Saint Lucius I

Lucius was elected on 25 June 253, while Cornelius's body was still at Centumcellae, and almost at once shared his predecessor's sentence: the emperor Gallus sent him into exile. He was back within months, probably when Valerian took the throne that autumn and, for a few years, left the Christians alone. Cyprian wrote from Carthage to congratulate him on the return, praising a confessor who had been "not only in one but in a double glory," and hoping God had brought him home so that he could suffer "under the eyes of the brethren" if it came to that.

It did not. Lucius died in Rome on 5 March 254 after a reign of eight months, and Cyprian, writing later to Stephen, recorded the one thing known about his policy: that he and Cornelius had agreed, "full of the spirit of the Lord and established in glorious martyrdom," that the lapsed should be received back after penance, which was the position Novatian's rigorists still refused. The Roman calendar of 354 lists him among the bishops rather than the martyrs, and his Greek epitaph in the papal crypt of Callixtus, a fragment reading "Lucius," was recovered by de Rossi.

His feast is kept on 4 March, the day before his death, because 5 March already belonged to another saint when the calendar was fixed.