ST. EUSEBIUS, POPE, C.

HE succeeded St. Marcellus in the pontificate, and strenuously maintained the discipline of the Church in the rigorous observance of the penitential canons, with regard to penitent sinners, especially those who had denied the faith in the persecution. Many, offended hereat, having at their head a turbulent man named Heraclius, gave him great disturbance on this account; but the true pastor stood his ground with invincible patience. He was banished into Sicily by the tyrant Maxentius, but was called thence by God in a short time to eternal test, in 310. The Liberian Calendar informs us that he sat only four months and sixteen days. See pope Damasus’s epitaph or poem on this holy confessor.