ANTIMO, bishop of NICOMEDIA. – Bishop of that city in Bithynia, martyred at the beginning of the 4th century (3 Sept. 302?) during the persecution of Diocletian. His feast is celebrated on 27 April. A fragment of a work De sancta ecclesia has been preserved, in which the characteristics defining the true Church in opposition to heretical sects are illustrated: unity, catholicity, and apostolicity. The fragment is in all probability interpolated, since it mentions figures (Asterius the Sophist and Eusebius of Caesarea) who lived after A. This does not, however, necessarily mean that the inauthenticity of this passage supports that of the remainder of the work, which is unknown to us.
BIBL.: G. Mercati, Note di letteratura biblica e cristiana antica (Studi e testi, 5), Rome 1901, pp. 87–89; O. Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, II, 2nd ed., Freiburg im Br. 1914, pp. 333–34. Mario Niccoli