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Updated: May 26, 2025
Without going into the question of the date at which Irenaeus wrote at present, and assuming with the author of 'Supernatural Religion' that his first three books were published before the death of Eleutherus in A.D. 190 the latest date possible for them, it will be seen that the Gnostic teaching to which Irenaeus refers is supposed to begin at a time when his first book may very well have been concluded, and to end actually five years later than the latest date at which this portion of the work can have been published!
Not until the second century did the episcopate become monarchical and the holder of the office the supreme authority within the Church by which he was elected. The change was complete by the time of Irenaeus, who wrote circa 180 A.D.; to him we owe our earliest catalogue of Roman bishops, beginning with Linus and ending with Eleutherus, the twelfth from Peter and the contemporary of Irenaeus.
The first congregations, those of Lyons and Vienne, were formed by Christians from Asia Minor, where some of them had known Polycarp, who was a pupil of St. John. Soon after the foundation of this infant Church, the great persecution of its members took place, about the year 175, when Eleutherus was bishop of Rome.
Eleutherus betook himself to prayer; the king came back the next day, and the bishop gave him a paper on which was written by a divine hand, he said, "The pardon granted to royal offences which might not be revealed." Clovis accepted this absolution, and loaded the church of Tournai with his gifts.
A note is appended to the name of Eleutherus in the Catalogue of Roman Pontiffs to the effect that "he received a letter from Lucius, a British king, requesting that he might be made a Christian." But this is a later addition, for it does not exist in the earlier catalogue, which was itself written nearly 200 years after the supposed event.
Ptolemy heard these accusations, but said nothing. Jonathan also went to meet Ptolemy as far as Joppa, and obtained from him hospitable presents, and those glorious in their kinds, with all the marks of honor; and when he had conducted him as far as the river called Eleutherus, he returned again to Jerusalem.
Eleutherus betook himself to prayer; the King came back the next day, and the bishop gave him a paper on which was written by a divine hand, he said, "the pardon granted to royal offences which might not be revealed." Clovis accepted this absolution, and loaded the church of Tournai with his gifts.
Commerce with Cyprus and southern Asia Minor was especially open to the mariners of this region, who could see the shores of Cyprus without difficulty on a clear day. Next came the "world" of Aradus, reaching along the coast from the Badas to the Eleutherus, another stretch of fifty miles, and including the littoral islands, especially that of Ruad, on which Aradus was built.
The elevated tract known to the ancients as Bargylus, and to modern geographers as the Ansayrieh or Nasariyeh mountain-region, runs at right angles to the spur terminating in the Mount Casius, and extends from the Orontes near Antioch to the valley of the Eleutherus. This is a distance of not less than a hundred miles.
It was either this Eleutherus, or his successor Victor, who was all but taken in to recognise Montanism, as indeed Zosimus was taken in, 250 years later, by the superior subtlety of our countryman, the Briton Pelagius. Eleutherus, or Victor, was only saved from this grave mistake by the advice of an Oriental heretic.
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