CATALOGUES OF POPES AND BISHOPS. - Early on, the custom arose in individual churches of keeping an official list of the series of bishops. At stake was the necessity of not making mention of bishops who had defected from the faith and of those who had been excluded as usurpers.
There is evidence as far back as the 3rd century of the custom of reading such catalogues during the sacred liturgy; these were written in special "diptychs" (v.); and in the inscription or erasure from these diptychs consisted the official recognition or the denial of the legitimacy of individual bishops (F. Cabrol, s.v. in DACL, IV, coll. 1045-94).
I. Catalogue of the popes
Beginning in 1947 the catalogue of the popes is found edited critically in the Annuario pontificio. The many catalogues handed down through the centuries, the work of private compilers, present discrepancies in number, in the inclusion or exclusion of names, and in chronology itself. This depends on deficiencies of positive data or of criticism; on the reality of confused situations due to contested elections, schisms, depositions; on the different way of dating the beginning of the pontificate; and all this implies delicate canonical as well as historical problems. The uncertainties in some particulars, however, do not invalidate the uninterrupted succession of the popes from the apostle Peter in the Roman see.
The oldest known catalogues are those compiled by Irenaeus (Adv. haer., III, 3, 3) and by Hegesippus (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., IV, 22) in the controversy with the Gnostics. They are a list of names without chronological indications. Gathered from local tradition (as Hegesippus affirms), they attest the existence and use at Rome around 150 A.D. of a catalogue, probably written and in use in the liturgy. According to E. Caspar it lacked indications on the duration of the pontificates, but was stable in the succession of names, so much so as to offer a chronological element for the dating of ecclesiastical events not otherwise datable (for example, the arrival and activity of heretics at Rome) than by the name of a pope (Irenaeus, Adv. haer., III, 4, 2-3).
In the 3rd century, with the work of the chroniclers Hippolytus and Julius Africanus and their continuators, there are the first attempts to fix the chronology of the popes and to synchronize it with that of the emperors. From Julius Africanus derives the chronology of Eusebius and from Hippolytus that of the so-called Liberian Catalogue, inserted in the Chronographer of 354. Eusebius reports in the Historia ecclesiastica and in the Chronicon two lists that agree in the identity and succession of the names, but differ in the number of years attributed to each; the Liberian Catalogue, besides indicating the duration of the pontificates in years, months and days, and, from 135 onward, also the date of ordination, presents a variant in the names. While Eusebius has: Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus..., the Liberian has Peter, Linus, Clement, Cletus, Anacletus, Evaristus. The splitting of Cletus-Anacletus (Cletus, the Western form of Anacletus) and the postponement after Clement are due to chronological difficulties of the compilers of the Liberian Catalogue, as is also the inversion Anicetus-Pius among the popes of the 2nd century, and the supposed splitting Marcellinus-Marcellus at the time of Diocletian to cover a vacancy of the Roman see lasting some years. These errors passed from the Liberian Catalogue into other catalogues and especially into two collections influential down to the last century: the portraits of the basilica of St. Paul and the Liber Pontificalis.
The portraits of St. Paul in the oldest series are from the 5th-6th century and, with the inclusion of the antipope Lawrence (beginning of the 6th century), reflect the struggles of the time; in the inscriptions, however, they reflect later influences.
The Liber Pontificalis expands the data of the Liberian Catalogue in order to give a biographical notice of the popes. Composed at the beginning of the 6th century, it does not escape, in the compilation of the oldest notices, the controversies aroused by the Laurentian schism, but it is accurate for contemporary notices, and, having met with favour, it was continued.
In the 6th-9th centuries the additions made by clerics of the Curia, some while the popes were still living, with the help of the pontifical archives, are important and, for general chronology, accurate. For a certain time (9th-10th centuries) the Liber Pontificalis is reduced to little more than a list added later, which allowed that confused period to include in it a Donus II (973) who never existed, and in some codices even the popess Joan. With Leo IX (1049) the more extensive biographies resume. Written by different authors, they were gathered together as a continuation of the Liber Pontificalis in the 12th century.
A similar work was carried out in the 14th and 15th centuries, reaching as far as Pius II (1464). There then appeared the Vitae pontificum of Platina, an elaboration of the Liber Pontificalis, without too many critical pretensions. In the following centuries O. Panvinio, C. Baronio and many others occupied themselves with the catalogue of the popes. In 1751 C. Marangoni published a Chronologia romanae pontificum, deducing it from the oldest series of the portraits of St. Paul, which passed into the annuals: Notizie per l'anno... (1818-1860), Annuario (1863-70), the Gerarchia cattolica (1873-1903), Annuario pontificio (1913-46).
In the 19th century historical criticism brought new methods into research and new results. The masterly edition of the Liber Pontificalis by L. Duchesne, richly annotated, offered the basis for a critical catalogue which, generally accepted by scholars, has today, with the clarifications of A. Mercati, passed into the use of the Roman Curia.
II. Catalogue of bishops
Like Rome, the other episcopal cities soon had their catalogue for liturgical purposes in the diptychs, and then historical with chronological indications. Irenaeus considered it easy in his time to establish it, but reports only the Roman one. Eusebius, referring back to Hegesippus and Julius Africanus, reports that of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria. In the 6th-7th centuries and following, the ambition of tracing one's own origins back to an Apostle or to a disciple of the Apostles altered many catalogues with fictitious names (the apostle Andrew bishop of Byzantium, bishops of Italy and of France sent by St. Peter, etc.) repeated with favour in the following centuries; v.: APOSTOLICITY OF THE CHURCHES.
The example of the Roman Liber Pontificalis, imitated by other cities, gave the Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis (9th century), Eichstettensis (11th century) etc., and the Gesta episcoporum much in use in the medieval period. With Humanism there were many local or diocesan histories, favourable through local patriotism to the ancient legends. With the 17th-18th centuries came the great erudite works of the Maurists, Gallia Christiana, and of F. Ughelli, Italia sacra, still useful but insufficient.
The episcopal sees of Italy go back to high antiquity, but the scanty notices of ancient writers, the few reliable data of the martyrologies and of the Passiones, the subscriptions of bishops at synods, the not numerous liturgical diptychs preserved, do not make the compilation of the catalogues easy. Ughelli with the Italia sacra (9 vols., Rome 1644-48) gave it amid many defects and errors, in small part eliminated by N. Coleti in his much enlarged and corrected edition (Venice 1717-1733), and by L. Cappelletti with Le Chiese d'Italia (21 vols., ibid. 1844-70). F. Savio opened new ways with Gli antichi vescovi d'Italia dalle origini al 1300, limited by his death to Piedmont and Lombardy. Restricting the field, F. Lanzoni with Le diocesi d'Italia dalle origini al principio del sec. VII (year 604), carried out Savio's design for all of Italy.
Bibliography15 works
Angelo Martini