Alexander of Rome
The Holy Hieromartyr Alexander, Pope of Rome
Hieromartyr · Bishop · d. c. 119, at Rome
Commemorated 16 March — Commemoration of the hieromartyr Bishop of Rome
Alexander (†c. 119) was, by the ancient reckoning, the fifth Bishop of Rome after the Apostle Peter, who held the see for about ten years in the early second century and, in the tradition of the Church, suffered martyrdom in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. The Western passion joins to him the priests Eventius and Theodulus, his fellow-sufferers, and remembers his conversion of the prefect Hermes and his household. He is one of the early bishops of Rome venerated throughout the undivided Church; the Byzantine calendar keeps his memory on March 16, the West on May 3. His martyrdom, though held by the tradition, rests on a late and legendary account, and the entry keeps it as such. He is not to be confused with Alexander of Rome the Soldier, the eighteen-year-old martyr of the regiment of the Tiberiani beheaded at Drizipera in Thrace under Maximian and commemorated on May 13 — a different saint who carries the same epithet "of Rome," and whom part of the manuscript tradition wrongly calls a bishop.
Alexander stands fifth in the succession of the Bishops of Rome — after Peter, Linus, Anacletus (Cletus), and Clement — in the list of the earliest Roman episcopate transmitted by Irenaeus, Eusebius, and the later papal catalogues. He is placed at the very opening of the second century, and the tradition assigns him an episcopate of about ten years, ending about the year 115–119, in the reign of the emperor Trajan (98–117) or his successor Hadrian (117–138).
Of the sub-apostolic Bishops of Rome the secure historical record is little more than their names and their order; almost everything told of Alexander's deeds and death comes from a later passio (the Acts of Alexander, Eventius, and Theodulus), a document of the fifth or sixth century whose historical value the scholarship holds slight. That account makes Alexander a young man of high promise who, as bishop, converted many at Rome — among them the city prefect Hermes and his whole household, and, through him, the tribune Quirinus and his daughter Balbina — and who, seized in the persecution, was imprisoned together with two of his priests, Eventius and Theodulus, and after torments put to death for the faith. Later Roman tradition connects his burial with the Via Nomentana, where a church of a martyr Alexander stood, and it may be that the memory of a distinct martyr buried there was drawn into the story of the pope.
The manner of his death is variously told: the Eastern notice (followed by the OCA) says he was burned, while the Western passio has him beheaded or dispatched by other torments. The uncertainty belongs to the legendary character of the whole account; what the tradition holds constant is that Alexander, Bishop of Rome, bore witness to Christ unto death in the early persecutions, and the Church has kept his memory among her hieromartyrs from ancient times.
Feast and commemoration
Alexander is commemorated in the Byzantine calendar on March 16 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 29), among the martyrs of the day in the Greek Menaion and the OCA synaxarion. The Roman calendar keeps him, with Eventius and Theodulus, on May 3 — the day the tradition assigns to his death — and it is from this that the "May 3, 119" of the Eastern notices derives. Because March 16 falls within Great Lent, his Byzantine memory ordinarily lands on a weekday of the Fast, when the full Liturgy is not served and no fixed Epistle and Gospel are appointed; his office is joined to the Lenten order. He is to be distinguished from the many other saints named Alexander in the calendar, and in particular from the hieromartyr priest Alexander of Side (March 15) and the martyr Alexander of the company at Rome.
Iconography
Alexander is depicted as an early Bishop of Rome and hieromartyr — a hierarch vested in the phelonion and omophorion, holding the Gospel-book and raising his hand in blessing, in the settled type of the apostolic-age and sub-apostolic bishops — sometimes shown with the two priests Eventius and Theodulus who suffered with him. No securely identity-verified pre-modern icon proper to him (as distinct from the several other Alexanders and Roman popes) was located for storage at the time of authoring; a suitable public-domain image is wanting.