STEFANO I, PAPA, saint. — He is commemorated in the Depositio Episcoporum on 2 August as buried in the cemetery of Callistus. On the same date and at the same place he is recalled by the Leonine Sacramentary (the name alone), by the Hieronymian Martyrology and by the Liber Pontificalis; the «de locis» and Malmesburiense itineraries indicate that he was buried on the Via Latina, confusing him with the homonymous protomartyr, to whom a church was dedicated precisely along that road.
The Gregorian Sacramentary and the Hieronymian Martyrology qualify him as a martyr, something unknown to the ancient Roman liturgical tradition: this dignity was attributed to him in the sixth century by the author of the Passio (BHL. 7845), who confused the information about S. with II (v.). He was elected on 12 May 254, and his brief pontificate was troubled by several controversies concerning Spain, Gaul and Africa. The bishops Basilides of Leon and Astorga, and Martial of Merida, had been deposed by their Spanish colleagues as libellatics. Basilides, however, unable to accept his deposition, went to Rome and succeeded in convincing S. of his innocence, thereby obtaining his rehabilitation. The Spaniards then appealed to St. Cyprian, who at the Synod of 254, contrary to S.’s judgment, declared the two bishops unworthy and deposed. Bishop Faustinus of Leon likewise appealed to St. Cyprian, after having unsuccessfully accused his colleague Marcian of Arles before S. as a Novatianist. St. Cyprian then wrote a forceful and urgent letter to S., urging him to act energetically to safeguard ecclesiastical discipline and to depose Marcian. The final issue was the controversy that arose between Cyprian himself (v.) and S. concerning Baptism administered by heretics. In Rome, Egypt and Palestine it was not customary to repeat this Baptism, contrary to the practice in Syria, Asia Minor and especially Africa. The question, already debated in the second century, became more heated in the third; some African councils had proposed their own practice as the only legitimate one, and the decisions of the council of 255–56 were also communicated to S. so that he might accept them. The Pontiff refused to receive the African legates and instead wrote a letter to St. Cyprian and to the churches of the East, in which he asserted the legitimacy of the Roman practice, to which all were to conform. In September 256, St. Cyprian convened a new synod at which 87 bishops reaffirmed the previous decisions on the matter. S.’s death, which occurred on 2 August 257, brought the distressing controversy to an end, and the persecution of Valerian, which broke out shortly afterward, raised other problems to be resolved.