Brent—How Irenaeus Has Misled the Archaeologists 49Moreover, as Rébillard has persuasively argued, the word τὸ κοιμητήριον (“the cem-
etery”) in the brief passage that described Callistus’s diaconal duties in the Refuta-
tio has been read consistently but improperly as though the term could describe a
large, general communal place of burial. Analyzed examples of the use of the word
κοιμητήριον, whether in the singular or in the plural, reveal that it describes a tomb or
tombs of the martyrs and not of the collective burial of the whole community.^67 Thus
Rébillard can charge de Rossi with what the French call antonomase, that is to say, the
regarding of a proper noun as though it were a general term. By this means he could
suggest that the Callistus catacomb was at that time the sole cemetery administered
by the Church of Rome, or that it was its principal cemetery. In reality, it applied to a
single tomb, that of Zephyrinus’s family, with some members of his community buried
there, and which was to develop, not as the communal burial site of the whole com-
munity but as a place where the faithful wished to lie at rest with particular saints.^68
Undoubtedly, a decade after Callistus’s death, the catacomb on the via Appia Antica
was to experience a radical reconstruction. That reconstruction must clearly be dated
from the time when bishops of Rome in succession were to be buried in a special
vault that was now under construction, namely the tomb of the popes in a mauso-
leum reserved for the leaders of the Roman community. Such a project was radically
different from what Callistus could have ever envisaged, whose successor, Urban, no
one saw any reason to bury there, nor was there any notion that he should be himself
buried there. His successor, Pontianus the bishop, who died with presbyter Hippolytus
in exile in Sardinia (a.d. 235), could hardly have arranged his own burial there—that
was to be the work of Fabian, whose concept the papal tomb clearly was.
Pontian’s death was followed by the election of his successor, Anteros, with a short
period of office of one month and ten days (a.d. 236).^69 Then Fabian was to succeed
him (a.d. 236), to whom the Chronographer of 354 attributes the division of Rome
among the seven deacons into regions, and the ordering of the constructions of “many
building works [fabricas] throughout the tombs [per cimiteria] .”^70 The creation of the
nucleus of the papal mausoleum in the Callistus catacomb was in all probability the
design of Fabian. It was there that he buried his immediate predecessor, Anteros, plac-
ing his remains in the loculus sealed with the marble epitaph on which his name was
engraved and affixed with his Episcopal title (EP.). He then added a loculus for the
remains of Pontianus, similarly identified with an epitaph, brought back from Sar-
dinia with those of presbyter Hippolytus whom he interred in the cemetery on the Via
Tiburtina. Thus he could make provision for his own burial there with what was in
process of becoming the papal crypt where together and apart from their community
the leaders of the Roman church could be in turn buried.
The novelty of the design is witnessed by the fact that Cornelius, Fabian’s immedi-
ate successor (a.d. 252), was buried neither in the crypt of the popes nor in the Cal-
listus catacomb itself but in the Lucina region, which was a separate burial complex
before the construction of the medieval pilgrim road that today has united the two.
Was this because of the disputed character of Cornelius’s office with his rival Novatian,
or was it because the concept of a burial place apart for leaders of the community did
not impress him? Certainly Novatian himself was buried in a grave excavated on the