Callistus I, Pope, Saint

CALLISTUS I, Pope, Saint. - The Lib. Pont. and the Liberian Catalogue call him a Roman of the Transtiberine region ("de regione Urbe Ravennantium") and assert that he was pontiff from the consulate of Antoninus and Adventus (218) until that of Antoninus (III) and Alexander (222). From the Lib. Pont. (I, p. 141) we also learn that he established the sabbath fast three times a year (the fast of wheat, wine and oil: cf. Zach. 8:19). This is a precedent for the fast of the Ember Days. It is further said that, a martyr, he was buried in his cemetery on the Via Aurelia, later called that of Calepodius. But another source (the Philosophumena, attributed, we do not know whether definitively, to Hippolytus, who would have been the bitterest adversary of C.) tells us much more about the Pope.

He would have been of servile condition and would have given his master considerable trouble with his intemperate hopes and reckless speculations. An incident with the Jews would have caused his fall into the hands of Roman justice, which would have sent him to the penalty of the mines in Sardinia. Having managed to have himself freed together with the group of confessors who were suffering there and who were recalled through the intervention of Marcia, concubine of Commodus, he would have been confined by the severe pope Victor to Anzio. Under the pontificate of the successor, the gentle Zephyrinus, C. returned to Rome and, with the office of deacon, was placed in charge of the official cemetery of the church, situated on the Appian Way, which afterwards took its name from him.

This is the first time that we learn of the existence of this cemetery dependent directly on the administration of the Roman community.

Having become pope after the death of Zephyrinus (217), the adventurous C. would not have behaved rightly according to the assertions of the tendentious and angry biographer. The latter reproaches him for the remission of sins, the readmission of those who had been too weak against the intimidations of the pagan authorities, an alleged complicity with heretics, and more besides. But C. had excellent arguments to defend himself. He compared the Church to the field in which the darnel grows mingled with the wheat (Mt. 13:29-30), or to Noah's ark in which clean and unclean animals took refuge (Gen. 6:19 ff.). Whoever does not grant forgiveness to the sincerely repentant sinner betrays the word of the Lord who came into the world not to condemn, but to redeem and to forgive (cf. Philosophumena, 11). It has been thought that even the Tertullian allusions to an "episcopus episcoporum" and to a "summus pontifex", biting allusions, had C. as their target (v. the De Pudicitia, 21). Indeed, it has even been believed that the idea of the prevailing authority of the Church of Rome in disciplinary matters originated from the polemics of the Callistan age. But these ideas must be rejected. The phrase: "omnem ecclesiam Petri propinquam" (De Pud., 21, 9) alludes generically to a Church that preserves the tradition of the faith taught by Peter. And nothing proves to us that the bishop of the Church of whom Tertullian was thinking was the bishop of Rome. It seems rather that it was the local African bishop, that is, Agrippinus. The relatively late urban hagiographic legends speak of the origins of the "titulus Callisti" of Trastevere, narrating of C. who would have gathered the Christians in his poor house in Trastevere, where the old priest Calepodius would also have been found. The author of the Passio had Calepodius, that is, the eponym of the suburban cemetery, buried by C., and had C. buried by a martyr of Oatia, Asterius, whose "dies natalis" fell a few days after that of C. In any case, it is quite probable that in Trastevere there existed a remembrance of pope C., analogous to the "Memoria Hippolyti" near the vicus Patricius. Beside this monumental remembrance, pope Julius I, in the 4th century, erected a basilica, which was called "titulus Iuli et Callisti". The Depositio martyrum (certainly earlier than 354) records: "pridie idus Octob. (depositio) Callisti in via Aurelia miliario III". He was therefore considered a martyr from very early on. And the fact that he was buried in a cemetery of Trastevere, rather than in the burial ground of the Appian Way that he had cared for, gives reason to suspect that his sacrifice was brought about in Trastevere and that there was not even the possibility of laying his body in the cemetery on the right bank of the Tiber.

For the so-called edict of C., v. PENITENZIALE DISCIPLINA.

Carlo Cecchelli

THE CEMETERY OF CALLISTUS I

It is the cemetery administered by the first deacon of the Roman Church, C., from the time of Zephyrinus, that is, from the close of the 2nd century. As early as 1852 G. B. De Rossi vindicated its location, after the topographical chaos of the preceding centuries in which not only the one beneath St. Sebastian but every subterranean cemetery both on the Appian and on the Ardeatine Way had been called the cemetery of C. Its identification was sealed by that series of monumental discoveries consecrated by De Rossi himself in the three volumes of his Roma sotterranea (1864-77) to illustrate it; Pius IX wished the entire area above it to be acquired by the Holy See. Like all the other great Christian cemeteries of Rome, the cemetery of C. consists of burial areas above ground with their respective hypogea, originally excavated separately, with their own descents, and only later connected together.

