LUCIUS, ST.

Legendary Christian king in England; fl. second century. The liber pontificalis mentions a letter supposedly written to Pope eleutherius c. 187 by a British king asking the Holy See to send missionaries to convert his people. The monarch's name is given in a passage reporting a letter from Lucio Britannio rege, and this is the only extant evidence of his existence. Later, unsubstantiated traditions relate that the king was baptized by St. timothy, who reportedly was working as a missionary in Gaul at the time, and that he then undertook a missionary journey himself to the area around the Swiss canton of Graubünden. His relics are reputed to have been brought to Chur, and a completely unhistorical life of the saint was written by the end of the 13th century. He has been honored since the Middle Ages as the patron of the Diocese of Chur. The story was taken up by bede (Hist. Eccl. 1.4; 5.24) and later chroniclers, but it is well to remember that the section of the Liber pontificalis in which he appears was not compiled until c. mid-sixth century, when he was already popular in Switzerland. It is the opinion of present-day scholars that the word Britannio in the text may have been confused by some medieval scribe for Britio, which was the location of one of the strongholds of Lucius Aelius Septimius Megas Abgar IX (see abgar, legends of), an early Christian king of Edessa in Asia Minor who concerned himself with the conversion of his people in mid-second century.

Feast: Dec. 3.

Bibliography: l. p. duchesne, Liber pontificalis 1:136. The 13th-century life, ed. b. krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 3:1–7. Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis 2:5024. a. harnack, "Der Brief des britischen Königs Lucius an den Papst Eleutherius," Sitzungsberichte der Deutschen (Preussischen to 1946) (1904) 909–916, reviewed by a. h. mathew, English Historical Review 22 (1907) 767–770; "Saint Lucien," The Irish Ecclesiastical Record 4th ser., 22 (1907) 457–474. j. g. mayer, Geschichte der Bistums Chur (Stans 1907) 11–29. h. leclercq, Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie 9.2:2661–63. c. j. godfrey, The Church in Anglo-Saxon England (New York 1962) 10.

[b. j. comaskey]