The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Martyrs' Church
Pope Anterus
died c. 236Early Church
Bishop of Rome for six weeks, spent gathering the records of the martyrs before he joined them.
Summary
- Lived died c. 236.
- Stood in The Martyrs' Church (AD 100–313).
- Hangs on The Martyrs.
- Tradition: Early Church.
The life
Anterus was elected bishop of Rome on 21 November 235 and was dead by 3 January 236. He held the office forty-three days.
He took it at the worst possible moment. His predecessor Pontian had just been deported to the Sardinian mines by the emperor Maximinus Thrax, along with the rival bishop Hippolytus, and had resigned so that Rome could have a functioning leader. Neither man was coming back. To accept the chair in that winter was to accept the target that had just been taken off it.
The Liber Pontificalis, the later Roman book of the popes, says that Anterus had the acts of the martyrs collected by notaries and deposited in the church archive. Historians treat the attribution cautiously, the same act is credited to Fabian, who followed him, and forty-three days is a short time in which to found an archive. What is not in doubt is that the Roman church of exactly this period did begin systematically writing down what happened to its martyrs, and that the men who ordered it done were watching their own predecessors die.
The same source says he was martyred for it. Whether he was killed or died of natural causes is not established; the persecution under Maximinus was real and aimed at clergy, but the record does not settle his case.
What is settled is where he was buried, and that took an archaeologist to prove. In 1854 Giovanni Battista de Rossi excavated the papal crypt in the Catacomb of Callixtus on the Appian Way and found the original slabs, cut in Greek. One of them reads ANTEROS EPI, Anterus, bishop. He was the first bishop of Rome laid in that chamber, and the row of third-century popes buried around him made the crypt the most important early Christian burial site in the world.
His name is Greek and he may have been of Greek origin; the Liber Pontificalis calls his father Romulus.
That is nearly everything the record holds. A man took a job that had just killed the last man to hold it, spent his six weeks making sure the deaths of ordinary Christians would be written down instead of forgotten, and was buried under a stone with two words on it.
Sources: Liber Pontificalis; the Depositio Episcoporum of the Chronographer of 354; G. B. de Rossi, Roma Sotterranea; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, article Pope St. Anterus.
What was happening while he lived3 moments · AD 100–313
- c. 165Justin Martyr is beheaded at RomeThe philosopher who had written open letters defending Christians to two emperors was tried by the city prefect Rusticus with six companions. The court record survives as the *Acts of Justin*. Asked what teachings he held, he explained them; asked to sacrifice, he refused, and the group was scourged and beheaded.
- 177The martyrs of Lyons and VienneMob violence in Gaul turned into arrests, torture, and days in the amphitheater. The churches there wrote an account that Eusebius preserved (*Church History* 5.1). Two names stayed: Pothinus, the bishop, over ninety years old, who died in prison, and Blandina, a slave woman whose owners feared she would break first and who outlasted them all.
- c. 203Perpetua and Felicity die in the arenaVibia Perpetua, a young mother of good family in Carthage, and Felicity, a pregnant slave woman, were arrested with several companions. Perpetua kept a prison diary that survives inside *The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity*, one of the earliest firsthand writings we have from a Christian woman. Felicity gave birth in prison days before they were sent out to the beasts.
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Pope Anterus at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Bishop of Rome for six weeks, spent collecting the records of the martyrs before he joined them.
Hangs on The Martyrs: The witnesses who paid with their lives, from the arena at Carthage to the present day, and the confessors who paid with everything short of their lives.
Standing beside himThe Martyrs' Church · 40 on this stretch of wall
A 22-year-old mother who kept a diary in prison and walked into the arena at Carthage singing.
Stayed with his people through plague and persecution, then walked to his own beheading and paid the executioner.
Traced his teaching straight back to the apostle John through Polycarp, and wrote the first great takedown of the gnostics.
Kept wearing his philosopher's cloak after he met Christ, argued the faith to the emperor's face, and was beheaded for it.
Wanted to die with his martyred father as a boy, and spent the rest of his life laying six versions of the Old Testament side by side.
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The lawyer who gave the church the word Trinity and told Rome that the blood of the martyrs is seed.