Miltiades, Pope, Saint

MILTIADES, Pope, Saint. - The Liber Pontificalis says he was of African origin. His pontificate, using the data provided by the Catalogus Liberianus and the Liber Pontificalis, but correcting their errors, can be fixed from 2 July 311 to 10 (11) January 314, therefore precisely in the years that saw Constantine's victory over Maxentius and the Edict of Milan, the end of the persecutions and the victory of Christianity.

Already in April 311 the Edict of Toleration had been promulgated by Galerius (Lactantius, De mort. persecut., 34), which Maxentius too, although he had not subscribed to it, applied extensively, restoring to M., through the urban prefecture, the goods confiscated from the Roman Church at the beginning of the persecution (St. Augustine, Brevic. Collat., III, 18, 34).

M. soon had to deal with the Donatist schism. Since the dissidents had asked Constantine for the bishops of Gaul as judges, the Emperor charged the Pope, by letter, with the examination of the controversy (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., X, 5). In October 313 M. held, with the participation of three Gallic and fifteen Italian bishops, a council in the palace given to him by Fausta in domum Faustae in Laterano, which recognized the regularity of the election and the validity of the ordination of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage and instead condemned Donatus, who had succeeded the intruder Majorinus in the Carthaginian see (Optatus of Milevis, De schismate donat., I, 23-24; St. Augustine, Brevic. Collat., III, 12, 24 and III, 17, 32). The Donatists never forgave M. for this sentence, and toward the end of the 4th century they accused him of having handed over the Scriptures and of having offered incense in the persecution of Diocletian, or at least of indirect "traditio", inasmuch as he had kept in the clergy, and sent to receive the restitution of the confiscated goods, two clerics guilty of "traditio", accusations which St. Augustine showed to be unfounded (St. Augustine, De unico baptismo, 27; Brevic. Collat., III, 18, 34-46).

The Liber Pontificalis attributes to him disciplinary and liturgical decrees: the prohibition of fasting on Sunday and Thursday and the introduction of the custom of bringing to the various urban churches a particle of the Eucharist consecrated by the Pope ("fermentum"). Other decrees are attributed to him by Pseudo-Isidore. M. was buried in the cemetery of Callistus and his name was inscribed in the Depositio episcoporum under 10 January.

Vincenzo Monachino