ALEXANDER I, POPE, saint. – Pontiff from about 109 to 119. St. Irenaeus (Adv. haer., III, 3: PG 7, 851) indicates A. as the successor of Evaristus and the fifth bishop of Rome after St. Peter. Eusebius of
Caesarea (Hist. eccl., IV, 4) specifies that he died in the third year of Hadrian’s reign (119–20) and that he had been bishop for ten years. However, L. Duchesne, albeit with reservation, inclines to place A.’s pontificate between the years 106–15.
Neither Irenaeus nor Eusebius states that he was a martyr. The Liber Pontificalis mistakenly confuses him with the martyr Alexander buried on the Via Nomentana. Like the other bishops of Rome in the first two centuries, he was probably buried in the Vatican cemetery. According to the Liber Pontificalis, A. would have inserted the Qui pridie or the Unde et memores into the canon of the Mass. But all agree that this assertion has no value (cf. F. Cabrol, Canon, in DACL, II, 2, col. 1852 ff.). Nor is authentic the other notice, also from the Liber Pontificalis, according to which A. would have established the custom of blessing houses with water mixed with salt.
To this pope were attributed some letters and decrees, which are certainly apocryphal.