ABSTRACT
A quick survey confirms how key this inversion to studies on Peter’s life has proven, as Agnellus’ miscalculations and solecisms have been uncritically incorporated into most studies of Peter hitherto. While Agnellus’ account of Bishop Peter’s life makes for a wonderful read, no doubt much detail is filled in with devotion. While clearly presented to be a suicide, many fingers pointed toward the military leader Arbogast, Rome’s Magister Militum, who spent most of his military life jockeying for power, and who ultimately found the emperor in the way of his plans. “His homilies were rich with rhymes, assonance, antithesis, repetition, figurative senses, illustrations taken from ordinary life, descriptions, anaphora, and paronomasia.” Peter is insistent that charitable deeds are manifestations of nothing other than God’s goodness and amidst the pomp and wealth of imperial Ravenna, he holds up the poor of Christ’s own time as those still to be met under the arches and in the streets of his own hometown.
