Eusebius, Pope, St.

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EUSEBIUS, POPE, ST.

Pontificate: April 18, 309 to Aug. 17, 309. A violent controversy over the lapsi, who claimed the right to be received back into ecclesiastical communion without submitting to the customary prolonged penance, was raging when Eusebius succeeded marcellus i. According to the inscriptions of Pope damasus i, the civil authority finally intervened, and Emperor Maxentius exiled both Eusebius and Heraclius, the leader of the opposition, to Sicily. After Eusebius' death his body was brought back to Rome and buried in the cemetery of Callistus. According to the Liber pontificalis, he was a Greek and had been a physician, but little reliable information about him survives.

Feast: Formerly Sept. 26, now Aug. 17.

Bibliography: Acta Sanctorum, Sept. 7:245250. k. bihl-meyer and h. tÜchle, Kirchengeschichte (Paderborn 1962) 1:167168. a. ferrua, ed., Epigrammata Damasiana (Vatican City 1942) 129136. j. n. d. kelly Oxford Dictionary of Popes (New York 1986), 26. g. schwaiger, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 3d. ed. 3 (Freiburg 1995), s.v. "Eusebius, heilig, Papst." b. sodaro, Santi e beati di Calabria (Rosarno 1996), 5256.

[r. k. poetzel]