Saint Victorinus of Pettau

The earliest Apocalypse expert.

Saint Victorinus of Pettau

Victorinus, from modern-day Slovenia, was a 3rd-century author of a number of a commentaries on the Bible, including the earliest preserved exegesis on the Apocalypse. (You can read it here.)

He was martyred as part of a decade-long genocide intended to rid the Roman Empire of Christianity. Books, churches, and sometimes entire cities were burned; people were crucified, torn by hooks, stretched out, broiled, spiked, body parts cut off, teeth knocked in, hair pulled out, strangled, stones tied around them and thrown in lakes. Nobody knows anymore how Victorinus died, but I imagine he was devoured by a leopard, or some other wild beast of Revelation.