Apollinaris of Ravenna

The only early witness is Peter Chrysologus, bishop of Ravenna in the fifth century, who makes Apollinaris the city's first bishop, of long episcopate, dead in the time of the persecutions after suffering many times for the faith — and who already answers the objection that he was a confessor rather than a martyr. Scholarship places his episcopate between the end of the second century and the beginning of the third; the Passio that makes him a disciple of Peter sent from Antioch is of the seventh century, composed to support Ravenna's claim to apostolic foundation against Rome. The basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, raised over his tomb in the sixth century, shows him praying in a green meadow strewn with lambs.