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St. Telephorus

O Eternal Shepherd, who appointed blessed Telesphorus shepherd of the whole Church, let the prayers of this martyr and supreme pontiff move You to look with favor upon Your flock and to keep it under Your continual protection. 

As a Greek by birth, though some authors say that he was born in Terra Nova, in Calabria. It is by some affirmed that his father was an Anchorite, and that Telesphorus himself was Roman by birth. Some say that by his decrees he confirmed the observance of Lent; and others affirm that the quadragesimal Fast came down by tradition, as stated by Saint Ignatius, Saint Jerome, and Theophilus. This holy pope suffered martyrdom, A. D. 139.

In his four ordinations, Telesphorus created thirteen bishops, fifteen priests, and eight deacons. Some pious Christians removed his body after execution, and placed it near that of Saint Peter, in the Vatican.

It is said that this pope ordered that all priests should celebrate three Masses on Christmas day. But Novaes considers that this statement rests only upon an apochryphal Decretal (vol. i., p. 44). However, this observance was followed under Saint Gregory the Great.

Saint Telesphorus presided over the Holy See during eleven years, eight months, and eighteen days.

Source:The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontifs, from St. Peter to Pius Ix, Volume 1, Issue 2, Artaud de Montor D. & J. Sadlier, 1869

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 PONTIFICATE OF ST. TELESPHORUS (A. D. 128–138).

1. St. TELESPHORUS succeeded St. Sixtus I. Before his elevation he had led the life of the anchorites, as we learn from the Liber Pontificalis, ex Anachoreta. To preside over the Christian assemblies in the catacombs; to ordain priests (* These ordinations were usually held about Christmas, mense decembri. The Church, from the earliest period, observed the practice of reserving fixed epochs for these important coremonies, which perpetuate the priesthood in the world.) and consecrate bishops, to take the place of those who had suffered from the sword of persecution; to confirm in faith and patience the churches shaken by the fury of tyrants; to regulate the order of the sacred ceremonies, and the forms of prayers or hymns that accompanied them; to place the ecclesiastical hierarchy on solid foundations; to watch over the maintenance of the holy doctrines and traditions; finally, to close a life of privations and pious toil by the torments of martyrdom ;—such were the glorious privileges of the earliest Roman Pontiffs.


1/. The Apostolic institution of Lent was maintained and confirmed by St. Telesphorus, who ordained a fast of seven weeks before Easter.
2/ The custom of celebrating Mass only at the hour of tierce-nine o'clock in the morning-was also maintained by this pope, who allowed no exception but on the feast of the Nativity, when it was celebrated in the night.
3/ He was the first who introduced into the liturgy the Gloria in Excelsis.

2. While Adrian visited the various provinces of his empire, he left behind him, together with shameful monuments of his passions, useful amelioration, and durable reforms. Athens was especially the object of his care; he did much for its embellishment, and gave it his name—the City of Adrian. During one of his visits there, St. Quadratus, whom Eusebius represents as a disciple of the Apostles, a man of brilliant genius and of apostolic zeal, availed himself of the occasion to address to him an apology, or defense, on behalf of the Christians, A.D. 126. This work, the first of its kind, was still extant in the time of St. Jerome, who mentions it with high eulogium. Only a fragment remains to us, on the reality of the miracles of Jesus Christ, as distinguished from the enchantments and transient impressions of magic. “The miracles of the Savior,” said the holy apologist, “ were always visible, because they were always true. Those whom He cured, those whom He recalled from death to life, were seen, not only at the moment of their cure, or of their resurrection, but long afterwards; not only during the lifetime of the Savior, but many years after He had ascended to heaven; some of them, indeed, are still living.'Aristides, a Christian philosopher of Athens, about the same time, presented another apology to Adrian, in which he relies on the testimony of the ancient philosophers to prove the sublimity of the Catholic faith. This work is also lost to us. The emperor, touched by these just representations, seems to have adopted sentiments more favorable to the Christian religion.

3.But that which chiefly contributed to put an end to the persecution was the letter which, nearly at the same time, Serenius Granianus, proconsul of Asia, addressed to Adrian on the subject of the cruelties practiced by the multitude upon the Christians. It was a custom at the public festivals, that the people of Rome, or of the provinces present, should have liberty to ask of the prince or proconsuls any thing which their passions, excited by the bloody spectacle, could suggest. “ The Christians to the lions” was the cry in every amphitheater, and without interrogatory, or process of law, or any valid judgment, Christians, by thousands, were cast to the wild beasts. Serenius, in his letter to the emperor, did not hesitate to pronounce upon these proceedings as monstrous iniquities. To sacrifice to the clamor of the populace a multitude of victims of every age and rank, of both sexes, when they were not even accused of any judicial crime, seemed to him a barbarism unworthy of Rome and of Adrian.

