One of the saints of the Gregorian canon, whose festival is celebrated on the 23rd of September. All that can be said with certainty about him is that his name appears at the head of all the lists of the bishops of Rome. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. iii. 3.3) identifies him with the Linus mentioned by St Paul in 2 Tim. iv. 21. According to the Liber Pontificalis, Linus suffered martyrdom, and was buried in the Vatican. In the 17th century an inscription was found near the confession of St Peter, which was believed to contain the name Linus; but it is not certain that this epitaph has been read correctly or completely. The apocryphal Latin account of the death of the apostles Peter and Paul is falsely attributed to Linus.
See Acta Sanctorum, Septembris, vi. 539-545; C. de Smedt, Dissertationes selectae in primam aetatem hist. eccl. pp. 300-312 (Ghent, 1876); L. Duchesne's edition of the Liber Pontificalis, 121 (Paris, 1886); R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, ii. 85-96 (Brunswick, 1883-1890); J. B. de Rossi, Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, p. 50 (1864). (H. DE.)