FINDING OUT MORE
CALLIXTUS AND HIS COMMUNITY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD CENTURY
Enrico dal Covolo
Introduction
The catacombs have been defined as "The great archives" of the Church. They represent the most obvious and visible witness to the faith of the early Christians and the temple of the first martyrs who signed their fidelity to their Master in their own blood.
Recently, in receiving the members of the Archaeological Commission and Directors of he Catacombs, Pope John Paul II declared:
"These monuments are invested with great historical and spiritual significance. In visiting them, we come in contact with the evocative elements of Christianity from the earliest times. We can, so to speak, touch with our hands the faith which animated the ancient Christian community. . . How then could we not be moved by the simple but so eloquent reminders of these first witnesses to the faith?"
Now we must look forward to the historic moment of the Great Jubilee, during which the catacombs of Rome will assume afresh their privileged place of prayer and pilgrimage. . . Together with the great Roman basilicas, the catacombs will be essential gathering places for the pilgrims in the Holy Year."
Thus, on a most opportune occasion, the Holy Father brought together the references which he made to the Catacombs in his Apostolic Letter, Tertio millenio adveniente: "The Church of the first millenium was born of the blood of the martyrs: 'Sanguis martyrum - semen christianorum'. The historical events linked to the figure of Constantine the Great could never have occurred during the first millenium if it had not been for the seeds sown by the martyrs and the heritage of sanctity which marked the first Christian generations. " (TMA, 37)
In this article, we intend to bring back to mind the circumstances and main characters of the christian community of Rome at the beginning of the Third Century. A privileged place is held by the bishop Callixtus (217-222) who gave his own name to the famous Catacomb on the Via Appia.
The Story of Callixtus
According to the Liber Pontificalis (the section which interests us was compiled in the VIth century), Callixtus was natione Romanus, ex patre Domitio, de regione Urberavennantium: i.e. he was born in Trastevere, the harbour area of Rome where the sailors of the Ravenna fleet were quartered.
The "first act" in his story comes from a source which is anything but impartial. It is in a series of the books attributed to Origen, Refutation of all Heresies, first published by E. Miller at Oxford in 1851. Very soon it was attributed to a certain Hippolytus, of whom we shall say more later.
In the ninth book of this work, concerning the reign of the emperor Commodus (180-192), Callixtus is found at Rome as a slave of Carpophorus, who is his turn was a freedman of the imperial household. Callixtus was charged on two accounts. One was for the failure of the bank belonging to Carpophorus and the other for having disrupted a Jewish religious service. Condemned ad metalla in Sardinia, he was set free through the good offices of Marcia, concubine of the emperor.
In the "second act" of the story, he is reported again at Rome. Zephyrinus, successor to pope Victor (189-199) put Callixtus in charge of the catacomb complex on the Via Appia. This was a prestigious appointment and one where he was the intermediary between the christian community of Rome - which legally possessed and administered the estates by right of association- and the civil authorities. On the death of Zephyrinus in 217, Callixtus was elected bishop. He tried to initiate a dialogue between two opposing theological positions in the christian community of Rome. On the one side were the supporters of the Logos who backed Callixtus and on the other the advocates of the monarchia, i.e. the rigid unity of God. The danger of the first was in di-theism ( i.e. believing in two gods, Father and Son), while that of the second was in "modalism" (the Father and the Son were only two "ways of showing the one God'). Among the supporters of the Logos, the author of the Refutation, placed himself, while he accused the pontiff of making common cause with the second group. "After the death of Zephyrinus," asserts our source, "having achieved what he had longed for (that is the office of bishop), Callixtus excommunicated Sabellius" the standard-bearer of monarchianism" thinking thus to distance himself from the Church's accusation of heterodoxy. In fact he was a swindler without scruple and for a while gained everyone to his side. His heart was full of venality and his mind empty of ideas. He was finally too ashamed to say anything, since he had publicly labelled some as being ditheists and on the other hand was continually accused by Sabellius of having betrayed the original faith."
This opinion, gravely compromised by the feelings of the author, is however useful in trying to reconstruct the extreme difficulties in which bishop Callixtus found himself. It did not concern abstract ideas but a grave responsibility of his office. In fact his conduct showed more the pastor than the theologian.
As long as it seemed possible, the pontiff sought a middle way, which would allow theological pluralism and preserve the unity of the Church. However, when this compromise endangered orthodoxy, he excommunicated both extremes (first Sabellius, and then the author of the Refutatio himself) thus he strengthened the communion of the body of Church.
Thus Callixtus - very different from how he appeared in the ninth book of the Refutation - showed himself a prudent and caring pastor, able to govern with energy the community confided to him.
The "final act" in the story of Callixtus reveals the shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Here we abandon the Refutation of all Heresies and take into consideration the Acta Martyrii of the pontiff.
Among the many legendary lives of the saints which are later developments, these Acts are probably unique. Among the large number of tales from the reign of Alexander Severus (222 -235) this one contains an acceptable historical "nucleus" and a genuine link to the emperors in question (Alexander himself and his predecessor Antoninus Elagabalus). According to the sources it appears that in 222 - during the same historically-recorded unrest which accompanied the tragic death of Elagabalus and his mother Soemia - the pontiff was thrown from the house where he lived in Trastevere into a well and there stoned ( . . . per fenestram domus praecipitari, ligatoque ad collum eius saxo, in puteum demergi, et in eo rudera cumulari ).
