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Home  »  Volume V: May  »  St. Alexander, Pope and Martyr

Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume V: May. The Lives of the Saints. 1866.

May 3

St. Alexander, Pope and Martyr

 
HE succeeded St. Evaristus in 109, and held the holy see ten years, but not complete. He died in 119, and is ranked among the martyrs in the canon of the mass. Notwithstanding the silence of St. Irenæus, we also find him styled a martyr in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, in the ancient Calendar of Fronto, and unanimously in other martyrologies which join with him two companions, Eventius and Theodulus, who suffered with him, or at least about the same time of his happy death. The bodies of SS. Alexander, Eventius, and Theodulus, were interred on the Nomentan road, but were translated into the church of St. Sabina, which now belongs to a great convent of Dominican friars. St. Juvenal, the first bishop of Narni, in Umbria, who died in peace about the year 367, is commemorated in the Roman Breviary on the same day. He is styled a martyr by St. Gregory the Great. (Hom. 57, in Evang. and Dial. l. 4, c. 12.)  1