Pope Fabian

Pope Fabian was Bishop of Rome from 236 until his death as a martyr in 250. Almost nothing can be verified about his birth, family, or early life. The later Liber Pontificalis calls him a Roman and names his father Fabius, but that work is not a contemporary source for the third century and cannot be treated as certain. The earliest narrative of his rise is given by Eusebius of Caesarea in the Ecclesiastical History. After Pope Anterus died, the Roman church gathered to elect a bishop. Fabian, then a layman who had come from the countryside, was present. Eusebius reports that a dove settled on his head, which the assembly took as a sign of the Holy Spirit, and that he was chosen by acclamation although he had not been a leading candidate.

His fourteen-year episcopate fell in a comparatively quiet period for Christians in the empire, between the persecution associated with Maximinus Thrax and the edict of Decius. Later Roman tradition, again chiefly the Liber Pontificalis, ascribes to him a reorganization of the city's clergy into seven districts under deacons and the appointment of subdeacons to gather records of the martyrs. He is also linked in medieval tradition with the sending of missionary bishops to Gaul; modern historians treat that coordinated mission as uncertain. During his pontificate the remains of Pope Pontian and of Hippolytus, who had opposed earlier Roman bishops, were brought back from exile in Sardinia and buried in Rome, marking an end to that schism. Eusebius notes that Origen wrote to Fabian, and Cyprian of Carthage records that Fabian joined in condemning Privatus of Lambaesis, an African bishop already sentenced by a large synod.

The peace ended when Decius, at the beginning of 250, ordered a general sacrifice to the gods of Rome. Church leaders were targeted at once. Fabian was arrested and died in Rome on 20 January 250. Cyprian, writing to the Roman clergy, spoke of him as a man of integrity whose martyrdom was a glory to the church. The Depositio martyrum in the Chronography of 354 already lists his burial on that date in the cemetery of Callistus. He was interred in the papal crypt of the Catacomb of Callixtus on the Appian Way. In the nineteenth century Giovanni Battista de Rossi recovered there a fragmentary Greek epitaph identifying Fabian as bishop and martyr.

The Roman church has kept his feast on 20 January from late antiquity; the same day is also the feast of Saint Sebastian. He is venerated as a saint and martyr in the Catholic Church and in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Because he belongs to the age of the martyrs, there was no later papal process of canonization or beatification in the medieval or Tridentine sense; his cult rests on early liturgical commemoration and on the archaeological witness of his tomb. Details of any personal patronage, marriage, or children are not preserved in reliable sources.