ANTERUS OF ROME

On August 18 (5), on the day of the Forefeast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, the Church honors the memory of St. Anterus, Pope of Rome. The saint was the 19th Bishop of Rome and martyr.

Almost nothing is known about his biography. He was Greek by birth and most likely was a freedman, that is, a slave set free. According to the testimony of the Apostle Paul, the first Christianity was the faith of simple and ignorant people (cf. 1 Cor. 1:26), therefore there was nothing unusual in such an origin of the Pope in the 3rd century.

The language of the original Roman Christianity was Greek. The very name of Bishop Anterus testifies to this. Taken from Greek mythology, where it denotes the deity “responsible” for “solicitation” of reciprocated love, this name testifies to the pagan origins of the saint. Apparently, he came to Christianity in adulthood and experienced a conscious conversion to faith in Christ.

Anterus’ election to episcopal service coincided with the beginning of the reign of Emperor Maximinus I the Thracian (235–238). Thus, the previous short period of relative calm, when, according to the testimony of Eusebius of Caesarea (260-339), “faith increased and our teaching could be freely preached to everyone” (6:36,1), was replaced by persecution.

Anterus’ predecessor in the Roman see, Pope Pontianus (230–235), ended his days suffering in the mines of Sardinia. His successor, Fabian (236–250), whose memory, which is very important, is also celebrated by the Church on August 18, that is, on the same day as Anterus, was beheaded by Emperor Decius (249–251). “I believe in the Church of the Martyrs, or the “martyrized” Church,” sounded the faith of the Christians of that time. One has to wonder how much everything has changed since then: humanity has changed, the world has changed and, alas, the Church itself has changed as well.

In the first three centuries of Christian history, the bishops of the Roman Church steadfastly professed the Orthodox faith and, in an amazing succession of martyrdom, one after another ended their lives in suffering for the faith.

In this sense of martyrdom, very little distinguished them from each other. It is important to remember that the holy Anterus was the first to whom it was revealed how precious those documentary evidence about the Roman martyrs that were kept in the archives of the Roman courts would be for the Church of Christ in the future.

The birthday of Saint Anterus, which is how the Early Church called the days of the death of the martyrs, came on January 3, 236. “I was very glad that for his impeccable rule an honorable death was sent to him,” Saint Cyprian (+258) congratulated the Roman Christians on the occasion of the martyrdom of their bishop Anterus in his letter from Carthage (+258). It is important to remember that for his contemporaries in this biblically heroic time, martyrdom, that is, testimony of faith in Christ even to death, was the cornerstone of the entire worldview.

According to sources, it was Saint Anterus who managed to gain access to the court records of the Roman martyrs. Having collected the acts of martyrdom, he placed them in the church repository. For refusing to hand over these priceless texts to the Roman authorities, he was imprisoned, where he soon died.

Just as the Lord Jesus, of all messianic titles, most loved the title “Son of Man,” so the Ancient Church preferred first of all to be called “apostolic,” thereby emphasizing its belonging to that special brotherhood of people, which was destined to bear witness to His Resurrection (cf. Acts 1:22). “The Lord revealed Himself alive to the Apostles whom He had chosen, appearing to them for forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God,” says the book of Acts (1:3). It seemed that Saint Anterus, for the sake of visible evidence of the apostolic succession of the Church, in some other, glorious, sacramental experience of the Gospel time between Easter and Ascension, before entering into his own martyrdom glory, was given the opportunity to testify to the Risen Jesus for a very short time. It is known that the saint’s pontificate was one of the shortest in history and lasted only about 40 days.

The first Christians were so sure that the Second Coming of Christ would come immediately that even the biographies of the Apostles were not preserved. The same would most likely have happened with the sufferings of the first martyrs. Saint Anterus of Rome was the first to stop this of conscious eschatological oblivion.

1 On August 18, the forefeast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, the Church honors the memory of Saint Anterius, Pope of Rome. This saint was the 19th Bishop of Rome and martyr. The memory of the nineteenth pope on the eve of August 19, the day of the Transfiguration in the churches of the Julian calendar, what a remarkable sequence. His pontificate lasted only from November 21, 235, to January 3, 236. This is the modern period of Advent, Lent, and the ten days of Christmas. At that time, in Anterus’s time, these feasts probably did not yet exist. Be that as it may, the pontificate of Saint Anterus was one of the shortest in history, lasting only a symbolic fifty days. It was as if the election to the pastoral ministry had become the Resurrection, and death the Pentecost, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

2 Practically nothing is known of his biography. He was probably a freedman, that is, a freed slave. According to the testimony of the Apostle Paul, early Christianity was the faith of simple and ignorant people (cf. 1 Cor 1:26). There was therefore nothing unusual about such a pope’s origins in the third century. Bishop Anterus’ very name may signify the status of a freed slave, or taken from Roman religion, it designates the deity “responsible” for the “solicitation” of mutual love. It seems that he came to Christianity as an adult and experienced a conscious conversion to faith in Christ.

3 Anterus’s election coincided with the beginning of the reign of Emperor Maximinus I of Thrace (235-238). Thus, the brief period of relative calm that had preceded it, during which, according to the testimony of Eusebius of Caesarea (260-339), “faith grew and our doctrine could be freely preached to all” (6.36.1), was replaced by persecution. Anterus’s predecessor in the Roman See, Pope Pontian (230-235), ended his days in the mines of Sardinia. Anterius’s successor, Fabian (236-250), whose very important memory is also celebrated by the Church on August 18, the same day as Saint Anterus, was the first pope in history to abdicate. The reason for this was that, aware of his imminent death, he gave way to another pope so as not to leave the Church without a pastor.

4 Saint Anterus was the first pope to whom the value of the documents concerning the first martyrs, kept in the archives of the Roman courts, was revealed. He managed to gain access to the judicial archives. After collecting the acts of martyrdom, in the secret vault of the Church, for refusing to hand over these priceless texts to the Roman authorities, he was imprisoned and died shortly after. “I was very pleased that such an honorable death was reserved for him for his impeccable pastoral service,” Saint Cyprian (+258) congratulated the Christians of Rome on the martyrdom of their bishop Anterus in his letter from Carthage. At the same time, in Toulouse, the wandering preacher and bishop Saturninus was preaching and was killed for his faith; like Cyprian, he too came from Roman Africa, the modern Maghreb.

5 So, Saint Anther was killed by pagans because he decided to preserve the memory of the Roman martyrs for future generations, and he did preserve it by refusing to give the documents to the pagans. The first Christians lived in anticipation of the inevitable Second Coming of Christ, so they did not preserve the memory of their saints. For this reason, even the biographies of the Apostles were not written down. Did Saint Anther’s decision signify some shift in this first Christian worldview? If so, it was prophetic. Prophets do not realize what they are doing. After all, having preserved the memory of other saints, he left nothing about himself.

6 Three centuries later, Pope Mercury (533-535) became the first Roman bishop to change his name to “John,” believing that such a high office could not be held by a man named after the god of commerce. There is no real translation of the name “Anterus”. Taken literally, it could therefore mean “before,” “preceding,” “preliminary,” or “anterior.” If this name really designates the deity of sexual relations between a man and a woman, it is a very pagan name! Was Anterus’s desire to retain such a strange name a conscious “apostolic madness”, which Paul writes about for good reason in his Epistle to the Corinthians (4:10), the prototype of the future “folly in Christ,” of the Christian ascetics and a prophetic testament to humility for any bishop?