Soter

Pope Soter (Greek: Soter, meaning saviour) was Bishop of Rome in the later second century, during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Ancient papal catalogues do not agree on exact years. The Liberian Catalogue assigned his episcopate to 162–170, while modern reconstructions, including those used in the Annuario Pontificio, allow dates that may range from about 162 or 168 to about 170 or 177. A frequently cited approximation is from around 167 until around 174. He succeeded Anicetus and was succeeded by Eleutherius. The Liber Pontificalis, a later compilation whose second-century lives are of limited historical value, states that he was born at Fondi in Campania, in southern Italy. No contemporary source records his birth year, parentage, or career before he became bishop of Rome.

Almost everything that can be said of Soter’s character and activity rests on a letter of Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, which Eusebius of Caesarea excerpted in the fourth book of the Ecclesiastical History. Dionysius wrote that it had been the Roman church’s custom from the beginning to send help to brethren in many cities, and that the blessed bishop Soter had not only maintained this practice but increased it, administering the bounty sent to the saints and exhorting, as a loving father his children, the brethren who came to Rome. Dionysius added that Soter’s letter was read aloud in the Corinthian assembly on the Lord’s Day, just as the earlier letter of Clement had been. No authentic theological treatise or decretal by Soter survives. His historical reputation is therefore that of a charitable and pastoral bishop whose church continued Rome’s already noted role as a source of material and moral support for distant communities.

The wider context of his pontificate included unresolved disputes over the date of Easter (the Quartodeciman question), which had already been discussed in Rome under Anicetus, and the rise of the New Prophecy, later called Montanism, in Phrygia. Later writers sometimes place Roman caution toward Montanism in this period, but the evidence tying specific anti-Montanist measures to Soter himself is weak. The Christian communities of the empire also faced sporadic local persecution under Marcus Aurelius; the famous martyrdoms at Lyon and Vienne are usually dated to 177, at or shortly after the close of Soter’s life. Irenaeus of Lyons belongs to the same generation. Decrees attributed to Soter by the Liber Pontificalis—that marriage should be blessed by a priest, and that women should not touch sacred vessels or burn incense in church—are regarded by historians as later, anachronistic inventions without second-century foundation.

Roman tradition, again following the Liber Pontificalis, held that Soter was buried in the cemetery of Callistus on the Via Appia. He has been venerated as a saint from an early date. His feast was observed on 22 April, often together with Pope Caius; it was among the commemorations removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, though he remains in the Roman Martyrology. Older martyrologies called him a martyr, but there is no reliable evidence that he died a violent death, and the present Martyrology praises his outstanding charity toward needy brethren who came to Rome from other cities, echoing Dionysius of Corinth. Like other second-century bishops of Rome, he was culted long before the medieval and modern processes of beatification and canonization existed. Beyond the succession lists, the Corinthian letter, and these later Roman traditions, the life of Soter cannot be reconstructed in any detail.