Pope Lucius I

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Catholicism
Eastern Orthodoxy
Other popes named Lucius

Pope Lucius I was the

Emperor Valerian
, which did not begin until after Lucius' death.

Life

Lucius was born in Rome. Nothing is known about his family except his father's name, Porphyrianus. He was elected probably on 25 June 253. His election took place during the persecution which caused the banishment of his predecessor, Cornelius, and he also was banished soon after his consecration, but succeeded in gaining permission to return.[1]

Lucius is praised in several letters of Cyprian (see Epist. lxviii. 5) for condemning the Novationists for their refusal to readmit to communion Christians who repented for having lapsed under persecution.

Veneration

Lucius I's

feast day is 5 March, on which date he is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology in the following terms: "In the cemetery of Callistus on the Via Appia, Rome, burial of Saint Lucius, Pope, successor of Saint Cornelius. For his faith in Christ he suffered exile and acted as an outstanding confessor of the faith, with moderation and prudence, in the difficult times that were his."[2]

His feast did not appear in the Tridentine calendar of Pope Pius V. In 1602, it was inserted under the date of 4 March, into the General Roman Calendar. With the insertion in 1621 on the same date of the feast of Saint Casimir, the celebration of Pope Lucius was reduced to a commemoration within Saint Casimir's Mass. In the 1969 revision Pope Lucius's feast was omitted from the General Roman Calendar, partly because of the baselessness of the title of "martyr" with which he had previously been honoured,[3] and was moved in the Roman Martyrology to the day of his death.

In spite of what is mistakenly stated in the Liber Pontificalis, he did not in fact suffer martyrdom.[4] The persecution of Valerian in which he was said to have been martyred is known to have started later than March 254, when Pope Lucius died.

Tomb

Lucius I's tombstone is still extant in the

petrified embryo
a woman had carried inside her for 28 years, as well as other monstrosities the king had collected. The skull remained in Roskilde Cathedral until 1908, when it was moved to Saint Ansgar's Cathedral while the property of Copenhagen's National museum.

Pope Lucius' head is among the few relics to have survived the Reformation in Denmark. However the Norwegian researcher Øystein Morten

carbon dating which concluded that the skull belonged to a man who lived between AD 340 and 431, nearly 100 years after the death of Lucius in 254. So the skull in question never belonged to Lucius, who died around AD 254. The results also rule out that it may have belonged to the King Sigurd.[8]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Kirsch, Johann Peter (1910). "Pope St. Lucius I" in The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  2. ISBN 978-88-209-7210-3
    ), die 5 martii].
  3. ^ Calendarium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1969), pp. 88 and 118
  4. ^ St. Lucius I; "There are no grounds for counting St Lucius among the martyrs, since he is listed in the Depositio Episcoporum" [Calendarium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), p. 118]
  5. ^ "When they entered Isefjord from the Kattegat, the ship carrying the priests was attacked by a vile demon that demanded a human sacrifice in order to let them pass", quoted from: https://web.archive.org/web/20150924092105/http://www.roskildekommune.dk/webtop/site.aspx?p=21421
  6. ISBN 8741363477
  7. ^ "Øystein Morten – Spartacus Forlag".
  8. ^ "Skull and cross wires". The Copenhagen Post. 15 December 2014. Retrieved 21 June 2021.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lucius I.

External links

Titles of the Great Christian Church
Preceded by
Bishop of Rome

253–254 		Succeeded by
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