14 October 217-222 A.D. Calixtus 1—Rome’s 16th; Oppposed by Hippolytus
14
October 217-222 A.D. Calixtus
1—Rome’s 16th; Oppposed by
Hippolytus
Chapman, John. "Pope Callistus I." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03183d.htm. Accessed 27 May 2014.
Pope
Callistus I
Sources
Chapman, John. "Pope Callistus I." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03183d.htm. Accessed 27 May 2014.
Pope
Callistus I
(Written by
most Latins, Augustine, Optatus, etc. CALLIXTUS or CALIXTUS).
Martyr, died c. 223. His
contemporary, Julius Africanus, gives the date of hisaccession as the first (or second?) year of Elagabalus, i.e., 218 or 219. Eusebius and the Liberian catalogue agree in giving him five
years of episcopate. His Actsare spurious, but he is the
earliest pope found the fourth-century
"Depositio Martirum", and this is good evidence that he was really a martyr, although he lived in a time of
peace under Alexander Severus, whose mother was a Christian. We learn from the "Historiae
Augustae" that a spot on which he had built an oratory was claimed by the
tavern-keepers, popinarii, but the emperor decided
that the worship of any god was
better than a tavern. This is said to have been the origin of Sta. Maria in Trastevere, which was built,
according to the Liberian catalogue, by Pope Julius, juxta Callistum. In fact the Church of St. Callistus is close by,
containing a well into which legend says his body was thrown, and this is
probably the church he built, rather than the more famous basilica. He was buried in the cemetery of Calepodius on the Aurelian Way, and his anniversary is given by
the "Depositio Martirum" (Callisti in viâ Aureliâ miliario III) and by the subsequent martyrologies on 14 October, on which
day his feast is still kept. His relics were translated in the
ninth century to Sta. Maria in Trastevere.
Our chief knowledge of this pope is from his bitter
enemies, Tertullian and the antipope who wrote the
"Philosophumena", no doubt Hippolytus. Their calumnies are probably based on facts. According to the
"Philosophumena" (c. ix) Callistus was the slave of Carpophorus,
a Christian of the household of Caesar. His master entrusted large
sums of money to Callistus, with which he started a bank in which brethren and widows lodged money, all of
which Callistus lost. He took to flight. Carpophorus followed him to Portus, where Callistus had embarked
on a ship. Seeing his master approach in a boat, the slave jumped into the sea, but was prevented
from drowning himself, dragged ashore, and consigned to the punishment reserved
for slaves, the pistrinum, or hand-mill. The brethren, believing that he still had money in his name, begged that
he might be released. But he had nothing, so he again courted death by
insulting the Jews at their synagogue. The Jews haled him before the prefect Fuscianus. Carpophorus declared that Callistus was not to be
looked upon as a Christian, but he was thought to be trying to save his slave, and Callistus was sent to the
mines in Sardinia. Some time after this,Marcia, the mistress of Commodus, sent for Pope
Victor and asked if there were
any martyrs in Sardinia. He gave her the list, without including
Callistus. Marcia sent a eunuch
who was a priest (or "old man") to release the prisoners. Callistus fell at his feet, and persuaded him
to take him also. Victor was annoyed; but being a compassionate man, he kept silence. However, he sent Callistus to Antium with a monthly allowance.
When Zephyrinus became pope, Callistus was recalled and set over the cemetery belonging to the Church, not a private catacomb; it has ever since borne Callistus's name. He
obtained great influence over the ignorant, illiterate, and grasping Zephyrinus by bribes. We are not told how it came
about that the runaway slave (now free by Roman law from his master, who had
lost his rights when Callistus was
condemned to penal servitude to the State) became archdeacon and then pope.
Döllinger and De Rossi have demolished this
contemporary scandal. To begin with, Hippolytus does not say that
Callistus by his own fault lost the money deposited with him. He evidently
jumped from the vessel rather to escape than to commit suicide. That Carpophorus,
a Christian, should commit a Christian slave to the horrible punishment of the pistrinum does not speak well for
the master's character.
The intercession of the Christians for Callistus is in his
favour. It is absurd to suppose that he courted death by attacking a synagogue; it is clear that he asked the Jewish money-lenders to repay what they owed him, and at
some risk to himself. The declaration of Carpophorus that Callistus was no Christian was scandalous and untrue. Hippolytus himself shows that it was
as a Christian that Callistus was sent
to the mines, and therefore as a confessor,
and that it was as a Christian that he was released. If Pope Victor granted Callistus a monthly pension, he need not suppose that he
regretted his release. It is unlikely that Zephyrinus was ignorant and base. Callistus could hardly have raised himself so
high without considerable talents, and the vindictive spirit exhibited by Hippolytus and his defective theology explain why Zephyrinus placed his confidence
rather in Callistus than in the learned disciple of Irenaeus.
