Callisto I

Callixtus I (Rome, c. 155-c. 222), secular name Callistus, was the 16th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 217 to 222 He ruled the Church during the reigns of the Roman emperors Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus.He was at odds with the later antipope Hippolytus of Rome, who was also his biographer and responsible for some dubious details in his life.

He persecuted early heresies against Christian dogma, such as Sabellianism and Montanism.

He died as a martyr and is considered a saint by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. His liturgical memory is celebrated on October 14.

Biography

Origins

Calixto, born as a slave into a pagan family of Greek origin residing in Rome, in the Trasteveres neighborhood (according to one of his rivals and biographers, Hippolytus of Rome) in approximately 155, and in whose language native his name means "the most beautiful" (kallistos), did not embrace Christianity until adulthood. Apparently his father, called Domitius or Carpophorus, was a Christian in disguise.

Imprisonments

As administrator of the assets of a high official of the Emperor Commodus, a Christian also named Carpophorus (that is, his son Carpophorus-Calixtus) was implicated in an embezzlement that earned him the death sentence in a mill. However Callixtus fled, but was captured at Portus, on the outskirts of Rome, when he tried to throw himself overboard in the port. It seems that these funds were used to help Christian widows and orphans.

Calixto's creditors allowed his release so that the young man could find a way to recover the lost money and thus satisfy his debts, something that never happened. Apparently he was imprisoned again for generating public ridicule in a synagogue, when he tried to apply for a loan by force.

He was sent to the sulfur mines of Sardinia, to perform forced labor, when he was denounced as a Christian. He remained there for three years until, around 190, he managed to be released thanks to the intercession of Marcia, a concubine of the Emperor Commodus, and Hyacinthus, a eunuch emissary of Marcia.

Ecclesiastical career

After his release, Pope Victor I assigned him to Antium granting him a pension, since his health weakened while in Sardinia. He lived there until his transfer to Rome claimed by Pope Ceferino, who, making him his personal secretary, gave him appointed a deacon and administrator of the Christian cemetery on the Appian Way, probably becoming the first territory of the church of Rome.

Papacy

On the death of Ceferino, Callisto is chosen as his successor in 217, despite being a freedman, when he was 62 years old. It was not until the 5th century that Pope Leo the Great ruled that a freedman could not access the papacy.

Controversies with Hippolytus

Virtually everything that is known about his pontificate comes from the writings of Hippolytus of Rome who, in his work Philosophumena, accuses him of being heretical, ambitious and corrupt. completely biased, since Hippolytus's opinion lacks objectivity since he opposed the election of Callisto from the outset and, supported by his followers, even got himself appointed Pontiff, which makes him the first antipope in the history of church.

Hipólito accused Calixto of being a monarchian and of admitting that men with up to three simultaneous marriages were ordained. Hipólito's denial of the validity of marriages between free people and slaves was also a source of confrontation, and the fact that Calixto allowed fornicators to return to the Church, as long as they expressed their repentance and fulfilled the penance imposed on them., by means of a decree that he issued in 217.

Hippolytus also claimed that the pope was a propagator of the modalism heresy. In short, the confrontation between these two men involved the struggle between Hipólito's strictness and Calixto's pastoral vision.

Calixto also had to confront Tertullian, the theologian who embraced and spread Montano's doctrines throughout North Africa.

He was assassinated in Rome in 222, aged 67, probably in a popular uprising. He was buried in the Catacombs of Calepodio on the Via Aurelia. In 790, Pope Hadrian I had his relics transferred to the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Pope Gregory IV found his body and that of Saint Calepodius under the entrance to the basilica and placed them under the main altar.

Legacy

Calixtus is the first pope, after Saint Peter, to appear as a martyr in the oldest known Roman Martyrology. His tomb on the Via Aurelia, discovered in 1960 and apparently built under the pontificate of Julius I, contains references to his martyrdom, which consisted of being caned to death, then his corpse being thrown into a well where today stands the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, a church founded by Callisto himself. Apparently a priest named Asterio recovered his corpse from the waters of the Tiber and gave him a Christian burial. This source (the Liber pontificalis) however is unreliable.

Some time later the cemetery that Callisto administered during his lifetime became the last resting place of the following pontiffs and became known as the Catacombs of San Callisto, despite the fact that Callisto himself was not buried there.

He was considered a saint and his feast day is currently celebrated on October 14. He is the patron saint of grave diggers.