Clateus

Saint Clateus (also known as Clateo) is an early Christian bishop and martyr associated with Brescia in northern Italy and venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. Ecclesiastical tradition identifies him as the second bishop of that see, succeeding Saint Anathalon, who is regarded as the first bishop of Brescia. His episcopate is placed in the first century, in the Roman territory later called Cisalpine Gaul. No contemporary inscriptions, letters, or administrative records mention him. Nothing reliable is known of his birthplace, family, education, conversion, or the length and character of his ministry; later catalogues of the bishops of Brescia simply insert his name after Anathalon in order to assert the antiquity of the diocese.

According to hagiographical and martyrological tradition he was put to death in the persecution of Christians under the Emperor Nero. Later sources commonly assign the year 64, linking his martyrdom to the aftermath of the Great Fire of Rome. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him as bishop and martyr at Brescia, which is the basis for locating his death in that city. No detailed passio, trial record, or eyewitness account survives, and modern historians therefore treat the precise year and circumstances as traditional rather than independently corroborated. His ministry, if the tradition is accepted, would have taken place while Christianity was still a small and intermittently persecuted minority in a largely pagan urban setting.

The cult of Clateus is recorded in the Roman Martyrology on 4 June. Local calendars of the Diocese of Brescia retained his memory among the earliest pastors of the church there, together with Anathalon and the later, more prominent Brescian martyrs Faustinus and Jovita. Medieval episcopal lists of Brescia included him in the succession, a common practice among north-Italian sees that sought apostolic or sub-apostolic origins. Because he lived long before the development of formal papal canonization, he was never the subject of a beatification or canonization process of the later medieval or modern type; his status rests on ancient public cult (cultus immemorabilis) attested by martyrologies and local tradition.

No reliable information survives concerning his burial place, any spouse or children, membership in a religious order, or specific patronages of places, professions, or causes. Standard hagiographical reference works record him simply as an early bishop-martyr of Brescia whose historical biography remains almost entirely unknown beyond the bare facts of his office and traditional martyrdom under Nero.