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.