From The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII. Written Originally in Latin by B. Platina, Native of Cremona, and translated into English (from an anonymous translation, first printed in 1685 by Sir Paul Rycaut), Edited by William Benham, Volume I, London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh, [1888, undated in text]; pp. 38-41.
The Lives of the Popes,
BY
B. Platina
Volume I.
ST CALISTUS I.
A.D. 219-223.
CALISTUS, an Italian of Ravenna, son of Domitius, lived in the time of Severus, an emperor whose fortune changed with his mind; for no sooner did he raise the fifth persecution against the Christians, but he was presently exposed to a multitude of dangers, and engaged in several wars; on the one side by Piscennius Niger, who was the cause of great commotions in Syria; on the other by Clodius Albinus, whom yet he vanquished with great slaughter in Gaul. But passing over from thence into Britain, being deserted of his friends, and accompanied 39 only with calamities, he died at York in the fifth year of his empire, leaving behind him two sons, Bassianus and Geta; the latter of which was looked upon and put to death as a public enemy, both because of his abominably dissolute life, but especially because he had with his own hand slain Papinian, the great asylum of the civil law. But Bassianus, receiving from the Senate the name of Antoninus, became possessed of the empire and took the surname of Caracalla, from a kind of long vests which he bestowed by way of largess among the people. He was of a nature more cruel than his father, and so impotently vicious, that there was no kind of villainy which he was not guilty of. He is said to have slain his brother Geta, and to have married his own step-mother. He left behind him nothing great and magnificent to perpetuate his memory, save only the Antoninian Baths (which bore his name as being begun by him, but were indeed finished by the emperor Alexander Severus), and the causeway he made in the Via Nova. He made it capital for any to wear amulets about their necks for the cure of quartan or tertian agues. But at length undertaking a war against the Parthians, he was surprised by his enemies between Edessa and Charræ, and stabbed, in the seventh year of his reign, as he was alighting off his horse to ease nature.
But during the confused state of things and under the government of the most dissolute emperors, Calistus was not at all diverted from his purpose of establishing a solemn fast three times in the year, to be observed on the Sabbath or Saturday, particularly to implore a blessing upon the fruits of the earth, corn, wine, and oil, viz., in the fourth month, the seventh, and the tenth, beginning the year according to the custom of the Jews. Though afterwards he changed his opinion, and appointed it at the four seasons of the year, viz., spring, summer, autumn, and winter; at which times in succeeding ages holy orders were conferred, which before was used to be only in the month of December. He also ordained that accusations against clergymen should not be admitted of in any court if the informers were either infamous, or liable to just suspicion, or avowed enemies of the accused. Moreover, he adjudged those to be heretics who maintained that priests, after they were once convicted of any notorious crime, were not to be restored to their former dignity, though they showed never so great signs of their repentance. Damasus 40 tells us that he built St Mary’s church in Trastevere; but I cannot imagine that of his founding to be the magnificent vast one which continues there at this time, since in those days of frequent persecution all things were carried secretly, and the Christians had only small chapels, and those private and hidden, and for the most part underground. He likewise built a burial-place, called by his own name, in the Via Appia, at the very place where the ashes of a multitude of martyrs had been formerly reposited; so that the reader must not think it strange that we have already said of several that they were buried in the Cemetery of Calistus, though it had not that name till now. I myself with some of my friends have religiously been to view it, wherein the ashes and bones of the martyrs are yet to be seen, and oratories and chapels in which the Christians privately communicated, when through the edicts of some emperors they could not do it publicly. In his time lived Tertullian, an African, the son of a Proconsular centurion, whom St Hierom reckoned next to Victor and Apollonius, the principal of the Latin writers. He was a man of excellent parts, and wrote a multitude of books. I have seen (saith Hierom) at Concordia, a little town in Italy, one Paul, who said, that when he was very young he was at Rome acquainted with St Cyprian’s amanuensis, who assured him that St Cyprian never passed a day without the reading of Tertullian. But having continued half his lifetime a presbyter at Rome, through the envy and reproaches of the Roman clergy he afterwards turned Montanist, and wrote several pieces against orthodox doctrine, particularly those “de Pudicitiâ,” “de Monogamiâ,” and “De Jejuniis.” He also composed six books against Apollonius. At the same time likewise Origen flourished, and did great service for the Church. For he opposed the heresy of the Ebionites, who asserted our Saviour to be a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary, and pressed the observation of Mosaical rites; both which errors were maintained by Symmachus. Moreover, by his learning he brought over to the orthodox faith one Ambrosius, who had been (as Eusebius tells us) a Valentinian, or (as Hierom will have it) a Marcionite; to whom, with Protoctetus, a presbyter, he dedicated his book “de Martyrio.” Porphyry, that violent opposer of Christianity, and who was Origen’s professed adversary, cannot yet sometimes forbear commending him, calling him the most learned and prince of 41 philosophers, acknowledging that he was profoundly skilled in Platonism, and finding no fault in him but his being a Christian. St Hierom himself says that he wrote six thousand volumes; though that father and St Austin too tell us that he was erroneous in most of them, and particularly in his book on First Principles entitled περὶ ἀρχῶν; yet Pamphilus the martyr, and Eusebius, and Ruffinus, a priest of Aquileia, appear very much in his praise and defence. As for Calistus, having at five Decembrian ordinations made sixteen presbyters, four deacons, eight bishops, he was crowned with martyrdom, and was buried in the cemetery of Calepodius, in the Via Aurelia, three miles distant from the city, October 14. He was in the chair four years, ten months, ten days. The see was then vacant six days.
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