Epithymetus

Saint Epithymetus (also called Epatimus or Epitimetus) was, according to the tradition of the Church of Naples, the second bishop of Naples, successor of Saint Asprenus and predecessor of Saint Maro. He is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church.

His figure is known only from the old lists of the bishops of Naples: the Gesta episcoporum Neapolitanorum (written between the eighth and ninth centuries) and the Catalogus episcoporum Neapolitanorum (tenth century). These sources say that he shepherded the Church for seventeen years, in the time of the popes Sixtus I and Telesphorus and of the emperor Hadrian, and that he followed the example of holiness of his predecessor ("prioris exempla sequens"). The exact period is uncertain: Giuseppe Cappelletti places him between the years 131 and 152, while other historians, starting from the first historically attested bishop of Naples, Fortunatus (343/344), put him in the first half of the third century. Present-⁠day studies consider that the first Neapolitan bishops before the fourth century belong to a poorly documented phase, and the reports about them come from traditions gathered centuries after the events.