The Ten Popes of the Second Century

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 18, 2026 | In Lives of the Popes

This installment begins in a somewhat dry manner, since we know almost nothing about the popes of the first half of the second century. In order to have something at all to say about them, I mention some details from the medieval Liber Pontificalis (LP), with the caveat that these much later claims are generally considered to have no solid historical basis. For some of the more reliable information about second-century popes, we can thank St. Irenaeus, the greatest Church Father of that period. Some of these popes were martyrs, but we do not know the circumstances of their martyrdom.

If there is any recurring subject in the details we do have about these popes, it is the controversy over the date of Easter (a matter which comes up in the papacies of Sts. Telesphorus, Anicetus, Soter, and Victor).

5—St. Evaristus (c. 100-c.109)

The Liber Pontificalis says that Pope St. Evaristus was Greek and his father was a Jew from Bethlehem, that he put Rome’s seven regions under seven deacons and assigned each of the city’s parish churches to a particular priest, and that he was a martyr.

6—St. Alexander I (c. 109-c. 116)

The LP claims that this martyr-pope added the words commemorating the institution of the Eucharist to the Mass, but given Christ’s command of this memorial, these words would already have been used. It also says that he introduced holy water: the blessing of water mixed with salt for the protection of churches and bedrooms from demons.

7—St. Sixtus I (c. 116-c. 125)

The sixth bishop of Rome after Peter was conveniently (or by later tradition) named Sixtus (the Greek name Xystus). The LP says that the martyr St. Sixtus ruled that the sacred vessels may only be touched by clerics, that the corporal should be made of purest linen, that the Sanctus be sung at Mass, and that bishops summoned to Rome should not be accepted by their diocese on their return unless they carried with them an apostolic letter from the pope.

Note that St. Sixtus I is not the Sixtus mentioned in the Canon of the Mass—that would be Pope St. Sixtus II, who was martyred more than a century later.

8—St. Telesphorus (c. 125-c. 136)

St. Telesphorus’s name indicates that he was a Greek. St. Irenaeus says that he always celebrated Easter on Sunday rather than calculating it exactly according to the Jewish Passover—but unlike the later Pope St. Victor I, St. Telesphorus kept communion with the Christians who dated Easter differently.

The LP says Telesphorus was either the son of an anchorite or an anchorite himself before becoming bishop of Rome (though whether anchorites actually existed this early is questionable), and that he originated Lent, the Gloria in the Mass, and the midnight Mass at Christmas.

According to St. Irenaeus, Pope St. Telesphorus suffered a glorious martyrdom (the Oxford Dictionary of Popes says “he is the only 2^nd-century pope whose martyrdom is reliably attested”).

9—St. Hyginus (c. 138-c. 142)

This Greek pope and martyr was said to be the son of a philosopher or previously a philosopher himself. St. Irenaeus wrote that during St. Hyginus’s reign, the Gnostic teachers Valentinus and Cerdo came to Rome. The LP says Pope Hyginus reorganized the clergy hierarchically, regulated church buildings in various ways (particularly by requiring them to be consecrated), and required one godparent to be present at baptisms.

10—St. Pius I (c. 142-c. 155)

This first in a long line of Pii is said by a 2^nd-century document to have been the brother of Hermas, author of that wonderful early Christian vision-narrative the Shepherd of Hermas. Since Hermas was a former slave, if they were brothers St. Pius would also have been a former slave. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes suggests that Pius must have presided over the synod in 144 that excommunicated the heretic Marcion of Pontus, who rejected the Old Testament and its God as contrary to that of the New.

St. Pius may or may not have been a martyr. His name is connected with the foundation of the well-known churches of S. Pudenziana and S. Prassede—these in fact originated later, but perhaps were preceded by house-churches from the time of Pius. He was supposed to have decreed severe penances for those who carelessly dropped the Eucharist, and to have given procedures for how to handle such accidents when they occur.

