medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Traditionally the thirteenth bishop of Rome after St. Peter, Eleuther(i)us (d. ca. 189) is said in the Liber Pontificalis to have come from Nicopolis in Epirus. He had been a deacon of the Roman church under pope St. Anicetus, whose immediate successor pope St. Soter he succeeded in ca. 173. He was the pope to whom St. Irenaeus of Lyon in 177 or 178 brought a letter from the persecuted churches of Lyon and Vienne announcing their travails and at the same time urging the pope to tolerate the Montanist movement (which latter will then have had sympathizers in Gaul). It is thought that Eleuther(i)us was the pope whom the pro-Montanist Tertullian says (_contra Praxeam_, 1. 5) initially wished to have good relations with Montanist-influenced churches in Asia Minor but afterward condemned that movement. The frequently encountered statement that Eleuther(i)us died a martyr appears to have no reliable foundation.
Various legends have attached themselves to Eleuther(i)us. According to a version of the perhaps originally sixth- or seventh-century Passio of St. Felician of Foligno that was used medievally at Hamburg and at Minden (BHL 2850), Eleuther(i)us, recognizing Felician's promise, had his archdeacon and successor pope St. Victor I oversee the saint's Christian education. In both the _Liber Pontificalis_ and Bede's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_ a British king named Lucius, wishing to be made a Christian, sent a letter to Eleuther(i)us requesting that missionaries be sent to him; the request was granted. This story was differently elaborated in the late eighth- or early ninth-century Vita of St. Lucius of Chur (BHL 5024) and in Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century _Historia regum Britanniae_.
In 1587 Camilla Peretti, the sister of Sixtus V, moved remains believed to be those of Eleuther(i)us and the actor-saint Genesius (a victim of the Great Persecution) from the church of San Giovanni della Pigna, where they had recently been discovered, to Santa Susanna, a church then under her patronage. Here's a view of the putative Eleuther(i)us' present resting place there (shared with Sts. Susanna, Gabinus of Rome, Felicity of Rome, and Genesius):
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/147964549_80ff6d92c2.jpg?v=0
Some period-pertinent images of pope St. Eleuther(i)us:
a) as depicted (at right, receiving Lucius' messenger) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of an abridged version of Wace's _Brut_ (ca. 1326-1350: London, British Library, Egerton MS 3028, fol. 4r):
https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=egerton_ms_3028_f004r
b) as depicted (right margin, third from the top) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of Neapolitan origin (after 1329) of Paulinus of Venice, _Chronologia magna_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 4939, fol. 66r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55002483j/f139.item.zoom
c) as depicted (at center) in the early fifteenth-century Great East Window (1405) in York Minster (photographs courtesy of Gordon Plumb):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/16873402577/
Detail view (the crown is a modern restoration):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/17054846386/
d) as depicted (right margin, third from the top) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CXIIIIv:
https://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/left_page/18%20%28Folio%20CXIIIIv%29.pdf
e) as depicted by Bernardino Lanzani and workshop in an early sixteenth-century fresco (ca. 1506-1507) in Pavia's cappella di San Salvatore in Santa Maria di Teodote:
http://media.kunst-fuer-alle.de/img/41/m/41_00426309.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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