The account in the Acts is substantially confirmed by the results of excavations and research carried out by A. Nestori (1968) in the Catacombs of Calepodius on the Via Aurelia.
In fact, as is well-known, Callixtus was not buried in "his own" catacomb, evidently because the christians of Trastevere found it more convenient to bury the remains (together with those of the priests Calepodius and Asclepiades, killed with him) on the Via Aurelia rather than on the Via Appia.
Now, the rediscovery of the original tomb of Callixtus - transformed in the IVth century into a cemetery basilica - supports the curt statement of the Depositio Martyrum (14th October), according to which Callixtus was buried at the Third Milestone of the Via Aurelia.
The excavations of Nestori, in fact, have brought back for researchers the picture of cemetery basilicas which rose much later in the VIIth -VIIIth centuries and which in their turn confirm the rough outlines of the martyrdom related in the Acts (the incidents of the stoning in the well and of the burial of the martyr).
But the story of Callixtus does not finish with his death. Trastevere, the port region, was famous for the large number of its cellae vinariae [inns] and for its popinae [eating houses]. It seems that the Christians were in dispute with the innkeepers to obtain the legal right to use, as a place of worship, the very site which was sanctified by his martyrdom. For his part, the emperor Alexander Severus, successor to Elagabalus in 222, took a personal interest in the dispute which was resolved in favour of the Christians. "He declared (rescripsit) very opportunely", says the text of the Storia Augusta, "that these places might well be dedicated to some form of divine worship, even if they had originally been popinarii ".
To grasp what was at stake, we need to understand the terminology. We know that in Trastevere was the house where the pontiff was born. In all probability Callixtus transformed this into a domus ecclesiae and designated it for the celebration of the liturgy. From this house, as we have already said, he was thrown down to the area below and martyred. In memory of their bishop, the christians wanted to remove this place from the profanation of the popinarii, to the extent of taking their case to the emperor himself (as for the rest, the tolerance and even sympathy of Alexander Severus for christians was well known).
Thus Matthiae, in his celebrated volume, Le chiese di Roma dal IV al X secolo, goes so far as to say that among the first christian places of worship, "the most ancient of those whose historical origins are absolutely certain and of which we know the exact location, is the titulus Callisti. . . Next to the present S. Maria in Trastevere, the small church of S. Callisto could mark the exact site where the ancient titulus stood."
Much later, in the IXth century, the bodies of martyrs Callixtus and Calepodius were translated to church of S. Maria in Trastevere. Since then Callixtus has rested beside his own house.
2. The question of Hippolytus
According to the accepted historical-critical studies of a century and more, Hippolytus - a high-ranking member of the christian community of Rome who adopted the theology of the Logos and promoted strict moral discipline - came into conflict with bishop Zephyrinus and even more so with his successor Callixtus.
It was not just the different teachings attested to in the Refutation of all Heresies. He was motivated more by personal and ill-concealed envy because Callixtus had been preferred to him as bishop. His opposition became a complete break. Hippolytus had himself ordained bishop and founded his own church, causing a schism among the clergy and laity of Rome. Thus Hippolytus became the first "antipope" in history. The schism continued into the pontificate of Pontian (230-235) with whom perhaps - as we shall see- he was able to bring back his group into the unity of the Church.
Both Pontian and Hippolytus were caught up in the persecution which- to quote Eusebius - Maximinus the Thracian unleashed on the christians "out of hatred for house of Alexander Severus the majority of whom were christians". Thus, on the death of Alexander in 235, Pontian and Hippolytus were exiled to Sardinia and condemned ad metalla.
Then Pontian, the first in history, decided to abdicated from the bishopric of Rome. He did this above all so that his enforced absence would not cause difficulties for the Church, but also to make it easier for Hippolytus to return to the fold. Thus Pontian had the joy of welcoming the reconciled Hippolytus and both of them receive the palm of martyrdom.
Finally, in the list of the Depositio of the Bishops of Rome which preceded the Liber Pontificalis, it is written that Hippolytus was buried in Tiburtina, while bishop Pontian was laid to rest in the Catacombs of Callixtus.
Such an account is in reality a clever harmonisation of the sources. They are the final result from a confusion of personages, probably more than one of the same name, which needs to be cleared up as soon as possible. Even the first historians of the Church, Eusebius and Jerome, fell victim to this in the IVth century. Eusebius in particular speaks of Hippolytus as being a "head of a church", and refers to a certain number of his literary works, among which was an Easter Calendar. Jerome explains that Hippolytus was a bishop, but does not tell us where his see was.
This confusion was aggravated by a pair of happenings, which occurred on similar dates: 1551 and 1851.
