 33 is the number of years Christ the Savior lived on earth, and the Church has always attached special semantic significance to it. Thus, there must be thirty-three Sundays between Pentecost and the beginning of the preparatory weeks of Great Lent.

2 In recent times, the phrase “Roman Pope” has caused concern among Orthodox Christians. In fact, it is an archaic ancient Christian title meaning “father,” “mentor,” or teacher as applied to a bishop. In correspondence, interlocutors refer to St. Augustine (354–430) as “pope.” He was the greatest Latin Orthodox theologian of his time, but the significance of his episcopal see was secondary. In turn, Augustine used the word “pope” in his correspondence with the bishop of Carthage, who was the head of the local Church of Roman Africa. Today, the Greek and Coptic patriarchs of Alexandria are called “popes” in their Churches. The title “pope” for the Roman pontiff means that he is the historical bishop of the city of Rome.

3 Sylvester was born шn the second half of the third century and passed away in 335. This means that he was a contemporary of the great ancient Greek Orthodox saints - Nicholas the Wonderworker (270-343) and Spyridon of Trimythous (270-348). Like them, he lived two lives, so to speak: the first life during the era of persecution of Christianity, which ended with the Great Persecution of Emperor Diocletian (303–313). The second life of these saints began when Christianity was legalized by Emperor Constantine after the Edict of Milan (313). However, unlike Nicholas and, in general, St. Spyridon, his biography is quite detailed and well documented. Important information about him is preserved in the so-called “Book of Pontiffs” — a chronological catalog of Roman bishops compiled in the Roman Church in the 6th–7th centuries, which carefully preserved information about the life of this ancient Christian community and its pastors.

4 Sylvester was from Rome. We know the names of his parents: Faustus and Rufinus. Unlike many of his contemporaries, including the Church Fathers, he was raised in a Christian family and was a Christian from childhood. The names of his main mentors in the faith are known. They were the priest Quirinus, also a Roman, who taught Sylvester the basics of sacred doctrine and morality, and Timothy, a wandering bishop. A native of Antioch, he came to Rome to preach. Sylvester’s parents welcomed him into their home, and he lived with them for a year and several months, during which time he preached constantly and converted a significant number of Romans to Christ. For this, he was arrested by the pagan police and subjected to the most severe torture. Refusing to offer sacrifice to idols, he was beheaded. Throughout all this, Sylvester showed incredible courage, for not only did he not renounce his friendship with the confessor of the faith, but he took his body and gave it a dignified burial. For this, he himself was arrested and tortured. He was required to renounce his faith. Perhaps he would have ended his life as a martyr, but the unexpected death of the Roman prefect saved the saint from being killed. The prefect died suddenly, choking on a fish bone. His death was the result of an accident. Subsequent Christian tradition interpreted what happened to the persecutor of Christians as punishment for his persecution, which Sylvester himself had predicted the day before. “This very night your soul will be taken from you,” he said to him in the words of Jesus in the Gospel (Luke 12:20). Be that as it may, it is important to understand that the saint’s words were not a curse or wishing evil on one’s neighbor, but a prophecy of a persecuted righteous man, as was often the case in the biographies of ancient biblical prophets.

5 In 284, Sylvester was ordained a priest, after which he retired to Monte Soratte, a mountain ridge 45 kilometers from Rome, where he built a small church on his own. The reason for his departure was the outbreak of a new persecution of Christians, as well as the increasing incidence of leprosy in the city. Many decades later, popular piety would say that, already as bishop of Rome, Sylvester healed Emperor Constantine of leprosy. Perhaps this story was a reflection and a kind of response to Sylvester’s former fear of this disease. Today, on the mountain where he hid, there is an ancient church dedicated to Saint Sylvester, built on the site of the former ancient sanctuary of Apollo.

