Anacletus

Anacletus, whose name also appears in ancient sources as Cletus and Anencletus, was the third bishop of the Christian community of Rome according to the earliest succession lists that survive from the late second century. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing toward the end of that century, enumerated the Roman bishops after the apostles as Linus, Anacletus, and Clement. Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century, together with Jerome, Epiphanius of Salamis, Augustine of Hippo, and Optatus of Milevis, transmit the same sequence, which became the standard memory of the first Roman succession in both East and West. The Greek form Anenkletos means blameless or unimpeached; Cletus is a shortened form of the same name. For a long period medieval papal catalogues and the Roman liturgy treated Cletus and Anacletus as two successive popes, an error that arose from the double form of the name in different lists. Since the early modern period the Catholic Church and most historians have regarded them as a single figure.

Virtually no contemporary documentation of Anacletus's life survives. He left no authentic letters or decrees. The chronology of the first-century Roman bishops is reconstructed from later catalogues that disagree among themselves, and modern official lists that assign his episcopate roughly to the years 80–92 remain conventional rather than strictly demonstrable from first-century evidence. The Liber Pontificalis, compiled centuries later, contains two separate legendary biographies: one presents Cletus as a Roman of the Palatine district, son of Emilianus, who is said to have ordained twenty-five priests; the other presents Anacletus as an Athenian, son of Antiochus. Because those notices assume two different men, they cannot be taken as a reliable account of one historical bishop's origin or acts. Claims that he divided Rome into parish districts or tituli likewise belong to this later legendary layer and reflect the organization of a subsequent age rather than proven first-century practice.

Tradition holds that Anacletus died a martyr at Rome during the reign of the emperor Domitian, in the later first century, and that he was buried near the tomb of the apostle Peter on the Vatican Hill. Independent first-century evidence for the manner of his death does not exist; the title of martyr was commonly attached to the early bishops of Rome in later martyrologies. His cult is nonetheless ancient. When the two names were still distinguished in the calendar, Cletus was commemorated on 26 April and Anacletus on 13 July. After they were recognized as one person, 26 April became the principal feast in the Roman tradition, and he is entered in the Roman Martyrology as pope and martyr. No well-attested medieval or modern patronages of particular places, trades, or causes are attached to him.

The confusion between Cletus and Anacletus affected not only calendars but also the numbering of later popes and the interpretation of early Christian chronology. Variant lists in the Liberian Catalogue (the Chronographer of 354) and other late antique compilations were later harmonized in different ways by medieval writers. Eastern narrative, especially Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, places his episcopate in the time of the Flavian emperors, but supplies no connected account of events from his years as bishop. The figure who emerges from the sources is therefore a name in the Roman succession, already cited by Irenaeus as part of the guarantee of apostolic teaching against second-century doctrinal disputes, and venerated thereafter as a saint and martyr, rather than a personality whose deeds can be described in detail.