Sixtus II

The holy Hieromartyr Sixtus II (Xystus) was bishop of Rome for about a year, from 31 August 257 to 6 August 258. He received the crown of martyrdom in the persecution of Emperor Valerian, together with his deacons. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 10 August, together with the Archdeacon Lawrence.

Ministry

According to the Liber Pontificalis he was a Greek and formerly a philosopher, which modern historians think a confusion with a writer of the same name; the Romanian Orthodox synaxarion calls him an Athenian. He followed Pope Stephen I, who had quarrelled with Saint Cyprian of Carthage and the Churches of Africa and Asia Minor over the baptism of those coming from heresy. Sixtus restored good relations with these Churches without changing the practice of Rome. Pontius, the disciple of Cyprian, calls him a gentle priest and a peacemaker.

Martyrdom

In 258 Valerian ordered that bishops, priests and deacons be put to death. Saint Cyprian, in a letter of that year, says that Sixtus was killed on 6 August in a cemetery, together with four deacons. Later tradition adds two more deacons, Felicissimus and Agapitus, and names the four as Januarius, Vincent, Magnus and Stephen. According to Roman sources he was beheaded on the chair from which he taught, in a cemetery on the Via Appia; historians do not know whether he was killed on the spot or first tried. Four days later the Archdeacon Lawrence suffered. The meeting of the two on the road to martyrdom, told in the Acts of Saint Lawrence, is held to be legendary.

Veneration

He was buried in the crypt of the bishops of Rome in the catacomb of Callistus, where Pope Damasus set an inscription in his honour. His name is spoken in the canon of the Roman Mass. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 10 August, while Rome keeps 6 or 7 August, depending on the calendar.