Reigned c. 106-115 Alexander I, Saint, POPE.—St. Irenaeus of
Lyons, writing in the latter quarter of the second century,
reckons him as the fifth pope in succession from the Apostles,
though he says nothing of his martyrdom. His pontificate is
variously dated by critics, e.g. 106-115 (Duchesne) or 109-116
(Lightfoot). In Christian antiquity he was credited with a
pontificate of about ten years (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., IV, i,)
and there is no reason to doubt that he was on the "catalogue of
bishops" drawn up at Rome by Hegesippus (Eusebius, IV, xxii, 3)
before the death of Pope Eleutherius (c. 189). According to a
tradition extant in the Roman Church at the end of the fifth
century, and recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, he suffered a
martyr's death by decapitation on the Via Nomentana in Rome, May
3. The same tradition declares him to have been a Roman by
birth, and to have ruled the Church in the reign of Trajan
(98-117). It likewise attributes to him, but scarcely with
accuracy, the insertion in the canon o