nN MOST OF THE VOLUMES of this series, we chiefly see the Fathers as early champions of the faith philoso- phizing on the contents of the deposit of faith. They are restating in their contemporary terminology what God re-
vealed, thrashing out what is obscure, showing the consistency of one revealed truth with another and with right reason, and little by little reducing the revealed truths of Scripture and tradition to an ordered system.
The present volume is somewhat different. In it we see two of the Fathers chiefly as preachers endeavoring to impart the life-giving message of Christianity to the people at large. St. Peter Chrysologus (c. 406-450), Archbishop of Ravenna and Doctor of the Church, and St. Valerian (fl. 439-460), Bishop of Cimiez near Nice in southern Gaul, were organs of tradition who were addressing their message not to the learned partisans of this or that school, but to the ordinary men and women of northern Italy or southern Gaul whose lives and manners were those of the fifth century.
In the Western Church, the terms sermon (sermo) and homily (homilia) were often interchangeable.1 They seem to be so used in the titles of the printed collections which have come down to us: 'Sermons of St. Peter Chrysologus' and 'Homilies of St. Valerian.'