July 20 is the feast of St. Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna and the martyr of the early Church. According to the tradition, he was a disciple of St. Peter, consecrated bishop by him at Antioch, and sent to preach at Ravenna. He was martyred there, by tradition, in the persecution of Vespasian, c. 79 — though the historicity is uncertain.
The cult of Apollinaris is one of the oldest in the West; his feast is attested in the Depositio martyrum of 354. The Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, built in 549 at the port of Ravenna, is the great monument of his cult — a UNESCO World Heritage site, with the mosaics of the late Roman empire that are among the masterpieces of early Christian art. The basilica holds his tomb in the apse, beneath the great mosaic of the Transfiguration, and the nearby Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, built by Theodoric in 505, is the second of the Apollinaris churches of Ravenna.
Apollinaris is the patron of Ravenna. From the basilica at Classe, where he is buried, to the basilica in the city, where his relics were translated in 856, the July 20 feast is the feast of the first bishop of the city that became the capital of the Western Empire.
