Saint Zephyrinus, a native of Rome, succeeded Victor in the
pontificate, in the year 202, in which Severus raised the fifth most bloody
persecution against the Church, which continued not for two years only, but
until the death of that emperor in 211. Under this furious storm this holy
pastor was the support and comfort of the distressed flock of Christ, and he
suffered by charity and compassion what every confessor underwent. The triumphs
of the martyrs were indeed his joy, but his heart received many deep wounds
from the fall of apostates and heretics. Neither did this latter affliction
cease when peace was restored to the Church. Our Saint had also the affliction
to see the fall of Tertullian, which seems to have been owing partly to his
pride. Eusebius tells us that this holy Pope exerted his zeal so strenuously
against the blasphemies of the heretics that they treated him in the most
contumelious manner; but it was his glory that they called him the principal
defender of Christ's divinity. St. Zephyrinus filled the pontifical chair
seventeen years, dying in 219. He was buried in his own cemetery, on the 26th
of August. He is, in some Martyrologies, styled a martyr, which title he might
deserve by what he suffered in the persecution, though he perhaps did not die
by the executioner.
Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,
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