Saint Anicetus

Around 155 an old man arrived in Rome from Smyrna. Polycarp had known people who had known the apostles, and he came to settle several matters with Anicetus, above all the date of Easter: the churches of Asia kept it on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, whatever the weekday; Rome kept the following Sunday. Neither would yield. Irenaeus, who told the story a generation later to a pope who had forgotten its lesson, records what happened next: Anicetus, "out of respect," yielded the celebration of the Eucharist in his church to Polycarp, and the two "parted from each other in peace." It is the first recorded meeting of a bishop of Rome with a bishop from elsewhere, and the first time Rome accepted that a difference of custom need not break communion.

Others came too. Hegesippus, a Palestinian Christian collecting the traditions of the churches, reached Rome under Anicetus, drew up a list of its bishops, and stayed until Eleutherius. Marcion's and Valentinus's followers were still teaching. And in the mid-160s, under the prefect Junius Rusticus, the philosopher Justin and six companions were tried, refused to sacrifice, and were beheaded: the first Roman martyrdoms of the era whose court record survives.