ST. ELEUTHERIUS, POPE, M.

HE was by birth a Grecian, and deacon of the church of Rome under pope Anicetus. He succeeded St. Soter in the pontificate, in 176, and governed the church while it was beaten with violent storms. Montanus, an ambitious, vain man, of Mœsia, on the confines of Phrygia, sought to raise himself among men by pretending that the Holy Ghost spoke by his mouth, and published forged revelations. His followers afterwards advanced that he was himself the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete Spirit sent by Christ according to his promises, to perfect his law. They seem at first only to have been schismatics and enthusiasts, but soon after added heresy and blasphemy, calling Montanus the Holy Ghost in the same manner that Christ is God the Son. They affected an excessive rigor, had many fasts, kept three Lents in the year, refused the communion and absolution to persons who had fallen into any sin of impurity, condemned second marriages as adulteries, and taught that it is unlawful to flee from persecution. Priscilla and Maximilla, two women of the town of Pepuza in Phrygia, vaunted their pretended prophecies, and were the oracles of their deluded votaries. The devil uses all sorts of baits to destroy souls. If many perish by those of pleasure, others fall by pride, which is gratified by a love of singularity and by an affected austerity. Some who braved the racks and gridirons of the persecutors, and despised the allurements of pleasure, had the misfortune to become the dupes of this wretched enthusiast, and martyrs of the devil. False prophets wear every face except that of a sincere and docile humility, though their austerity towards themselves usually ends in a short time in some shameful libertinism, when vanity, the main-spring of their passions, is either cloyed or finds nothing to gratify it. In this we see the false rigorists of our times resemble those of former ages. Pharisee-like, they please themselves, and gratify their own pride in an affected severity: by it they also seek to establish themselves in the opinion of others. But humility and obedience are a touchstone which discovers their spirit. Montanus succeeded, to the destruction of many souls, who by pride or the like passions sought the snare: among others, the great Tertullian fell, and not only regarded Montanus as the Paraclete, but so much lost his faith and his reason as to honor the ground on which his two pretended prophetesses had trod; and to publish in his writings their illusions and dreams concerning the color of a human soul, and the like absurdities and inconsistencies, as oracles of the eternal truth. The Montanists of Asia, otherwise, called Cataphryges and Pepuzenians, sought in the beginning the communion and approbation of the bishop of Rome, to whom they sent letters and presents. A certain pope was prevailed upon, by the good accounts he had received of their severe morals and virtue, to send them letters of communion. But Praxeas, one who had confessed his faith before the persecutors, arriving at Rome, gave him such informations concerning the Pepuzenians and their prophecies, showing him that he could not admit them without condemning the judgment of his predecessors, that he revoked the letters of peace which he had determined to send, and refused their presents. This is the account which Tertullian, himself a Montanist, gives of the matter.1 Dr. Cave and some others think this pope was Eleutherius, and that he approved the very doctrine of the Montanists; which is certainly a mistake. For the pope received from Praxeas only information as to matters of fact. He was only undeceived by him as to persons and facts, and this before any sentence was given. Nay, it seems that the Montanists had not then openly broached their errors in faith, which they for some time artfully disguised. It seems also, from the circumstance of the time, that the pope whom Praxeas undeceived was Victor, the successor of Eleutherius, and that Eleutherius himself had before rejected the pretended prophets.2

This good pope had the affliction to see great havoc made in his flock by the persecution, especially at Lyons and Vienne, under Marcus Aurelius. But he had, on the other side, the comfort to find the losses richly repaired by the acquisition of new countries to the faith. The light of the gospel had, in the very times of the apostles, crossed the sea into the island of Great Britain; but seems to have been almost choked by the tares of the reigning superstitions, or oppressed by the tumults of wars in the reduction of that valiant people under the Roman yoke, till God,3 who chose poor fishermen to convert the world, here taught a king to esteem it a greater happiness to become an apostle, and extend his faith in this remote corner of the world, than to wear a crown. This was Lucius, a petty king, who reigned in part of the island. His Roman name shows that he was one of those kings whom the Romans honored with that dignity in remote conquered countries, to be their instruments in holding them in subjection. Lucius sent a solemn embassy to Rome to beg some zealous clergymen of pope Eleutherius who might instruct his subjects and celebrate and administer to them the divine mysteries. Our saint received the message with joy, and sent apostolical men who preached Christ in this island with such fruit that the faith in a very short time passed out of the provinces which obeyed the Romans into those northern parts which were inaccessible to their eagles as Tertullian wrote soon after.4 Fugatius and Damianus are said to have been the two principal of these Roman missionaries: the old Welsh Chronicle, quoted by Usher, calls them Dwywan and Fagan. They died in or near the diocese of Landaff; and Harpsfield5 says, there stood in Wales a church dedicated to God under their invocation. Stow in his Annals says that in Somersetshire there remaineth a parish church bearing the name of St. Deruvion. From this time the faith became very flourishing in Britain as is mentioned by Origen, Eusebius, St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Gildas &c., quoted by Usher, Alford, &c.* Florinus, who taught God to be the author of evil, and Blastus, who pretended that the custom of celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, which was tolerated in the Orientals, ought to be followed at Rome, were condemned by St. Eleutherius, who governed the church fifteen years, and died soon after the emperor Commodus, in 192. He was buried on the Salarian road, but his remains have been translated to the Vatican church. See St. Irenæus,1. 3, c. 3; Eusebius,1. 4, c. 22;1. 5, c. 3, 4, 14; Tillemont, t. 3, p. 60.