In the upper level Pope Zephyrinus (217) had his mausoleum; there too was laid the protomartyr of the Eucharist, Tarsicius; there on 6 August 258 occurred the massacre of Sixtus II and four of his deacons. In the subterranean level various regions are distinguished.

Region of the Popes and of St. Cecilia. — This region is composed of two nuclei, originally separate from each other, each with its own descent; the first consisting of a gallery with niches for sarcophagi, later extended for loculus burials and deepened; the second with its own stairway that led to a cubiculum and to a gallery later deepened, and on which was excavated a series of cubicula called by De Rossi those of the Sacraments, on account of the symbolic representations contained in them, dated between the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century. Beside the stairway, in a deepened gallery, is the cubiculum where the popes were laid: Pontian, Anterus, Fabian, Lucius, Stephen, Sixtus II, Dionysius, Felix, Eutychian and certain bishops, such as Urban, Numidianus, Manitus, Polycarp, Julian, Laodiceus, Optatus. The sepulchral inscriptions in Greek of the martyr popes Pontian and Fabian, of the popes Anterus, Lucius and Eutychian, and of the bishops Numidianus and Optatus of Biskra (Numidia) have been found again.

The plaster at the entrance of the chapel is covered with graffiti of pilgrims with frequent invocations to St. Sixtus; the interior was adorned with columns, with a poem of Damasus, a commemorative inscription of Sixtus III, and had an altar of which traces remain. Adjacent is the tomb of St. Cecilia decorated with paintings of the beginning of the 9th century.

Another nucleus, also of the end of the 2nd century, is the one closest to the Appian Way, with an open-air area and a subterranean one, called by De Rossi the crypt of Lucina, on account of the Lucina mentioned in the biography of Pope Cornelius in the Lib. Pont.; she is said to have buried that pope in an area of her own. But the area is earlier than Pope Cornelius (253), who was buried in a deepened zone that represents the last period of burial. The pope's inscription is the only one in Latin, and De Rossi found a fragment of it in a farmhouse as early as 1849. The tomb is adorned with a poem of Damasus and with paintings of the 6th century representing the popes Cornelius and Sixtus II and the bishops Optatus and Cyprian, who from the 4th century was commemorated in C. In the oldest part of this region there is a double cubiculum with frescoes of the end of the 2nd century representing the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan, Daniel among the lions, the cycle of Jonah, Good Shepherds, Orants, genii, the symbols of the seasons.

A third region is the one called that of Eusebius; it too has its own stairway. It contains the crypt of the martyrs Calocerus and Parthenius, in which nothing remains but a graffito with their names; the tomb of Pope Caius with the sepulchral inscription in Greek indicating his deposition on 22 April (283); the tomb of Pope Eusebius (311) with fragments of the poem composed by Damasus in his honor and a copy of the 6th century; the double cubiculum of the deacon Severus, excavated with the permission of Pope Marcellinus (296-304). The region contains other notable cubicula, such as the one with the representation of a family of 5 persons in beatitude, true portraits of the end of the 3rd century; the cubiculum called that of the little sheep with the scene of the Good Shepherd surrounded by his flock, the multiplication of the loaves, Moses untying his sandals, the miracle of the spring. Further on an arcosolium with the Epiphany, the resurrection of Lazarus and a garden. Another region of the cemetery was called by De Rossi that of Pope Miltiades, but no memory of the pope laid in C. has been found.

Finally, further north, the region called Liberian, on account of an inscription of a deceased woman laid sub Liberio papa (352-366). It too had its own stairway. There De Rossi found a fragment of the sepulchral poem of the deacon Redemptus, while the syllogae have preserved its entire text.

A series of painted arcosolia is from the second half of the 4th century; one of them contains the bust of Christ with a nimbus and twice the orant; a second Adam and Eve, a third a seller of herbs.

One region was called by De Rossi that of the Labyrinth or of the Arenarium of Hippolytus, and there he sought the memorials of that group of martyrs recalled by the itinerary inserted in the Gesta regum Anglorum and identified by De Rossi with the confessores quam Graecia misit of Damasus, whom Marucchi instead wrongly sought outside the Callistian domain. - See Pl. XXVI.

Enrico Josi