ZEphyrinus, POPE, St. — Successor of Victor and predecessor of Callistus, consecrated in 199, d. in 217. In the *Philosophumena* it is read that he appointed the deacon Callistus to administer the cemetery (IX, 11).
In the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* he is listed on 20 Dec.: “Rome, burial of Z. and of the bishop Ephraem”; the Munich codex even gives “Rome, burial of St. Zephyrinus, bishop, on the via Appia in the cemetery.” In the *Liber Pontificalis* it is read that he was buried in his own cemetery next to the cemetery of Callistus on the via Appia, on the VIII Kalends of September (I, pp. 62, 139 sg.); this date of 25 Aug. is rejected by Duch. who prefers the other date of 20 Dec. from the *Hieronymianum* (ibid., p. CLVIII). His tomb is indicated above ground by the *Notitia ecclesiarum* (R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, *Codice topografico della città di Roma*, II, Rome 1942, p. 88); the *Epitome de locis* places him in burial together with the martyr Tarsicius, “in one tumult” (ibid., p. 110). G. B. D. Rossi, L. Duchesne, and O. Marucchi held that Z. was buried in the triconch cell where today stands the bust of G. B. De Rossi. De Rossi, however, believes that he was first buried underground and then transferred above ground, at least by the time of Sixtus III, because his name does not appear in the commemorative inscription placed by that pope in the 3rd-century popes’ crypt. Duchesne thinks that he was immediately buried above ground in the cemetery of Callistus and precisely in the triconch cell mentioned. G. Wilpert instead preferred to recognize his tomb in a triconch cell situated to the east of the first. P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri thinks that the triconch cell proposed by Wilpert corresponds better to the “iuxta c. M. Callisti” of the *Liber Pontificalis*, but observes that in it the tomb discovered in the month of May 1920 does not seem contemporary with the construction of the building, whereas the place of honor should not have been in the center but in the apses; moreover, one cannot exclude that besides the two surviving cells there may have been others, and therefore he concluded that the elements are lacking to determine the tomb of Z. In the Vatican Grottos, in a catalogue of relics of the 9th century it is read: “Zephyrinus, Pope, and Tarsicius,” but relics of Z. and of Tarsicius are also listed in S. Silvestro in Capite.