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Pope St. Eleutherius

Pope St. Eleutherius

?–189 CE · Nicopolis

Eleutherius was bishop of Rome from roughly 175 to 189, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. He had earlier served as a deacon under Anicetus, placing him within Rome's established clergy. His pontificate confronted the rise of Montanism, a prophetic movement that tested the Church's response to new claims of inspiration. The Liber Pontificalis preserves the celebrated but legendary tale that he received a request from a British king, Lucius, and sent missionaries to Britain—a story now widely dismissed as unhistorical. The Liber Pontificalis also gives him a Greek origin. His reign sits amid the doctrinal controversies shaping late second-century Christianity.

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Stop 0 of 2Birthplace (Per Tradition)

NicopolisEpirus (Greece)

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About Nicopolis

The 'Victory City' Augustus founded to commemorate Actium, later home to the exiled slave-philosopher Epictetus, whose Stoic school here shaped emperors and ethics for centuries.

Across the traditions, in Nicopolis at the same time

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In the same place & time

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Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Pope St. Eleutherius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works

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