Sixtus

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Sixtus is one of the popes of the early centuries named by Saint Peter in the speech of Canto XXVII of the Paradiso, in which the prince of the apostles recalls the pontiffs who with their martyrdom founded the poor Church. Verse 44 places him in a silent line of popes who died for the faith, together with Linus, Anacletus, Pius, Callixtus, and Urban, set against the corruption of the contemporary Church that accumulates gold. The note to Canto XXVII specifies that Sixtus is one of those popes of the early centuries who died martyrs for the faith, placed in the luminous ranks evoked by Peter in the Heaven of Mars. His name appears in the sequence «and Sixtus and Pius and Callixtus and Urban», pronounced in the context of Peter's second speech against papal worldliness.