6 In 313, Emperor Constantine signed the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed religious tolerance towards Christians. A new era was dawning, and on January 10, 314, the Roman bishop Miltiades died. Sylvester was elected to replace him. The reforms he carried out in church life after his election are interesting. For example, the clergy were forbidden to engage in trade, and the days of the week were renamed. The names of the days of the week in order, from the first or second to the fifth or sixth, seem familiar to us in the Russian language. However, considering that in French and English they are still named after pagan deities, Sylvester’s innovation, which took root in Latin and then spread to Portuguese and Polish, for example, was truly revolutionary. The last day became Shabbat, that is, a day of rest, according to biblical tradition, and the first day of the week — our Sunday — was named “the Lord’s Day.” He also abolished fasting on Saturdays, with the exception of Holy Saturday, on the grounds that the Christian anti-Jewish polemic, which apparently formed the basis of this fast, had lost its relevance by the time the persecutions ceased in the 4th century. Subsequently, fasting on Saturdays was restored in the Western Church and, centuries later, became one of the formal reasons for the schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in the middle of the 11th century. In this sense, Sylvester’s decision to abolish Saturday fasting should be recognized as prophetic. Without knowing it, it eliminated in advance a possible cause of discord between the West and the East.

7 As just noted, Sylvester was a contemporary of two of the greatest ancient miracle workers of the Early Church, Saints Nicholas and Spyridon. The memory of Nicholas is celebrated on December 19, but for many believers, especially in the United States and the West in general, it is associated with Christmas and New Year’s gifts, while the celebration in honor of Saint Spyridon, December 25 according to the old style, coincides with the “Gregorian” “secular” or “Greek” Christmas. These are different names that the same Christmas holiday can have depending on the context in which we place it.

8 As a contemporary and spiritual brother of the great saints Nicholas and Spyridon, Sylvester was in many ways similar to them. Like them, he did not take an active part in the political life of that turbulent era. For this, he was and continues to be reproached by commentators and researchers. But from the point of view of the theology of holiness, this is magnificent. Nicholas was bishop of the city of Myra in Lycia in southern Anatolia. In Nicholas’s time, it was rather an insignificant city. Spyridon was most likely a chorepiscopus (literally, from the Greek, “village bishop”) of the small village of Trimythous in Cyprus. In the unofficial hierarchy, the dioceses of Nicholas and, even more so, that of Spyridon were quite minor. It was the personal holiness of both saints that immortalized them and brought them unforgettable fame. Silvester was the Pope of Rome. As head of the Roman Church, the most authoritative church in the ancient world, in the ancient imperial capital, he managed to remain on the sidelines while being at the epicenter of pastoral and social responsibility.

9 The saint’s biography states that, like his contemporary George the Great Martyr, Sylvester defeated a terrifying and fearsome dragon. George killed the dragon because he was a warrior and had the right to do so. Sylvester, however, was a priest and could not use violence even against snakes, so he locked the dragon in a cave. According to local Roman legend, the cave was to be opened centuries later. At the turn of the first and second millennia, when the Roman Church was headed by a “new pope” who, by a strange coincidence, was named Sylvester II (999–1003), many expected the dragon to emerge from the abyss. Roman Christians feared the imminent Apocalypse, and this expectation was associated with the name of Sylvester and the dragon he had once defeated in ancient times. Such was the influence of the saint on the collective human memory!

10 Sylvester was an educated man. His biography describes in detail how he organized a grand debate with Jewish thinkers, led by a certain scholar and sorcerer named Zambrius. They zealously tried to convince him with words. According to legend, Empress Helena herself witnessed this debate. Sylvester did not yield on any of the biblical or dogmatic points. Brilliantly quoting Scripture, he prevailed. Then, as a final argument, an enraged bull was brought to the place of the debate, which Zambrius immediately killed, invoking the name of God. In response, Sylvester resurrected the poor animal and commanded it to be meek. This is a sign of great mercy and, of course, hope. Those who have pets can call on Saint Sylvester for help as a merciful, “ecological” saint. Sylvester’s dispute about faith in the presence of crowned persons became an archetype. Similar open disputes about dogma were later conducted in Roman Africa by St. Augustine (354–430). The Life of Cyril, Apostle of the Slavs (827–869) describes in detail his public debates on faith with Jews and Muslims. In the era of early Islamic tolerance, similar debates took place at the court of the caliphs. The great Christian theologian of our time, Father Emilio Platti (1943–2021), an expert on Islam, wrote about this in detail in his books.