11—St. Anicetus (c. 155-c. 166)

This Syrian pope and martyr is said by St. Irenaeus to have welcomed the elderly St. Polycarp of Smyrna to Rome for a discussion of the controversy over the date of Easter. Like St. Telesphorus before him, Anicetus was tolerant of those who followed a different method. St. Polycarp wanted him to adopt the Asian custom of observing Easter on the day of the Jewish Passover. In fact, some scholars say that the early Roman Church did not have a special annual celebration of Easter, instead considering every Sunday to be a celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. The early Christian historian Eusebius writes: “Polycarp could not persuade the pope, nor the pope, Polycarp. The controversy was not ended but the bonds of charity were not broken.”

St. Anicetus vigorously opposed Gnosticism and Marcionism, then plaguing Rome, and perhaps for this reason he forbade clerics to wear long hair, a Gnostic custom.

12—St. Soter (c. 166-c. 174)

St. Soter was said to have been born into a Greek family in Campania (Soter is Greek for savior). As late as the Renaissance, there was an extant letter to the bishops of Italy, held by the scholars of the time to be written by Pope Soter or perhaps Evaristus. The letter, now lost, forbade women, even nuns, to touch the altar-cloth or put incense in the censer during Mass; and it deemed marriages only to be valid if the wife was blessed by a priest, solemnly given to her husband by her parents, and watched over by her bridesmaids.

More reliably, we have fragments of a letter addressed to St. Soter and the Church at Rome from St. Dionysius of Corinth:

From the beginning it has been your custom to do good to all the brethren in many ways, and to send alms to many churches in every city, refreshing the poverty of those who sent requests, or giving aid to the brethren in the mines, by the alms which you have had the habit of giving from old, Romans keeping up the traditional custom of the Romans; which your blessed Bishop Soter has not only preserved, but has even increased, by providing the abundance which he has sent to the saints, and by further consoling with blessed words the brethren who came to him, as a loving father his children.

Another fragment indicates that not only a letter from Pope St. Soter, but also the earlier letter from Pope St. Clement I to the Corinthians, were read in the church of Corinth on Sunday:

Today, therefore, we have kept the holy Lord’s day, on which we have read your letter, which we shall always have to read and be admonished, even as the former letter which was written to us by the ministry of Clement.

The Oxford Dictionary of Popes suggests that it was under Pope St. Soter that the Roman Church began celebrating Easter as an annual festival, though not following the dating used by the Christians in Asia Minor.

13—St. Eleutherius (c. 174-c. 189)

A Greek from Nicopolis, St. Eleutherius had been a deacon under Popes Anicetus and Soter.

While Christians elsewhere in the empire were persecuted during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Church in Rome itself enjoyed almost complete freedom from persecution at this time under Aurelius and his successor Commodus.

Pope St. Eleutherius instead had to deal with the spread of Montanism. This schismatic sect flourished in second-century Phrygia and third-century Carthage. Its founder, the Phrygian Montanus, was baptized sometime around 156 and shortly thereafter began to prophesy in a mad and ecstatic manner. He claimed to be the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit, in fulfillment of the promise of Christ to send a Paraclete, and that his revelations would supersede those of Christ. Two other important leaders of the sect were the prophetesses Maximilla and Priscilla.

The Montanists wanted to remain as a superior group within the Church, and at first not much was done about them. At least at the beginning, they did not seem to be teaching any false doctrines, though their disciplines were met with disapproval and their manner of prophesying was considered contrary to Catholic tradition—so different from the way in which the prophets of the Old and New Testaments had spoken with full use of their faculties and free will. Gradually, though, more and more bishops in Asia were troubled by them; sometime in the late second century they were excommunicated, and around the beginning of the third century they set up their own communities.

The Montanists taught that the Second Coming and the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth were imminent. They practiced austere disciplines, forbidding second marriages (early on they even forbade first marriages). They taught only one forgiveness of sins at baptism; any sins after baptism could not be forgiven.

Eventually the Montanists split up into different sects, the most important of which would be led by Tertullian, the greatest of the early African Church Fathers before St. Augustine. Tertullian sadly fell into this heresy in his middle age, in the early third century. The last of the Tertullianists would reconciled to the Church by St. Augustine in the fourth century.

