Pope Linus - Life

Life

The Liberian Catalogue and the Liber Pontificalis date Linus's episcopate to 56–67 during the reign of Nero, but Jerome dates it to 67–78, and Eusebius puts the end of his episcopate at the second year of the reign of Titus (80).

Irenaeus identifies Linus with the Linus mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:21 as an associate of the Apostle Paul. Others of the sources mentioned above say the same.

According to the Liber Pontificalis, Linus was an Italian from Tuscany (though his name is Greek) and born in Volterra, and his father's name was Herculanus. The Apostolic Constitutions names his mother as Claudia (immediately after the name "Linus" in 2 Timothy 4:21 a Claudia is mentioned, but the Apostolic Constitutions does not explicitly identify that Claudia as Linus's mother). The Liber Pontificalis also says that he issued a decree that women should cover their heads in church, created the first fifteen bishops, and that he died a martyr and was buried on the Vatican Hill next to Peter. It gives the date of his death as 23 September, the date on which his feast is still celebrated. His name is included in the Roman Canon of the Mass.

On the statement about a decree requiring women to cover their heads, J.P. Kirsch comments in the Catholic Encyclopedia: "Without doubt this decree is apocryphal, and copied by the author of the Liber Pontificalis from the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (11:5) and arbitrarily attributed to the first successor of the Apostle in Rome. The statement made in the same source, that Linus suffered martyrdom, cannot be proved and is improbable. For between Nero and Domitian there is no mention of any persecution of the Roman Church; and Irenaeus (1. c., III, iv, 3) from among the early Roman bishops designates only Telesphorus as a glorious martyr."

The Roman Martyrology does not call Linus a martyr. The entry about him is as follows: "At Rome, commemoration of Saint Linus, Pope, who, according to Irenaeus, was the person to whom the blessed Apostles entrusted the episcopal care of the Church founded in the City, and whom blessed Paul the Apostle mentions as associated with him."

A tomb found in St. Peter's Basilica in 1615 by Torrigio was inscribed with the letters LINVS, and was once taken to be Linus's tomb. However a note by Torrigio shows that these were merely the last five letters of a longer name (e.g. Aquilinus or Anullinus). A letter on the martyrdom of Peter and Paul was once attributed to him, but in fact dates to the 6th century.

Feast day: 23 September