A tomb marked LINVS may have belonged to someone called Aquilinus
Pope Linus is usually counted as the second bishop of Rome, after Peter, yet the earliest lists name him as the first to receive the office from the apostles. A tomb found in Saint Peter's Basilica in 1615, inscribed LINVS, seemed to be his, but those letters may end a longer name.
Almost everything about Linus is disputed. Around 180, Irenaeus wrote that the apostles handed him the leadership of the Roman church, and identified him with the Linus who sends greetings alongside Paul in the Second Epistle to Timothy. The oldest succession lists, from Irenaeus and Hegesippus and preserved by Eusebius, have Peter and Paul entrusting him with the office, which could make him the first pope; only from the late 2nd or early 3rd century did it become customary to count Peter first.
Dates vary too. Eusebius and Jerome put his tenure at 68 to 80, while the Liberian Catalogue and Liber Pontificalis give 56 to 67, under Nero, probably an error since the same sources credit Peter with 25 years in Rome. Even the order of successors was argued over; Jerome noted that most Latin writers placed Clement directly after Peter.
The Liber Pontificalis supplies colourful details: birth in Volterra in Tuscany to a father named Herculanus, the creation of the first 15 bishops, a rule that women cover their heads in church, and death as a martyr. In the Catholic Encyclopedia, J.P. Kirsch judged the head-covering decree apocryphal, lifted from Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and the martyrdom improbable, since no persecution of Roman Christians is recorded between Nero and Domitian. The Apostolic Constitutions call his mother Claudia, a name that follows his in 2 Timothy, though the Bible never links the two.
He is still commemorated on 23 September and named in the Roman Canon of the Mass. A letter about the martyrdom of Peter and Paul once credited to him actually dates from the 6th century. The Canadian city of Saint-Lin–Laurentides takes its name from him.
Source: Pope Linus
