Pope Eleuterus
Eleuterus or
Eleutherius,
pope (about
175 -
189). Allusions to him are found in the letters of the martyrs of
Lyons, cited by
Eusebius, and in other documents of the time. The
Liber Pontificalis, at the beginning of the
6th century, says that he exchanged letters with a British king, Lucius, who was desirous of being converted to
Christianity.
Bede copied this story into his
Ecclesiastical History, from which book it became widely known. This tradition - Roman, not British - is an enigma to critics, and, apparently, has no historical foundation.
from a 1911 encyclopedia