The orthodoxy of Callistus is
challenged by both Hippolytus and Tertullian on the ground that in a
famous edict he granted Communion after due penance to those who had committed adultery and fornication. It is
clear that Callistus based his decree on the power of binding
and loosing granted to Peter, to
his successors, and to all in
communion with them: "As to thy decision", cries the Montanist Tertullian, "I ask, whence dost thou usurp this right of the Church? If it is because the Lord said to Peter: Upon this rock I will build My Church, I will give thee the keys of
the kingdom of heaven', or whatsoever though
bindest or loosest on earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven', that thou presumest that this power of binding
and loosing has been handed down to thee also, that is to every Church in communion with Peter's (ad omnem ecclesiam Petri propinquam, i.e. Petri ecclesiaepropinquam), who art thou that
destroyest and alterest the manifest intention of the Lord, who conferred this on Peter personally and alone?" (On Pudicity 21)
The edict was an order to the whole Church (ib., i): "I hear that an edict
has been published, and a peremptory one; the bishop of bishops, which means the Pontifex Maximus, proclaims: I remit
the crimes of adultery and fornication to those
who have done penance."
Doubtless Hippolytus and Tertullian were upholding a supposed custom of earlier times, and the pope in decreeing a relaxation was regarded as enacting
a new law. On this point it is unnecessary
to justify Callistus. Other complaints of Hippolytus are that Callistus did
not put converts from heresy to public penance for sins committed outside the Church (this mildness was
customary in St. Augustine's time); that he had received into his
"school" (i.e. The Catholic Church) those whom Hippolytus had excommunicated from "The
Church" (i.e., his own sect); that he declared that a mortal sin was not
("always", we may supply) a sufficient reason for deposing a bishop. Tertullian (De Exhort.Castitatis,
vii) speaks with reprobation of bishops who had been married more than once, and Hippolytus charges Callistus with
being the first to allow this, against St. Paul's rule. But in the East marriages before baptism were not counted, and in
any case the law is one from which the pope can dispense if necessity arise. Again Callistus allowed the
lower clergy to marry, and permitted noble ladies to marry
low persons and slaves, which by the Roman law was forbidden; he had
thus given occasion for infanticide. Here again Callistus was rightly
insisting on the distinction between the ecclesiastical
law of marriage and the civil law, which later ages have always taught. Hippolytus also declared that
rebaptizing (of heretics) was performed first in Callistus's day, but he
does not state that Callistus was answerable for this. On the whole, then, it
is clear that the Catholic church sides with Callistus against the schismatic Hippolytus and the heretic Tertullian. Not a word is said against the character of Callistus since his promotion, nor
against the validity of his election.
Now Hippolytus's own Christology is most imperfect, and he
tells us that Callistus accused him of Ditheism. It is not to be wondered at,
then, if he calls Callistus the inventor of a kind of modified Sabellianism. In reality it is certain that Zephyrinus and Callistus condemned
various Monarchians and Sabellius himself, as well as the opposite error of Hippolytus. This is enough to suggest that Callistus held
the Catholic Faith. And in fact it cannot be denied that the Church of Rome must have held a Trinitarian doctrine not far from that taught
by Callistus's elder contemporary Tertullian and by his much younger
contemporary Novatian--a doctrine which was not so
explicitly taught in the greater part of the East for a long period afterwards. The
accusations of Hippolytus speak for the sure tradition of the Roman Church and for its perfect orthodoxy and moderation. If we knew more of St. Callistus
from Catholic sources, he would
probably appear as one of the greatest of the popes.
Sources
The
Acts of St. Callistus were uncritically defended in the Acta SS., 14 Oct.; and by
MORETTI, De S. Callisto P. et M. (Rome, 1752). The Philosophumena were first published in
1851. On the story of Callistus BUNSEN, Hippolytus and his Age (London, 1852), and CH.
WORDSWORTH, St. Hippolytus and the
Church of Rome (London, 1853) are
worthless. DOLLINGER'S great work Hippolytus und
Kallistus(Ratisbon,
1853), tr. PLUMMER (Edinburgh, 1876) is still the chief authority. See also DE
ROSSI,Bulletino
di Arch. Crist.,
IV (1886); NORTHCOTE AND BROWNLOW, Roma Sotterranea (London, 1879), I,
497-505. De Rossi observes that the Liber Pontificalis calls Callistus the son
of Domitius, and he foundCallistus Domitiorum stamped on some titles of
the beginning of the second century. Further there is extant an inscription of
a Carpophorus, a freedman of M. Aurelius. The edict of Callistus on penance has
been restored with too much assurance by ROLFFS, Das Indulgenz-Edikt des römischen
Bischofs Kallist(Leipzig,
1893), Harnack thinks that Callistus also issued a decree about fasting, and
that other writings of his may have been known to Pseudo-Isidore, who
attributed two letters to him (which will be found in the Councils, in
HINSCHIUS, etc.); one of these seems to connect itself with the decision
attributed to Callistus by Hippolytus; see
HARNACK, Chronol., II, 207-8. On the
Catacomb of St. Callistus see DE
ROSSI, Roma Sotterranea (Rome, 1864-77);
NORTHCOTE AND BROWNLOW, Roma Sotterranea (London, 1879).
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