Brent—How Irenaeus Has Misled the Archaeologists 47The Papal Mausoleum in the Catacomb of Callistus
and Episcopal Power
An interpretation of the model of Irenaeus and Hegesippus as forerunners of the
emergence under Victor of a monarchical episcopate in Rome has been, I believe,
implicitly accepted by archaeologists in dating and interpreting the development
under Callistus of the cemetery that bears his name. Simonetti maintains that Victor
was the founder of the monarchical episcopate in a Roman church that was previously
governed by a single presbytery. Within such a context, Irenaeus can be regarded as
standing at the watershed, using the presbyter as well as bishop as a successor to the
apostles. Succession in such a context must mean the successor of a monarch, like the
successors of Alexander the Great, who were referred to as his διάδοχοι, or indeed,
the sacerdotal successors of the Maccabees as priest-kings. Therefore, it might be
concluded that Irenaeus, if not directly an ideologue of the monarchical episcopate,
nevertheless played ideologically the role of a good fellow traveller in that direction.
I have already explained why I believe that the sacerdotal explanations of Ehrhardt
and Telfer are misplaced in Irenaeus’s case and scholastic ones more pertinent. But
from de Rossi onward, despite Styger’s considerable and warranted criticism of his
famous predecessor, nevertheless regarded the dating of the considerable building
work engaged in by the Roman community sometime in the course of the first half
of the third century could be made more precise by reference to Callistus’s pontificate
and the alleged emergence of a monarchical succession in Rome to which Irenaeus’s
alleged model had pointed.
Styger had otherwise accomplished what Fiochi Nicolai and Guyon have described
as “une veritable ‘révolution copernicienne’” in the view of the original construction of
the catacomb of Callistus that was the fruit of the original excavations of the brothers
J. B. and M. S. de Rossi.^58 The high sections of the galleries of area I were in fact part
of the original complex of the cemetery, and not the later constructions that they had
been considered to have been. Styger’s conclusions have been generally accepted in
subsequent studies.^59
But cubiculum L1, the so-called “tomb of the popes,” remained for Styger never-
theless part of the original complex. Gallery L was constructed at the same time as A
was begun, in accordance with the rules of Ausgrabungstheorie according to which
transverse galleries are developed pari passu with those running lengthwise. But it is
not simply Styger’s archaeological analysis of the origins and construction of the cata-
comb that bears Callistus’s name that has continued to survive, but also his historical
interpretation and dating of the beginnings of the construction, and this has, in my
opinion, been most unfortunate.
Styger, with the contemporary support of Fiochi Nicolai and Guyon, have all main-
tained that Callistus around a.d. 217 developed the original plan of the catacomb to
be the burial place of the Roman Christian community.^60 Nicholai and Guyon point
to the deepening of the level of gallery I^1 to that of galleries A and B, where I could
form with them, when H, F, and J were added, a grid like network. But the real cause of
this new phase of deepening the galleries was, for these two archaeologists, not simply