Saint Linus, known in Greek as Linos, stands in the earliest succession lists as the bishop to whom the Apostles Peter and Paul entrusted the episcopate of the Church of Rome after they had founded and built it up. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, writing about the year 180, records that the blessed Apostles committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate, and he identifies this Linus with the companion whom Saint Paul greets in the closing of the Second Epistle to Timothy: "Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers." Thus the New Testament itself places Linus in Rome near the end of Paul's life, a living link between the apostolic age and the continuing ministry of the Church.
According to the Liber Pontificalis and long-standing tradition, Linus was an Italian, born in Volterra in Tuscany (ancient Etruria). His father is named Herculanus; some ancient texts call his mother Claudia, a name that appears immediately after Linus in the same Pauline greeting, though Scripture does not explicitly identify her as his mother. Jerome styles him "the first after Peter to be in charge of the Roman Church," and Eusebius describes him as the first to receive the episcopate at Rome after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. Later convention came to regard Peter as the first pope and Linus as his immediate successor; whether counted first or second, the ancient lists agree that Linus held the pastoral charge of the Roman community for roughly a dozen years, commonly dated from about 68 to about 80.
In that office he continued the work the Apostles had begun: gathering the faithful, ordaining clergy, and preserving the deposit of faith amid the pressures of the imperial city. The Liber Pontificalis attributes to him a decree that women cover their heads in church—an ordinance that later scholars recognized as drawn from Saint Paul's own teaching and ascribed to Linus by pious tradition—and records that he created fifteen bishops for the service of the Church. Whether or not every detail of later legend is historical, the core witness remains: Linus received the episcopal responsibility from the Apostles and handed it on in peace to his successor, traditionally named Anacletus (or Cletus).
Tradition further relates that he was buried on the Vatican Hill beside the Apostle Peter, in what is now the Vatican Necropolis beneath Saint Peter's Basilica. The Liber Pontificalis speaks of his martyrdom and of burial on 23 September, the day still associated with his memory; yet Irenaeus, listing the early Roman bishops, singles out only Telesphorus as a glorious martyr, and no persecution is securely attested in Rome between Nero and Domitian. The Roman Martyrology therefore commemorates him simply as Pope, to whom the blessed Apostles entrusted the episcopate and whom Paul names as companion. His name is retained in the Roman Canon of the Mass, where the Church still invokes him among the first successors of Peter.
Thus the life of Saint Linus is the life of quiet continuity: a man formed in the circle of the Apostles, charged with the care of souls in the capital of the Empire, and faithful until death in handing on what he had received. Local devotion in Volterra has long claimed him as a native son, and churches and places across Europe and Canada bear his name.
May Saint Linus, faithful steward of the apostolic charge, obtain for us the grace of humble perseverance in the service of Christ's Church today.
Iz Butlerovih Života svetaca
Butlerovi Životi svetaca
JUNE 2 — SS. MARCELLINUS AND PETER, MM
Marcellinus was a priest, and Peter an exorcist, both of the clergy of Rome, and eminent for their zeal and piety. In the persecution of Dioclesian, about the year 304, they were condemned to die for their faith: and by a secret order of the judge, the executioner led them into a forest, that the holy men being executed privately, no Christians might be acquainted with the place of their sepulchre.* When he had brought them into a thicket overgrown with thorns and briers, three miles from Rome, he declared to them his sanguinary commission. The saints cheerfully fell to work themselves, grubbed up the brambles, and cleared a spot fit for their sepulchre.† After they were beheaded, their bodies were buried in the same place. Some time after, Lucilla, a pious lady, being informed by revelation,‡ and assisted by another devout lady named Firmina, took up their bodies, and honorably interred them near that of St. Tiburtius on the Lavican road in the Catacombs. Pope Damasus assures us, that, when a child, he learned all these particulars from the mouth of the executioner himself,§ and he has inserted them in a Latin epitaph with which he adorned their tomb. Anastasius the librarian testifies, from ancient registers, that Constantine the Great built here a church in honor of these martyrs, in which he caused his mother St Helena to be buried under a porphyry tomb, on the Lavican road, three miles from Rome, and that he gave to this church a paten, weighing thirty-five pounds,|| of Pure gold, with many other rich presents; which is also mentioned by Bede,1 Ad02, and Sigebert.3 The porphyry mausoleum of St. Helena is still shown among other antiquities near the Lateran basilic. Honorius I. and Adrian I. repaired this church and cemetery of St. Tiburtius, and SS. Marcellinus and Peter, as Anastasius mentions. Not long after, the bodies of SS. Marcellinus and Peter were translated into Germany on the following occasion. Eginhard, a German, the favorite secretary of Charlemagn
Izvor:
Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints
