Saint Hermas

Hermas (Greek: Ερμάς) was a freedman and Christian born in Aquileia, who lived in Ancient Rome. He was a brother of Pius, Bishop of Rome about the middle of the 2nd century. His father was an Italian called Rufinus, and according to the Liber Pontificalis was also a native of Aquileia. Some later writers identify him as Hermas of Dalmatia, mentioned in Romans 16:14. Hermas the freedman was the character and, by some assessments, the author of the work titled The Shepherd of Hermas, which, in the early Church, was sometimes classed among the canonical Scriptures. There are three sources indicating Hermas was the brother of Pius I: The statement that Hermas wrote during his brother's Pius pontificate may similarly be an inference from the fact that it was in a list of popes, against the name of Pius, that the writer found the information that Hermas was that pope's brother. He may have been an elder brother of the pope. The Shepherd has been viewed as an allegory, similar to Pilgrim's Progress. Apparent autobiographical points "...may be fact, or pure fiction, or fiction founded upon fact." It is not even certain that the writer's name was really Hermas. The hagiographer Alban Butler (1710–1773) wrote in his Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints under May 9,