FABIAN, Pope, Saint, Martyr. - He was elected in Jan. 236 immediately after the death of Pope Anterus. After the death of Maximinus Thrax the Church had a period of tranquility during the Empire of Gordian III and of Philip the Arab.
Pope F. turned his attention to the community of Rome: to the Augustan division into fourteen regions he substituted an administrative division of seven regions, and over each of them he placed one of the seven deacons; in the "Liberian Catalogue" one indeed reads: "hic regiones divisit diaconibus". The biographer of the Liber Pontificalis added that F. would also have appointed seven subdeacons and seven regional notaries, for the "Acts of the Martyrs", but the notice is not documented, whereas the subdeacons are mentioned by Cornelius in his letter to Fabius of Antioch (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 43: PG 20, 621) and several times by St. Cyprian (Ep. 8, 9, 29, 34: PL, 4, coll. 246-53; 302-303; 320-24).
This type of organization established by F. continued afterward, acquiring ever greater importance in the life of the Church of Rome, as is attested by documents and by epigraphic monuments. G. B. De Rossi reconstructed the boundaries of the seven regional districts (Roma sotterr., III, Rome 1877, pp. 515-28).
Another activity of F. is also noted in the "Liberian Catalogue": "multas fabricas per cimiteria fieri iusset".
The cemeteries were therefore connected with the regional division and dependent on the churches of the individual regions.
The cemeteries existing at the time of F. are certainly those that the monuments themselves indicate, that is, besides the cemetery of Callistus, those of Priscilla, of Domitilla, of Praetextatus; on the Tiburtina the cemetery where Hippolytus had been laid, and perhaps those of Pamphilus and of Bassilla on the "Salaria vetus". De Rossi sees in the "many buildings" made for assemblies above the subterranean cemeteries, as he believes he can claim for F. the second area and the building that rises from the ground right in the center of that area with its exedras, called today the tricora cell (G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, I, Rome 1864, p. 199; II, ibid. 1867, pp. 278-79).
F. deposed in Africa Privatus, bishop of Lambaesis, but the text of his letter has been lost, as have the two exchanged between him and Origen (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 36: PG 20, 397; St. Jerome, Ep., 84, 10: PL 22, 731). Moreover F. obtained from the imperial authority permission to transport from Sardinia to the cemetery of Callistus the remains of the martyr pope Pontian (Lib. Pont., I, p. 145). The organizing activity of F. had such resonance that it aroused the wrath of the emperor Decius, who declared that he would have preferred to have a rival in the Empire than the bishop of God in Rome (St. Cyprian, Ep., 55, 9).
Decius unleashed the persecution and one of the first victims, on 20 Jan. 250, was Pope F., after a pontificate of 14 years, 11 months and 11 days. His martyrdom was immediately reported to the other communities (St. Cyprian, Epp., 9, 1; 30, 3).
F. was laid in Callistus in the same crypt where Anterus and Pontian were buried; on the closing slab was written in Greek only the name of FABIANOC and his dignity of bishop ΕΠΙ(ΕΚΟΠΟΣ); later his title of martyr was added with the simple combination of three consonants MPT. The inscription was found by G. B. De Rossi in the crypt of the Popes in Callistus in 1854.
His veneration is attested already in the 4th century by the Depositio martyrum: XIII Kal(endus) ian(narias) Fabiani in Callisti.