In 1551 there was brought to light a badly mutilated statue of a person on a throne. On each side of the throne and right upper back were cut inscriptions. We can read a list of writings, including an Easter Calendar, which was immediately identified as that attributed by Eusebius to Hippolytus. Thus, restoring the statue between 1564 and 1565, Pirro Ligorio assigned it the name of "Hippolytus, bishop of Porto, who lived during the reign of the Emperor Alexander" From this was attributed to Hippolytus the list of writings inscribed on the throne including the Easter Calendar.
In 1851, however, E. Millar published for the first time, under the name of Origen, the Refutation of all Heresies. The first book had been known since 1701; the second and third are still lost even today. Books four to ten have been rediscovered in a greek codex on Mount Athos and are now to be found in Paris. Very soon all ten books came to be attributed to the same Hippolytus shown in the statue discovered three centuries before.
This brilliant reconstruction, sealed with the authority of A. von Harnack and generally accepted by the those easily pleased, thus finally identified Hippolytus as a very prolific author - on a par with Origen for his breadth of interests if not for his depths of thought - exegete and homilist, writer against heresy, chronographer and polemicist.
However, there is still the problem of attributing to the same author works which are culturally, theologically and linguistically different, and this is an obvious wedge with which to split the whole structure.
The first attack on the "accepted opinion" was made in 1947 by P. Nautin, and two others followed in 1976 and 1988 by a group of Italian scholars, among whom V. Loi died prematurely, M. Simonetti and - in regard to the celebrated statue itself - M. Guarducci.
The present state of the "question of Hippolytus", whatever hypothesis you wish to adopt, is a long way from a satisfactory solution in all its aspects. In each case, the proposition of Loi and Simonetti to divide the works of Hippolytus between two writers of the same name seems better than any other in light of the data at our disposal.
According to this hypothesis - which appears very likely - we have to distinguish between two men called Hippolytus. There was an Asiatic Hippolytus to whom we owe most of the exegetical works and a roman Hippolytus, who is the same as the martyr and of whom the list in the Depositio speaks. Concerning There is no reason to doubt the historical existence, the martyrdom and burial of this Hippolytus, even if his life story deserves further critical evaluation.
Conclusions
The historical evidence from the catacombs of Callixtus has served to remind us of a lively and interesting "split" in the christian community in Rome at the beginning of the Third Century.
We can learn at least two different lessons which could prove useful to cultural and pastoral leaders bringing pilgrims to the catacombs.
Above all there is the general point on method. The early centuries of the Church, and in particular the tombs in the Catacombs are sometimes presented in a "pre-critical" manner. We allow too much scope for edifying stories, which do not stand up to critical analysis. These superficial emotions are thrown into crisis when confronted by science and risk becoming "stumbling blocks" instead of opportunities for the faith to grow.
From this point of view, it is opportune to look closely at the help available to the pilgrims.
In truth, a praiseworthy start has been made: there is the timely volume by A. Baruffa, The Catacombs of San Callisto. History -Archaeology and Faith, Libreria Editrice Vaticana now having reached its third edition and available in several languages.
The second point concerns the content we have given. How can we teach this ? In general, what kind of teacher can bring alive the story of the early church?
The question is very complex and merits a well thought out answer.
To gather the legacy and the teaching of the early Church, in fact, entails the risk of two quite opposite extremes.
On the one hand there is the danger of pretending to trace christian origins in quite idealised formulae, or ways immediately applicable to the Church of today.
The example of the stories of Callixtus and Hippolytus show that the pilgrim Church in this world reveals both the human and the godly. In her field, grows the good seed, but an enemy has sown cockle. In studying the history of the early Church the believer cannot avoid making critical judgments.
It is true that in relation to society of the IInd and IIIrd centuries, the christians found themselves subject to a "new culture" where they had to reconcile what they had inherited from classical times with the Gospel values. The dialogue between faith and culture which the Fathers proposed as a solution (as we see in the cases of Callixtus and, as far as we can discern in Hippolytus) was not unanimously accepted. In each case we look at "we may not be in possession of all the historical facts and yet history itself is the only real source." (R. Cantalamessa).
The other risk is that of the people who will not accept the "charisms of the early times".
We are convinced that the study of the example of the early christian is important and irreplaceable for the Church of today.
In fact the period of the origins - of which Nicaea represents in many ways the sunset - has its own charism. It is the time when the deposit of the apostolic faith is consolidated in the tradition of the Church.
To go back to the example we have already referred to, the meeting of faith and culture in the first three centuries has yielded definite fruit - which we must never forget- on the level of language, of the bringing together of different cultures and their whole histories, of the working out of a common "christian spirit" in the world and the formulation of new ideas for human living.
That is why attention to the "Church of the Catacombs" remains very useful for an understanding and interpretation of our present stage in the Church, at the dawn of the Third Millenium
Enrico dal COVOLO, dean of the Pontificium Institutum Altioris Latinitatis (Faculty of Christian and Classical Languages - Pontifical Salesian University), professor of Ancient Greek Christian Literature, member of the historical-theological Commission of the Great Jubilee; author of "I Severi e il Cristianesimo", "Chiesa-Società e Politica", "Storia della Teologia", "Introduzione allo Studio dei Padri della Chiesa".
E-Mail: Lettere@ups.urbe.it