Pope St. Eleutherius, though, reigned during the early stage of Montanism. The Catholic Encyclopedia relates his connection to the controversy:

During the violent persecution at Lyons, in 177, local confessors wrote from their prison concerning the new movement to the Asiatic and Phrygian brethren, also to Pope Eleutherius. The bearer of their letter to the pope was the presbyter Irenaeus, soon afterwards Bishop of Lyons. It appears from statements of Eusebius concerning these letters that the faithful of Lyons, though opposed to the Montanist movement, advocated forbearance and pleaded for the preservation of ecclesiastical unity.

Just when the Roman Church took its definite stand against Montanism is not certainly known. It would seem from Tertullian’s account (Against Praxeas 1) that a Roman bishop did at one time address to the Montanists some conciliatory letters, but these letters, says Tertullian, were recalled. He probably refers to Eleutherius, who long hesitated, but, after a conscientious and thorough study of the situation, is supposed to have declared against the Montanists.

There was an unlikely legend about St. Eleutherius receiving a letter from a British king, Lucius, asking for the British people to be accepted into the Church—however, it is plausibly suggested by scholars that this Lucius was actually the well-known Christian king of Edessa by the same name.

14—St. Victor I (189-98)

Since Latin-language Christian literature had its origin in Africa, it’s appropriate that St. Victor, the first African pope, was also said by St. Jerome to be the first Latin writer in the Church.

Victor is chiefly remembered for his role in the quartodeciman controversy. The Quartodecimans were those like the Christians of Asia Minor who, following ancient custom, celebrated Easter exactly on the fourteenth day from the new moon, rather than always on a Sunday. St. Victor sought unity by attempting to persuade the Christians from Asia to celebrate Easter always on a Sunday according to the Roman custom. Bishop Polycrates of Ephesus refused on the grounds that the quartodeciman celebration was ancient tradition, especially in his region.

In response, St. Victor summoned the first recorded synod of Italian bishops at Rome, and called for counsel on the matter from bishops around the Christian world. The bishops all wrote back to say that Easter was celebrated on Sunday—except Polycrates and the Asian bishops, who not only described their Quartodeciman practice but also claimed that it was the “rule of faith” to do as they did.

Victor wrote to the Asians directing them to adopt the same dating as the rest of the Church, or else be excommunicated. St. Irenaeus and others who shared Victor’s opinion on the date of Easter nonetheless wrote to him chiding him for his harshness, and encouraging him to show the same tolerance as his predecessors like Sts. Telesphorus and Anicetus. None of these bishops, however, suggested that the bishop of Rome was exceeding his jurisdiction in making this threat to excommunicate the bishops of Asia Minor. We do not know the outcome of their pleas for mercy—some say Victor relented—but the Roman dating of Easter eventually prevailed worldwide.

On the advice of St. Irenaeus, Pope St. Victor laicized a priest named Florinus for his Gnostic writings. He also excommunicated Theodotus of Byzantium, a leather-seller who led a group of adoptionists, who taught that Jesus was only a righteous man who was adopted as Son of God.

The emperor Commodus is remembered as a truly terrible ruler, yet Christianity enjoyed unprecedented favor in the Empire at this time. Pope Victor played his part in this, as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

The favourable opinion of the Christians held by Commodus is ascribed to the influence of a woman named Marcia. According to the testimony of Hippolytus she had been brought up by the presbyter Hyacinthus, was very favourably inclined towards the Christians, perhaps even a Christian herself. One day she summoned Pope Victor to the imperial palace and asked for a list of the Roman Christians who had been condemned to forced labour in the mines of Sardinia, so that she might obtain their freedom. The pope handed her the list and Marcia, having received from the emperor the required pardon, sent the presbyter Hyacinthus to Sardinia with an order of release for the Christian confessors. …Irenaeus points out that Christians were employed at this period as officials of the imperial Court.