Pope Callistus

Callistus I (also spelled Callixtus) was bishop of Rome in the early third century, occupying the see from about 217 until his death in 222. Almost all that is known of his life before the papacy comes from a bitterly hostile contemporary, Hippolytus of Rome, whose Refutation of All Heresies portrays Callistus as a former slave of Carpophorus, a Christian in the imperial household at Rome. According to that account, Callistus was entrusted with a bank that received deposits from fellow Christians, lost the funds, fled the city, was recaptured after an attempted drowning, and was condemned first to the treadmill and then to the mines of Sardinia. He obtained release when Marcia, a Christian and concubine of the emperor Commodus, secured a pardon for a group of Christian confessors; Hippolytus claims Callistus's name was not on the original list and that he was included through intrigue. After his return, Pope Victor I is said to have assigned him to Antium with a pension. These details cannot be independently verified and are colored by Hippolytus's later rivalry, but they remain the only narrative of Callistus's origins that survives from antiquity. The later Liber Pontificalis simply describes him as a Roman, the son of Domitius.

Under Pope Zephyrinus, Callistus served as deacon and was given administration of the Christian cemetery on the Appian Way. That burial ground, thereafter known as the Catacomb of Callixtus, became the principal resting place of third-century bishops of Rome and of many martyrs, and its organization is one of the most tangible marks of his career. On the death of Zephyrinus, Callistus was chosen bishop of Rome. Hippolytus, a learned presbyter and rival, refused to accept the election and headed a rigorist congregation, becoming in later reckoning the first antipope. He accused Callistus of doctrinal error—charging him with a form of modalism or Patripassianism in the theology of the Godhead—and of disciplinary laxity. Callistus, Hippolytus alleged, received back into communion those who had committed grave sins of the flesh after they had done penance, recognized unions between free women and slaves as marriages, and admitted men who had been married more than once to the clergy. No writings of Callistus himself survive. Later Catholic tradition regards him as orthodox and as a pastor who tempered the severe penitential practice of the second century, while treating Hippolytus as a schismatic whose own Christology was not free of difficulty. The two men represent a real conflict in the Roman church over penance, the status of sinners, and the language used of Father and Son.

Callistus's pontificate fell during a relatively quiet period for the Roman community, under the emperors Macrinus and Elagabalus and the early years of Alexander Severus, when there was no general imperial persecution. The Liber Pontificalis ascribes to him various disciplinary measures and the foundation of a church in Trastevere, the neighborhood with which later legend most closely associates him; the present basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere stands in that tradition. He died in 222. Ancient liturgical sources, including the Depositio Martyrum in the Chronograph of 354, list him among the martyrs, and later hagiography recounts that he was killed in a popular riot in Trastevere, thrown into a well or beaten to death. Modern historians note that 222 was not a year of official persecution and that the martyrdom, while firmly established in cult, is not described by any contemporary narrative.

He was buried not in the catacomb that bears his name but in the cemetery of Calepodius on the Via Aurelia. His feast is observed on 14 October. In subsequent centuries relics attributed to him were translated to Santa Maria in Trastevere. He is venerated as a saint and martyr in the Catholic Church and is invoked as a patron of cemetery workers, a patronage that reflects his historical role in organizing the Christian burial grounds of Rome.