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The saints

St. John I

An old pope sent on an impossible mission, who died in a king’s prison.

Feast: 18 May · died 526 · The early Church · Rome, Constantinople and Ravenna

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A plain typographic plate: St. John I, with the feast day.

Typographic plate by Stone & Incense: we found no public-domain image of this saint we could verify.

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Ravenna, 526

Theodoric, the Arian king of Italy, was furious that the emperor in Constantinople was persecuting Arians.1

He forced the elderly Pope John to go to Constantinople and plead for them.1

The emperor welcomed the pope with honor, but Theodoric suspected him of plotting.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church remembers him as a pope who died in prison under the Gothic king Theodoric.

01St. John I

Prison

When John returned, Theodoric threw him into prison at Ravenna, where he died of hunger and neglect.1

Live it this week

Do a hard errand for someone

John was sent on a mission he didn’t choose. This week, take on one difficult conversation or errand for someone else who can’t face it.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint John I”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.