Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/222

 CALLISTUS

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CALLISTUS

the " Philosophumena " (c. ix) Callistus was the slave of Carpophorus, a Christian of the household of Caesar. His master entrusted large sums of money to Callistus, with which he started a bank in which brethren and widows lodged money, all of which Callistus lost. He took to flight. Carpophorus fol- lowed him to Portus, where Callistus had embarked on a ship. Seeing his master approach in a boat, the slave jumped into the sea, but was prevented from drowning himself, dragged ashore, and consigned to the punishment reserved for slaves, the pistrinum, or hand-mill. The brethren, believing that he still had money in his name, begged that he might be released. But he had nothing, so he again courted death by insulting the Jews at their synagogue. The Jews haled him before the prefect Fuscianus. Car- pophorus de- clared that Cal- listus was not to be looked upon as a Christian, but he was thought to be trying to save his slave, and Callistus was sent to the mines in Sardinia. Some time after this, Marcia, the mis- tress of C o m - modus, sent for Pope "Victor and asked if there were any martyrs in Sardinia. He gave her the list, without including Callistus. Marcia sent a eunuch who was a priest (or "old man") to release the prisoners. Callistus tell at his feet, and persuaded him to take him also. Victor was annoyed; but being a compas- sionate man, he kept silence. However, he sent Cal- listus to Antium with a monthly allowance. When Zephyrinus became pope, Callistus was recalled and set over the cemetery belonging to the Church, not a private catacomb; it has ever since borne Callistus's name. He obtained great influence over the ignor- ant, illiterate, and grasping Zephyrinus by bribes. We are not told how it came about that the run- away slave (now free by Roman law from his master. who had lost his rights when ( lallistus was condemned to penal servitude to the State) became archdeacon and then pope.

Dollinger and De Rossi have demolished this con- temporary scandal. To begin with. Hippolytus does not say that Callistus by his own fault lost the money deposited with him. He evidently jumped from the vessel rather to escape than to commit suicide. That Carpophorus, a Christian, should commit a Christian slave to t lie horrible punishment of the pistrinum does not speak well for the master's character. The inter- cession of the Christians for Callistus is in his favour. It is absurd to suppose that he courted death by attacking a synagogue; it is clear that he asked the Jewish money-lenders to repay what they owed him. and at some risk to himself. The declaration of Carpophorus that Callistus was no Christian was scandalous and untrue. Hippolytus himself shows that it u.i as .1 Christian that Callistus was sent to the mines, and therefore as a confessor, and that it was as a Christian that he was released. If Pope Victor granted Callistus a monthly pension, we need not suppose that he regretted his release. It is unlikely that Zephyrinus was ignorant and base.

Callistus could hardly have raised himself so high without considerable talents, and the vindictive spirit exhibited by Hippolytus and his defective theology explain why Zephyrinus placed his confi- dence rather in Callistus than in the learned disciple of Irena=us.

The orthodoxy of Callistus is challenged by both Hippolytus and Tertullian on the ground that in a famous edict he granted Communion after due penance to those who had committed adultery and fornication. It is clear that Callistus based his decree on the power of binding and loosing granted to Peter, to his successors, and to all in communion with them: "As to thy decision", cries the Montanist Tertullian. "I ask, whence dost thou usurp this right of the Church? If it is because the Lord said to Peter: 'Upon this rock I will build My Church, I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven', or ' whatsoever thou bindest or loosest on earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven', that thou presumest that this power of binding and loosing has been handed down to thee also, that is to every Church in com- munion with Peter's (ad omncni ecclesiam Petri propinquam, i. e. Petri eccles-ice propinqvam), who art thou that ilestroyest and alterest the manifest inten- tion of the Lord, who conferred this on Peter person- ally and alone?" (De Pudicitia, xxi.) The edict was an order to the whole Church (ib., i): "Ihear that an edict has been published, and a peremptory one; the bishop of bishops, which means the Pontifex Maxi- mus, proclaims: I remit the crimes of adultery and fornication to those who have done penance." Doubtless Hippolytus and Tertullian were upholding a supposed custom of earlier times, and the pope in decreeing a relaxation was regarded as enacting a new law. On this point it is unnecessary to justify Callistus. Other complaints of Hippolytus are that Callistus did not put converts from heresy to public penance for sins committed outside the Church (this mildness was customary in St. Augustine's time); that he had received into his "school" (i. e. the Catholic Church) those whom Hippolytus had excommunicated from "The Church" (i. e., his own sect); that he declared tha' a mortal sin was not ("always", we may supply) a sufficient reason for deposing a bishop. Tertullian (De Exhort, casti- tatis, vii I speaks with reprobation of bishops who had been married more than once, and Hippolytus charges Callistus with being the first to allow this, against St. Paul's rule. But in the East marriages before baptism were not counted, and in any case the law is one from which the pope can dispense if necessity arise. Again Callistus allowed the lower clergy to marry, and permitted noble ladies to marry low persons and slaves, which by the Roman law was forbidden; he had thus given occasion for infanticide. Here again Callistus was rightly insist- ing on the distinction between the ecclesiastical law of marriage and the civil law, which later ages have always taught. Hippolytus also declared that rebaptizing (of heretics) was performed first in Cal- listus's day, but he does not state that Callistus "as answerable for this. On the whole, then, it is clear that the Catholic Church sides with Callistus against tin' schismatic Hippolytus and the heretic Tertullian. Not a word is said against the character of Callistus since his promotion, nor against the validity of his election.

Hippolytus, however, regards Callistus as a heretic.

Nov Hippolytus's own Chnstology is most imperfect,


 * ii,. 1 lie tells us that Callistus accused hituof 1 lit liei-m.

It is not to be wondered at, then, if he calls Callistus the inventor ot a kind of modified Sabellianism. In realitv it is certain that Zephyrinus and Callistus condemned various Monarcmans and Sabellius hini- i well as the opposite error of Hippolytus. This is enough to suggest that Callistus held the Catholic