From The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII. Written Originally in Latin by B. Platina, Native of Cremona, and translated into English (from an anonymous translation, first printed in 1685 by Sir Paul Rycaut), Edited by William Benham, Volume I, London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh, [1888, undated in text]; pp. 52-53.
The Lives of the Popes,
BY
B. Platina
Volume I.
ST STEPHANUS I.
A.D. 253-257.
STEPHANUS, a Roman, the son of Julius, was chosen bishop when the Roman Empire seemed to be utterly ruined, and particularly at the time when Posthumus exercised his usurped power in Gallia, though not without great advantage to the public, for he governed very well ten years together, freed the country from hostility, and restored that province to its ancient form. But being afterwards killed at Mentz in a tumult of the soldiers, Victorinus succeeded him, who was indeed an excellent soldier, but being excessively incontinent and adulterous, was slain at Cologne.
Stephanus, applying himself to the regulation of the Church, ordained that the priests and other ministers should not use their sacred vestments anywhere but in the church, and during the performance of divine offices; lest otherwise they should incur the punishment of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, for touching the holy vessels with profane hands. Concerning the reactivation of those who returned to the faith, he was of the same judgment with Cornelius, his predecessor, and thought it by no means lawful to communicate with those who rebaptized them; whereupon Dionysius, who had formerly concurred in opinion about the matter with those of Carthage and the East, both his and their sentiments of it being now altered, writes to Stephen, and encourages him from the assurance that both the Asian and African Churches were now reconciled to the judgment of the Roman see concerning it. About the same time Malchion, a presbyter of Antioch, a person of extraordinary eloquence, became very useful to 53 the Church of God in writing against Paulus of Samosata, the bishop of that place, who endeavoured to revive the opinion of Artemon, affirming Christ to have been a mere man and that he had no existence till he was conceived by the Virgin Mary, — an opinion which, being afterwards condemned in the Council of Antioch by general consent, this Malchion, in the name of the synod, wrote a large epistle to the Christians concerning it. As for Stephanus, when he had by his example and persuasion converted a multitude of Gentiles to Christianity, being seized by Gallienus, as some say, or else by those who upon the edict of Decius were appointed to persecute the Christians, he himself, together with many others his proselytes, was hurried away to martyrdom; and having suffered, he was interred in the cemetery of Calistus in the Via Appia, August the 2nd, after that he had at two Decembrian ordinations made six presbyters, five deacons, three bishops. He was in the chair four years, five months, two days; and the see was vacant two and twenty days.
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