Pope Eleutherius (; died 24 May 189), also known as Eleutherus (), was the bishop of Rome from c. 174 until his death in 189. His pontificate is alternatively dated to 171–185 or 177–193.
He is linked to a number of legends, one of them credited him with receiving a letter from "Lucius, King of Britain".
As of 2025, he is the only Pope named Eleutherius.
Life
According to the
Liber Pontificalis, he was a
Greeks born in
Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece.
[: "St. Eleutherius ... According to the Liber Pontificalis, St. Eleutherius was a Greek from Nicopolis in Epirus."][: "St Eleutherius, Pope ()... It is stated that he was a Greek by origin."] His contemporary Hegesippus wrote that he was a
deacon of the Roman Church under
Pope Anicetus (c. 154–164), and remained so under
Pope Soter, whom he succeeded around 174.
Dietary law
The 6th-century
recension of
Liber Pontificalis ('Book of the Popes') known as the "Felician Catalog" includes additional commentary to the work's earlier entry on Eleutherius. One addition ascribes to Eleutherius the reissuance of a decree: "And he again affirmed that no food should be repudiated by Christians strong in their faith, as God created it, provided however that it is sensible and edible." Such a decree might have been issued against early continuations of Jewish dietary law and against similar laws practiced by the
Gnosticism and
Montanism. It is also possible, however, that the editor of the passage attributed to Eleutherius a decree similar to another issued around the year 500 in order to give it greater authority.
British mission
Another addition credited Eleutherius with receiving a letter from "Lucius, King of Britain" or "King of the Britons", declaring an intention to convert to Christianity. Authoratiative accounts from the 1st and 2nd century, of Terullian, St. Clement, and St. Iraneaus, referred to Britain as being of the first as having been impacted by the Christian faith. Lately, ancient religious records have been quickly labeled as
pious forgery, however it has been admittedly reproduced by several of the most reliable, including the letter itself transcribed by John Foxe in his 14th century work
Actes and Monuments. This stands alongside the reputations of
Liber Pontificalis written in 535 AD, the Cistercian Hagiagropher Jocelyn in the 12th Century, Gildas, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, Urban, John of Tynemouth, and Capgrave, that preceded Foxe by nearly 1,000 years. Those who question its validity will then move to discussion over its original purpose. Haddan,
William Stubbs, and Wilkins considered the passage "manifestly written in the time and tone" of Prosper of Aquitaine, secretary to Pope Leo the Great in the mid-5th century, and supportive of the missions of Germanus of Auxerre and Palladius. Duchesne dated the entry a little later to the pontificate of Boniface II around 530, and Mommsen to the early 7th century. Only the last would support the conjecture that it aimed to support the Gregorian mission to the
Anglo-Saxons led by Augustine of Canterbury, who encountered great difficulty with the native British Christians, as at the Synod of Chester. Indeed, the Celtic Christians invoked the antiquity of their church to generally submission to Canterbury until the
Norman Conquest, but no arguments invoking the mission to Lucius appear to have been made by either side during the
among the Welsh and Saxon bishops.
Some claim that the first Englishman to mention the story was Bede and he seems to have taken it, not from native texts or traditions, but from The Book of the Popes. Subsequently, it appeared in the 9th-century History of the Britons traditionally credited to Nennius: The account relates that a mission from the pope baptised "Lucius, the Britannic king, with all the petty kings of the whole Britannic people". The account, however, dates this baptism to AD 167 (a little before Eleutherius's pontificate) and credits it to Evaristus (reigned ). In the 12th century, more details began to be added to the story. Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-history History of the Kings of Britain goes into great detail concerning Lucius and names the pope's envoys to him as Saint Fagan and Saint Duvian. The 12th-century Book of Llandaf placed the court of Lucius in southern Wales and names his emissaries to the pope as Elfan and Medwy.
Others cite the reliable histories from centuries before: "Gildas, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, Urban, John of Tynemouth and Capgrave, referred to 'as the most learned of English Augustinians whom the soil of England ever produced', support the date of return of the emissaries of King Lucius from visiting Bishop Eleutherius at Rome, as that given in the British annals, a.d. 183, over a century and a half before the Roman Catholic Church was founded. Cardinal Baronius not only denounces the Augustinian claim but in detail recites the whole record from the year a.d. 36 onward."
An echo of this legend penetrated even to Switzerland. In a homily preached at Chur and preserved in an 8th- or 9th-century manuscript, Saint Timothy is represented as an apostle to Gaul, whence he went into Roman Britain and baptised a king named Lucius, who himself became a missionary to Gaul and finally settled at Chur, where he preached the gospel with great success. In this way Lucius, the early missionary of the Swiss district of Chur, became identified with the alleged British king of the Liber Pontificalis.
Harnack suggests that in the document which the compiler of the Liber Pontificalis drew his information, the name found was not Britanio, but Britio. Now this is the name ( Birecik]]-, Britium) of the fortress of Osroene. The king in question is, therefore, Lucius Ælius Septimus Megas Abgar VIII, of Edessa, a Christian king as is well known. The original statement of the Liber Pontificalis, in this hypothesis, had nothing to do with Britain; the compiler of the Liber Pontificalis changed Britio to Brittanio, and in this way made a British king of the Syrian Lucius.
Death
According to the
Liber Pontificalis, Pope Eleutherius died on 24 May and was buried on the
Vatican Hill (
in Vaticano) near the body of
Saint Peter. Later tradition has his body moved to the church of San Giovanni della Pigna, near the pantheon. In 1591, his remains were again moved to the church of
Santa Susanna at the request of Camilla Peretti, the sister of Pope Sixtus V. His feast is celebrated on 26 May.
See also
-
List of popes
-
List of Catholic saints
Notes
Citations
Sources
Further reading
