Irenaeus

Brent—How Irenaeus Has Misled the Archaeologists 51

entry at this point, and not earlier in Irenaeus, of the chronographic tradition into

the monuments of Episcopal government. Irenaeus’s list was an undated list, but what

succeeded it, reaching a final form in the Chronographer of 354, had dates for the suc-

cession and deaths of bishops of Rome. The chronographic tradition has imposed on

Irenaeus’s original list of bishops and its continuation up until Pontian a quite artificial

system of dating.

According to the dated list of the Chronographer of 354, each bishop before Pon-

tian succeeds to the episcopate with his two contemporaneous consuls and dies at the

point of another consular succession. For example:

1. Eleutheros died in the consulship of Paternus and Bradua (AD 185). His suc-
   cessor, Victor, succeeded him when Commodus and Glabrio became the next
   consuls (AD 186).


2. Zephyrinus lived “until the consulship of Praesens and Extricatus [AD 217].”
   Callistus succeeded him only when Antoninus and Adventus succeeded them
   (218).


3. Urban succeeded Callistus when Antoninus and Alexander left office (AD

222. and Maximus and Elianus succeeded them (AD 223).

But Pontian and his successors are given definite dates for their deaths, and so

manage to die and be succeeded as bishops whilst consuls are still in office: bishops do

not succeed consuls in parallel with each other. This process implies a radical trans-

formation for the previous concept of Episcopal succession, as we shall now see in

conclusion.

Fabian’s Monarchical Episcopal Succession
Is Neither Irenaeus’s nor Victor’s
In the imposition of dates upon Irenaeus’s undated list, we are witnessing, I submit, for
the first time the introduction of the chronographic tradition into Christian historiog-
raphy. As Eusebius’s Chronicon makes clear, the chronographic tradition set up parallel
lists of pagan kings, Roman consuls, Hebrew monarchs, and Greek Olympiads side by
side in order to try to establish the chronology of world history and, indeed, in Chris-
tian chronography, salvation history. Between such lists of names and dates there could
be inserted the spatium historicum, which has left its mark on Eusebius’s writing of his
ecclesiastical history. Here the names of famous individuals or of significant events
could be recounted with suitable anecdotes recounted, authors and their works briefly
described, and dates of periods in which they “flourished” inferred from the paral-
lel consular, regnal, or Olympiad dates. The continuator of Irenaeus’s list could only
deploy such a rough-and-ready method to establish dates for bishops before Pontianus
and back to Peter. Having placed their names in the spatium historicum, he looked at
the consuls in the columns at the side and fixed the deaths and subsequent succession
of each bishop quite artificially with the beginning and end of consular reigns.