PROTERIUS, Saint. — Unknown to the Latin Martyrologies, he is commemorated by the Greeks on February 28. He was elected Patriarch of Alexandria after the Council of Chalcedon, in which the heretic Dioscorus was deposed (457).
The supporters of the latter, however, stirred up continual disturbances in the city, which were repressed by the Emperor Marcian. P. sent to Pope St. Leo the Great in 454 a profession of faith and in 456 held a Synod against certain bishops, priests, and Eutychian monks. At the death of Marcian (457), Timothy Aelurus, in the absence of the Prefect of Alexandria, occupied the see and had himself consecrated bishop by two heretics. P. took refuge in the Baptistery, where Timothy’s followers reached him and slaughtered him together with six clerics. His body, ignominiously paraded through the city, was burned and the ashes scattered.