ALESSANDRO I, POPE, saint. - Pontiff from about 109 to 119. S. Ireneo (Adv. haer., III, 3: PG 7, 851) indicates A. as the successor of Evaristo and the fifth bishop of Rome after s. Pietro. Eusebio di Cesarea (Hist. eccl., IV, 4) specifies that he died in the third year of the reign of Adriano (119–20) and that he had been bishop for ten years. L. Duchesne, however, albeit with reservations, is inclined to place A.’s pontificate between the years 106 and 115.
Neither Ireneo nor Eusebio calls him a martyr. The Liber Pontificalis wrongly confuses him with the martyr Alessandro, buried on the via Nomentana. Like the other bishops of Rome of the first two centuries, he was probably buried in the Vatican cemetery. According to the Liber Pontificalis, A. inserted the Qui pridie or the Unde et memores into the canon of the Mass. But all agree in holding that this assertion has no value (cf. F. Cabrol, Canon, in DACL, II, 2, col. 1852 sgg.). Nor is the other report, likewise from the Liber Pontificalis, authentic, according to which A. established the practice of blessing houses with water mixed with salt.
Certain letters and decrees were attributed to this pope, but they are certainly apocryphal.