35ChAPtER thREEHow Irenaeus Has Misled the Archaeologists
Allen BrentT
he anonymous author of the Elenchos, a work clearly in the literary genre of hereti-
cal exposure in the tradition of the lost work of Justin, and of the surviving one
of Irenaeus, describes the action of Zephyrinus regarding Callistus in the following
terms: “Wishing to have him as an associate [ὡς συναράμενον αὐτὸν θέλων ἔχειν] for
the direction of the clergy [πρὸς τὴν κατάστασιν τοῦ κλήρου], he honoured him to his
own harm and to this end brought him back from Antheion and placed him in charge
of the cemetery [εἰς τὸ κοιμητήριον κατέστησεν] .”^1 Zephyrinus’s immediate predecessor
Victor (c. 190), in refusing to exchange the fermentum with Asiatic congregations in
Rome, provoked according to Eusebius a rebuke from Irenaeus.^2
Victor’s act, though short lived, is hailed by Simonetti as the origin of a monarchical
episcopate at Rome that replaced government previously by a presbyteral council. Vic-
tor was succeeded by Zephyrinus, whose “associate” Callistus was. The “cemetery” over
which the latter was put in charge has been identified, from de Rossi’s time onward,
with the catacomb that traditionally bears Callistus’s name from the time of the Libe-
rian Depositio (a.d. 354) onward, on the third mile of the via Appia Antica, followed
by the medieval itineraries. But Callistus himself was not buried there, but rather in
the cemetery of Callepodius on the via Aurelia. Some time before a.d. 235 an extensive
building project was begun that involved a deepening of levels because the walls of
the original nuclei were filled up with loculi that were obstacles to the opening of the
transverse corridors. Thus the initial network had reached saturation point, and the
new work was clearly a response to a desire to increase the capacity of the cemetery, in
fact to some 1,100 tombs.^3
On the basis of the note in the Elenchos, this new project has been attributed, as we
shall see, to Callistus, with a plan conceived by him that was to result in the tomb of the
popes from a.d. 235 onward. Thus Callistus can be said to reflect Victor’s alleged proj-
ect of creating a monarchical episcopate and seeking to centralize all Christian burial
within one cemetery, however only partial its realization. And Irenaeus, but a few years
previously, can be regarded, in his Episcopal succession list, as paving the way for such
a development and legitimizing its grounds.