Saint Pontian

The system followed under the reign of Alexander Severus, with regard to the sovereign Pontiffs, did not take long to be applied to Pontian. This holy Pope had to suffer persecution for the freedom of his ministry; he was not, however, put to death, but an order issued from the imperial court e xiled him with the holy p riest Hippolytus, distinct from the bishop of Porto, to the island of Buccina, one of the wildest on the southern coast of Sardinia.

Alexander Severus had undertaken an expedition against the Germans. The legions, dissatisfied with the severity with which he worked to restore military discipline, and stirred up by Maximin the Thracian, assassinated him near Mainz in the twenty-eighth year of his life (235). Maximin hastened to reap the fruits of the crime. The new emperor, a former shepherd in the mountains of Thrace, was a giant, eight and a half feet tall, coarse and unlettered, barely speaking the Latin language, making a game of men's lives, of a savage and ferocious character. His first concern was to publish edicts of death against the Christians. This was the sixth general persecution that broke out against the Church. Maximin's decrees were specifically directed against those who taught in the churches and who governed them. The material impossibility of extending the proscription to the entire multitude of the faithful without depopulating the empire, no less than the hope of succeeding in extinguishing the religion in the blood of its leaders and pastors, had dictated this reserve. The order was immediately dispatched to put to death, on the very island where Alexander had exiled him, the holy Pope Pontian (November 235 ). His body was later transported to Rome and depos ited , under the pontificate of Saint Fa bian, in the cemetery of Callixtus.

Abbé Darras, General History of the Church.