This volume presents the proceedings of the International Congress Chromatius of Aquileia and His Age which took place at Aquileia (Italy) from 22 to 24 May 2008 under the direction of Pier Franco Beatrice (University of Padova) and Alessio Peršič (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan) and was fostered by the National Commitee for the Sixteenth Centenary of the Death of Saint Chromatius Bishop of Aquileia headed by Dr. Mons. Duilio Corgnali, in common accord with the Dioceses of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and the adjacent Slovenian and Austrian Dioceses of Ljubljiana, Koper / Capodistria, and Gurk-Klagenfurt.
The Congress was part of a vast range of celebratory activites inspired by the desire to create a renewed Christian historical awareness of both the significance of Aquileia and its Fathers and of the strong vitality of evangelical spirituality directed at creating a synthesis between East and West, between Greco-Roman civilization, the revealed Hebrew epos, and the disruptive diversity of the new invading peoples. The Christian communities are heirs to the long tradition of the Patriarcate of Aquileia which lasted for over a thousand years and it was the passionate interest in their Christian origins which prompted the Congress. The Aquileian metropolis—patriarcal see until the eighteenth century and a crossroads where Romans and Illyrians, Germanic peoples and Slavs all met—was a cradle of monasticism and home to some of its greatest masters (Martin, Chromatius, Rufinus, and Jerome). These scholars have proven to be the beneficiaries of earlier exegetic skills (Victorinus, Fortunatianus) as well as intrepid and creative mediators of the highest and most controversial expressions of Greek spiritual and theological culture in the Roman world and of the rediscovered veritas hebraica of Old Testament sources. Lastly, Paulus Diaconus and the Patriarch Paulinus II distinguished themselves as inspiration for a modern European identity after its slow Christian and barbarian palingenesis.
The Congress brought together scholars from Europe and America who are experts on the work of Chromatius—only recently saved from the near obscurity into which it had fallen in manuscript tradition—for the purpose of providing original contributions on an international level to Aquileian literary historiography, Chromatius in particular, not always taken into account and given due merit.