Saint Callistus I

Saint Callistus I was a pope and martyr of the early third century. Before he became bishop of Rome he had been a slave and then a deacon entrusted with the care of the cemetery on the Appian Way, known today as the Catacombs of Saint Callistus. The Church commemorates him on October 14.

Almost everything we know about his early years comes from a writing of Hippolytus, a Roman presbyter and his bitter opponent, so these reports must be read with caution. According to Hippolytus, Callistus was the slave of Carpophorus, a Christian of the imperial household, and ran a bank for him in which the faithful, too, deposited their savings. When the bank failed, he tried to escape by ship but was caught and punished with labor at the mill. The year of his birth is unknown.

As Hippolytus goes on to say, after an incident in a synagogue Callistus was brought before the prefect of the city and sent to the mines of Sardinia, where Christians condemned for their faith were also laboring. He regained his freedom together with them through the intervention of Marcia, who was close to Emperor Commodus. Pope Victor I then sent him to Antium. The Roman Martyrology, too, mentions his long exile in Sardinia.

Victor’s successor, Pope Zephyrinus, called Callistus back to Rome, made him a deacon and a close collaborator, and entrusted him with the administration of the Roman Church’s cemetery on the Appian Way. It was the first cemetery that belonged to the whole community and not to a single family. Many martyrs and popes of the third century were laid to rest there.

After the death of Zephyrinus, in 217 or 218, Callistus became bishop of Rome. Hippolytus did not accept the election, placed himself at the head of a separate community, and accused the pope of errors in his teaching about God and of excessive leniency. Callistus condemned the teaching of Sabellius, who blurred the distinction between the Father and the Son. He allowed sinners to return to the Church once they had done penance, and he also recognized marriages between free women and slaves, which Roman law did not permit. The Martyrology says of him that he promoted true doctrine and kindly reconciled the fallen. Hippolytus himself, it is held, was later reconciled with the Church and is venerated as a martyr.

Callistus was killed in 222. The circumstances of his death are not certain, since under Emperor Alexander Severus Christians were generally not persecuted. A later account of his martyrdom, unreliable in its details, relates that he was thrown into a well in Trastevere. The oldest Roman calendar of martyrs, from the fourth century, records under October 14 the laying of his body in the cemetery of Calepodius on the Aurelian Way.

He has been venerated as a martyr since antiquity. In the early Middle Ages his relics were moved to the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, and nearby stands a church dedicated to him, built according to tradition on the site of his martyrdom. On October 14 the liturgy recalls his service to the Church and his care for the faithful departed.