52 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy
This being the case, two important conclusions follow in support of my argument
that Irenaeus cannot be regarded with Callistus as the creator of the concept of monar-
chical episcopacy. The first is that the introduction of the chronographic tradition
marked by the introduction of real dates from Pontianus onward can and should be
read as part of Fabian’s ideological concept reflected in the material fabric of the cre-
ation of the papal crypt. Popes have dates in their succession lists because monarchs
have reigns that have dates in theirs, and that is important for the establishment of
their legitimacy. Fabian’s popes must have their own crypt in the way that Augustus’s
successors had their own mausoleum.
But a second conclusion for my argument now follows. If Pontianus and his succes-
sors with real dates mark an ideological change in the conception of episcopal author-
ity, then that shift has not taken place with how Callistus’s authority was conceived by
his immediate successors. Neither Callistus nor his successor, Urbanus, are accorded
real dates, but the artificial chronological method simply imposes consular dates with
an assumed parallel. Had the pontificate of Callistus marked the success of an alleged
episcopal monarchy established by Victor whose ideology Irenaeus had written with
his concept of apostolic succession, then we should have expected real dates to have
begun with his pontificate. The purpose, therefore, of Callistus’s plan for the develop-
ment of the catacomb that bears his name must have been, if not quite different from,
at least more hazy and indefinite than that which Fabian was some fifteen years in the
future to clarify and apply with precision.
The model for Irenaeus’s succession list was therefore quite different from that
which was to inform Fabian’s Episcopal monarchy. It was, as we have argued, scholas-
tic. To prove that there was a coherence in philosophical or theological teaching, you
needed only to show that the school of the philosophers or of the apostles simply had
an orderly succession of one philosopher or bishop to another: dates were not essential.
Neither was an imperial mausoleum for monarchs to lie in state in succession to one
another required for such a scholastic succession.