4. The reply of the emperor was not addressed to Serenius Granianus, who, in the interval, had probably relinquished the government of Asia, but to his successor, Minucius Fundanus. It is thus recorded by Eusebius : “I have received the letter addressed to me by the illustrious Serenius Granianus, your predecessor. The affair appears to merit serious attention, in order to protect these men (the Christians) from similar vexations, and that pretenses may be withdrawn from informers for future calumnies. If the inhabitants of any district have charges to make against the Christians, which they are able in person to sustain before your tribunal, let them have recourse to this judicial mode; but they must not be permitted to pursue them with foolish or tumultuous clamor. Reason demands that if there be any ground of accusation, you should have cognizance of it. If they are convicted of actions contrary to the laws, decide the case according to the gravity of the crime. If, on the contrary, the accusation proves to be calumnious, let the informer suffer merited punishment.”

This re-script was sent to other governors of provinces, and the fury of persecution was relaxed, though not entirely extinguished; for, on the one hand, the passions of the populace, and, on the other, the hatred of the proconsuls for the very name of Christian, together with the progressive decline of respect and obedience towards the central authority, continued still to leave multitudes of Christians a prey to the blind passions of the populace, or to judges misguided by their prejudices.

5. The Jews, always conquered, and always rebellious, availed themselves of the absence of the emperor in distant provinces to attempt a new insurrection. They were embittered against the sovereignty of Adrian by a double motive. This prince, who had undertaken to raise all the cities of his vast empire from their ruins, had sent a pagan colony to rebuild and inhabit Jerusalem. He also changed the name of the ancient City of David to that of Ælia Capitolina. The Jews could not endure without indignation the presence of these idolaters, who raised altars to false gods in the very places where the God of Abraham had been so long invoked by their fathers. Another measure, too, had outraged their devoted attachment to the law of Moses. Adrian had prohibited, under pain of death, the circumcision of their infants. This was to take away the seal of their covenant with God—the sacred sign which distinguished them from the pagans. A sullen discontent soon became apparent among them. They assembled in the vast subterranean cavities near their cities, and secretly organized a revolt. A cunning impostor contrived to turn these hostile inclinations to the profit of his own ambition. He was Barchocebas, or the Son of the Star. He announced himself as the envoy of God, to deliver the Jewish people from the oppression of their enemies. The star of Jacob, predicted by Balaam, was the sign of his advent; he was the Messiah promised by the prophets, and expected by the patriarchs. The rabbi Akiba placed the resources of his science and influence at the service of the false prophet, and Barchocebas was hailed as the Savior of Jerusalem. He soon found him. self at the head of a multitude of partisans, and the first use he made of his power was to persecute with the greatest cruelty the Christians who refused to abjure their faith in Jesus Christ, and to enter into the league which he formed against the Roman domination. The tortures to which he condemned these victims surpassed in barbarity and cruelty all that pagan rage had hitherto invented. Meanwhile he extended his intrigues throughout the East among the Jews, and sought for the enemies of the empire in all directions. In the neighboring tribes he found a multitude greedy for pillage, ready to swell the number of his troops. The Romans, at first, despised this insurrectionist movement in a nation which they had so often conquered, and its importance was only discovered when the extent of its ramifications became apparent. The governor of Judea, Tinnius Rufus, began by sending to execution a crowd of persons, without distinction of age or sex. This act of cruel severity served only to excite the insurgents to greater fury. Their revolt at once, in every point in Syria, alarmed the governor, who called on the emperor for re-enforcement. Adrian summoned from Great Britain Julius Severus, reputed to be the greatest general of his time, and dispatched him to the aid of Tinnius Rufus. Seeing the numbers of his enemies, Severus avoided a general attack, preferring a slower mode of warfare to the dangers of an uncertain combat. He therefore attacked them separately, to force them into narrower limits, and to cut off their supplies. His skillful manæuvres were completely successful. Within two years he captured, in succession, every fortified place in Judea, and destroyed more than six hundred thousand Jews, without including those who perished by famine, fire, or want. An immense multitude were sold in the markets of Terebinth and Gaza. Such as were not sold in those cities were transported into Egypt. This frightful disaster surpassed those which Nabuchodonosor and Titus had inflicted upon Judea. Barchocebas lost his life at the siege of Bether, where the rebels had fixed the center of their operations. Jerusalem no longer preserved any traces of her past glories. The stones which had served in the erection of the temple, were now employed to build a theater. Over one of the gates was placed a marble hog, to the Jews the most impure of animals. A statue of Jupiter was set upon the Holy Sepulcher; and one of Venus was raised upon Calvary. A sacred wood for pagan sacrifices was planted at Bethlehem The consecration to Adonis of the grotto where Jesus was born, profaned this holy place. The dispersed Israelite were prohibited from entering Jerusalem-neither were they allowed to approach it-however strong might be their love of Sion. They were obliged to purchase at a great price the per mission, on one day of the year, to bathe with their tears the places upon which, in other times, their religion had shed such splendor. St. Jerome, who, in his time, was a witness of this lugubrious ceremony, says: “After having purchased the blood of the Savior, they purchase their own tears; they pay a ransom for the privilege of weeping. What a dismal spectacle, on the anniversary of the day when Jerusalem was taken and destroyed by the Romans,'to see the approach, in mournful attire, of a multitude of people—of women and men, bending under the weight of years, and covered with rags, whose bearing attests the anger of the Lord, in the exhaustion of their bodies, and in their torn garments !"

