Observations placeholder
Theodore the Sacristan
Identifier
020926
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Wikipedia
Theodore the Sacristan (Latin: Theodorus) was a sixth-century sacristan in the Church of St. Peter in Rome. He is mentioned in the writings of Gregory the Great, and was later venerated as a saint.
What is known of Theodore's life comes from Gregory the Great's Dialogues, where he appears in Book III, Chapter 24. There, Gregory records that Theodore once rose very early in the morning in order to tend the lamps that hung by the door of the basilica. He was up on a ladder that he used when refilling the lamps with oil, when Saint Peter appeared to him vested in a white stole. The saint asked him, "Theodore, why have you risen so early?" and disappeared. Theodore was afterwards struck by great fear, and in his shock was unable to rise from his bed for the next several days
When the interlocutor of the Dialogues, Peter the Deacon, questions why Theodore would have been shocked and sickened by having seen Saint Peter, Gregory replies with a citation from Scripture in which the prophet Daniel is likewise shocked into illness by a troubling vision: "And I Daniel languished, and was sick for some days: [...] and I was astonished at the vision, and there was none that could interpret it" (Daniel 8:27).
Theodore died in 560. His body is believed to have been laid to rest in the basilica where he served, although the precise place is not known.
Further reading
McCready, William David (1989). Signs of sanctity: miracles in the thought of Gregory the Great. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.