11 Later traditions attributed a special relationship between Sylvester and Emperor Constantine. However, most of this information hardly corresponds to historical facts. According to these sources, Sylvester healed Constantine of leprosy. In gratitude, Constantine granted Sylvester power over the Roman province. Thanks to this, it later became the Papal States. The successor to this tradition today is the city-state of the Vatican. It should also be noted that many people today refer to the Roman Catholic Church using the word “Vatican” regardless of the time and era. This is a ridiculous anachronism. The Vatican as the “control center” of the Roman Catholic Church came about with the signing of a treaty between the Italian government and the Roman church hierarchy in the 1920s. This ended more than fifty years of the Pope’s exile, a kind of voluntary imprisonment. Italy simply solved a long-standing complex problem. Thus, the Vatican is a very new phenomenon, while the Roman Church is very, very ancient. According to our contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, it is the most archaic and legitimate political organization of our time. According to legend, Saint Sylvester not only healed Constantine of leprosy, but also baptized him. For these good deeds, as if it were a New Year’s gift, he received the State as a gift. This is a very beautiful legend. It is magnificent in the enormous influence it has had on all subsequent history. “The kingdom as a gift” is like a New Year’s fairy tale!

12 When Pope John Paul II died in Rome on April 2, 2005, and just a few days later, at his funeral, the people spontaneously began to proclaim his “immediate canonization” (in Italian: santo subito). Commentators on these events unanimously agreed that nothing like this had ever happened before in history. This took place in St. Peter’s Basilica, which, like other significant churches and basilicas in Rome, including Santa Maria Maggiore, was built by Sylvester himself as a testament to his friendship with Emperor Constantine. He patronized the Christianization of pagan Rome through architecture. It turned out that the commentators were wrong. The first evidence of the veneration of Saint Sylvester as a saint dates back to the period very shortly after his death. He was buried in the Catacombs of Priscilla, where a basilica named after him was later erected. For some time, the saint’s name even replaced the previous historical name of the catacombs, and they began to be called the “Catacombs of Saint Sylvester.” He became the first Roman bishop, not a martyr, to be canonized by the Church. In the kontakion to Saint Sylvester, in the Orthodox liturgical Menaion, a book containing texts in honor of saints and holidays, it says: “The Trinity delights in you, O holy bishop Sylvester! You are divine thunder, a spiritual trumpet, a planter of the Faith and destroyer of heresies. As ever stand with the angels, entreat Christ without ceasing for us all!”

13 Saint Sylvester died on December 31, 335. That is why his name has become synonymous with New Year’s celebrations in many countries and languages. The Russian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar. The difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is slowly but steadily changing and currently stands at thirteen days. Therefore, in our church calendar, the memory of Saint Sylvester falls on January 15, that is, on the second day of the “old” New Year. This shift of the holiday from January 13, i.e., December 31 according to the old style, most likely occurred because the news of the Roman bishop’s death reached the Orthodox East two days late. Let us recall how, due to the time difference between the USSR and the USA, Victory Day came to be celebrated on both May 8 and May 9, 1945. The old and new calendars rarely coincide. But in Heaven, where, according to the Apostolic Symbol of Faith, the righteous dwell in the Communion of Saints in Heaven, time is different, or perhaps, in accordance with the words of the Apocalypse (10:6), there is no time at all. In 2025, the celebration in honor of the holy bishop, pastor, and miracle worker is extremely significant, as it marks 1,710 years since his heavenly birth, as the early Christians called the death of the righteous. Therefore, on New Year’s Eve, we will remember St. Sylvester with those on another continent. A New Year’s fairy tale makes possible what calendars do not allow.