Saint Pontian

With Pontian the papacy acquires dates. The Liberian Catalogue, a Roman list compiled in 354 from the church's own records, gives his accession as 21 July 230 and his abdication as 28 September 235, and from here on the reigns of the bishops of Rome can be counted in days. He was a Roman, the son of Calpurnius, according to the Liber Pontificalis, and for the first five years he presided over a church at peace under Alexander Severus, still divided by the schism of Hippolytus, and drawn into the wider church's affairs: a Roman synod under Pontian is said to have confirmed the condemnation of Origen pronounced at Alexandria in 231.

The peace ended in March 235, when the army murdered Alexander and raised the Thracian giant Maximinus, who turned on the friends of the old regime and on the leaders of the church among them. Pontian and Hippolytus, bishop and rival bishop, were arrested together and deported to Sardinia to labor in the mines, "the island of death." Knowing he would not return, Pontian did something no predecessor had done: on 28 September he laid down his office so that Rome could elect a successor. It is the first papal resignation on record, and the church accepted it without comment.

He died on the island within months, worn out by the mines, and his rival, the church came to believe, died reconciled beside him.