Pope Stephen

Pope Stephen I was Bishop of Rome from 254 until his death in 257. The Liber Pontificalis, a later compilation of papal biographies, describes him as a Roman by birth and the son of a man named Jovius (or Jobius). No contemporary source records the year or circumstances of his birth, and nothing reliable is known of his career before he succeeded Pope Lucius I. His election fell in a comparatively quiet interval for the Church, after the Decian persecution and before the measures taken by the emperor Valerian against the Christian clergy.

The issue that dominates the surviving evidence for his pontificate is the dispute over baptism administered outside the Catholic Church, especially by Novatianists and other groups regarded as heretical or schismatic. In Africa, Cyprian of Carthage and successive councils held that there was no true baptism apart from the Church and that converts from such groups must be baptized. Similar views were current in parts of Asia Minor. Stephen defended the Roman practice: baptism conferred in the name of the Trinity was valid even if the minister was a heretic, and such persons were to be received by the laying on of hands rather than by a second baptism. He refused to receive an African delegation and is reported to have broken, or threatened to break, communion with churches that rebaptized. Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia wrote a letter, preserved among Cyprian’s correspondence, attacking Stephen in unusually harsh language for arrogance and for abandoning what Firmilian regarded as apostolic tradition. The conflict was not settled in Stephen’s lifetime; later Western practice followed the Roman position.

Stephen also became involved in the cases of Basilides and Martial, Spanish bishops who had obtained certificates of sacrifice during persecution and had been deposed by their colleagues. According to Cyprian, they appealed to Rome and Stephen supported their restoration, a decision the African bishops rejected. These episodes show both the growing readiness of the Roman see to hear appeals from other churches and the resistance those claims still encountered in the mid-third century.

Later legend, reflected in the Liber Pontificalis and in liturgical texts, presents Stephen as a martyr who was beheaded while seated on his cathedra as he celebrated the liturgy, at the beginning of Valerian’s persecution. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him as a martyr on 2 August. Contemporary evidence is weaker. Eusebius of Caesarea, who treats this period, does not describe Stephen as a martyr, and the dating of Valerian’s first edict against bishops, priests, and deacons is close enough to Stephen’s death that the manner of that death remains uncertain. He was buried in the papal area of the Catacomb of Callixtus on the Via Appia. His successor was Sixtus II, who was himself put to death the following year. Stephen has been venerated as a saint in the Latin Church from antiquity; his cult belongs to the era before formal papal canonization procedures.