This catastrophe was advantageous, however, to the Christian Church in Jerusalem, which hitherto had been governed by bishops converted from Judaism, and was consequently attached to the observances of the Mosaic law. A residence in this city being now permitted only to the Gentiles, the Church was recruited chiefly by her conquests among them. Besides, in the utter dispersion of a people condemned by God, this last tempest gave a new force to the proofs of Christianity, which, according to the prophets, was to succeed Judaism, and rise on its ruins, A. D. 134.

6. Far from confessing their offenses in the presence of these terrible judgments of Heaven, the Jewish doctors sought more diligently, than ever to blind themselves, and to lead their unhappy compatriots into the same errors. From hatred to Christianity, and in order to weaken the proofs of the divinity of Jesus Christ, which is made so evident in the prophecies, they began the composition of the Talmud, or doctrine, an enormous compilation of their oral traditions. This work is divided into two parts; the Mischna, or law, which is the text, and the Ghemur, or complement, which is a commentary on the other. The entire collection forins twelve volumes in folio. Among its fables and puerile inventions there is a hatred of the name of Christian, which is not even dissembled. This book is perhaps the greatest obstacle to the conversion of the Jews.

7. At this epoch, a work of another class, but with the same object, was undertaken by an apostate Christian. Aquila, a native of Sinope, in Pontus, was first a pagan. The miracles which he saw performed among the Christians converted him, and he was baptized; but his attachment to astrology, which, in spite of the counsels of the bishops, he refused to abandon, caused his excommunication, and he was excluded from the Church. To avenge this injury, he was circumcised, and openly embraced Judaism. Carrying his hatred still further, he applied himself to the study of the Hebrew tongue; and after acquiring a thorough knowledge of it, he commenced a new Greek version of the Scriptures, to correct that of the Septuagint. He endeavored especially to make it literal, and succeeded so well that even St. Jerome pronounces his translation very exact. But the same Father reproaches him for having designedly weakened the passages which serve to establish the divinity of Jesus Christ.

8. All these desperate efforts to hinder the progressive advancement of the Catholic Church ended by imparting to it new strength. The dispersed Jews carried everywhere the testimony of the victory of Christianity, and the heretics, in yielding to the disorders of an infamous life, condemned themselves; in fine, the emperors achieved the ruin of their own authority by the excesses of every description to which they abandoned themselves. Adrian expired A. D. 138. Towards the close of his life, this prince became melancholy and cruel. He condemned to death his brother-in-law Servienus, and Fuercus, his grand-nephew. He was suspected of poisoning his wife Sabina, whom he afterwards placed among the divinities of the empire. He complained that he, who at his will had sent so many to execution, could not die himself. Finally he expired, suffocated by an excess in eating, cursing the physicians, and jesting upon his soul. Antoninus Pius, his adopted son, a prince worthy of the surname which his virtues and his gratitude towards his benefactor had gained for him, succeeded to the throne. His fine qualities endeared him to the Romans and made him venerable to strangers, even to the barbarian sovereigns, who chose him more than once for arbiter in their disputes.

9. The same year Pope St. Telesphorus ended his Apostolic career by a glorious martyrdom. He had governed the Church ten years. St. Hyginus, converted from philosophism-ex philosopho—was his successor.

Source: A General History of the Catholic Church: From the Commencement of the Christian Era Until the Present Time, Volume 1, Abbe Joseph Épiphane Darras 1866