FAITH & rEASON THE JOurNAl OF CHrISTENdOm COllEgE

Fall 1977 | Vol. III No. 3

Popes Before the Tiara:The Early Centuries

Warren H. Carroll

hIrty meN followed St. Peter aS VIcar of chrISt before the church roSe out of the catacombs into the light of imperial favor when constantine became ruler of the roman world. the accuracy of the list of them (if not always the length of their reigns) is solidly established by the second century testimony of St. Irenaeus of lyons (adv. haer. 3,3), who had been taught the faith by St. Polycarp of Smyrna who in turn had been taught it by St. John himself. St. Irenaeus also

testified to the unique position of the papacy:

each of these thirty men had the fullness of Papal power. It is historical fact that several of them, even in the scanty christian documents of this period which have come down to us, are known to have both claimed and exercised that fullness of Papal power, beginning with St. clement I, third in succession after St. Peter, in his famous letter from rome to settle a dispute in the church at corinth, about 95 a.d., when in all probability St. John still lived as the last of the apostles. of several of these early Popes, nothing whatever is known beyond their names and their approximate tenures in office. But about others there is more to be learned, of very great significance in the history of the Papacy, of the church, and of the christian presence in the world. These pontificates were of a kind the world was never to see again after Constantine-unless, as some believe, the last pontificates before the end of the world bear a similar character, as indeed they may. All these were Popes before the tiara. they were surrounded by no signs of splendor, no trappings of power. often they were hunted men.

In this essay, Warren H. Carroll dramatically recounts the history of the popes before Constantine, popes who lived without worldly recognition in a hostile and pagan culture. The author suggests that this period of the first centuries of Christian history bears similarities to our own secular times. Es-pecially from Pius I[ca. 140 A.D. ] on, the available information comes together to form a series of heroic and inspiring episodes which both recall the essential character of the Petrine power and provide

models for Peter’s successors in the modern age.

we shall confound those who hold unauthorized assemblies ... by pointing to the tradition of the church that is the greatest, most ancient, and best known to all men, founded and established at rome by the two most renowned apostles, Peter and Paul. It is from the apostles that this church has its tradition and the faith announced to all men, showing its succession of bishops right down to our own day. and therefore all the churches (that is, the faithful everywhere) must agree with rome because of its special priority, for those who spread everywhere have maintained in her the tradition received from the apostles. (adv. haer. 3, 2)

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many were martyrs. and many were slaves. but there can be no question that these men acted as Popes, in a man-ner so similar to their present-day successors as to be startling even to the well-informed Catholic. The hunted fugitive Pope, the slave Pope, the Pope hurrying through back alleys to keep out of sight of the anti-Christian mob or the officially encouraged persecutors so as to carry on his duties-these too were Popes just as much as Innocent III, St. Pius V, Pius IX or Paul VI. we can learn much from a study of the historical evidence that has survived, of what they did.

a chroNIcle of hereSy aNd orthodoXy

the second century a.d. is by far the most poor-ly recorded of any century in church history. this was the time of the “five good emperors”-Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius-and of the worldwide roman peace. most people in the roman world had heard very little of christianity and understood it even less. christian records of any kind for that century are brief and scattered. Its first three Popes-Evaristus, Alexander I and Sixtus I-remain no more than names. Of its fourth, St. telesphorus, we know only that he died a martyr under the Emperor Hadrian; of its fifth, Hyginus, again we know nothing.

then came Pope Pius I, reigning approximately from 140 to 155, whose brother wrote The Shepherd of Hermas. and it was in his pontificate that the heretics whose influence grew so rapidly in the primitive church especially for the ensu-ing 80 to 90 years began beating a path to rome, hoping to win over its bishop to their ideas, because he was the head of the church and for them to convert him would mean their final victory.

to rome, then, came marcion in the time of Pius I. marcion was from Pon-tus in asia minor, a bishop’s son, wealthy, impressive, vehement, who asked him for his interpretations of two sayings of Christ as recorded by St. Luke: “A good tree can bring forth only good fruit” and “No man puts new wine into old bottles.” The answer Marcion wanted was that the God of Jesus was not the creator of the world we know and could not have been, because the world contains evil. Instead, according to marcion, the world was the creation of an inferior and evil spirit, the de-

miurge, and christ came only to save a few elect whose spirituality was at war with a world conceived in evil.

would that we had Pope Pius I’s reply to marcion, but we do not have it. We know only the result: Mar-cion’s arguments, his enthusiasm, his wealth and pride and power fell like thistledown upon the Vicar of christ, the tenth man to sit in the chair of the fisherman, and marcion went away angry and rebellious. In the middle of July 144 he established his own church, the first to be set up in defiance of the Holy See. Many more would come and go.

After the pontificates of Anicetus and Soter, friends of the new montanist prophesying in asia minor came to rome, insisting that the holy Spirit was with them. they taught that christians were actively to court martyrdom and, finally, that they were to renounce mar-riage and families, because the end of the world was at hand. they had forgotten christ’s teaching that no man, not even the Son, but only the father, knows the day and the hour. but Pope eleutherius, having the mind of christ, remembered. Intrigued and even impressed at first with Montanist fervor, he soon saw its dangers and where its renunciation of the world was leading. he

condemned it as contrary to catholic tra-dition; after tertullian became a montanist later, he accused the Pope of “putting the Holy Spirit to flight” (Adv. Prax. 1). but the Pope alone authoritatively discerns spirits in matters of faith. tertullian was wrong.

to rome came also theodotus of byzantium, who had denied christ un-der persecution, and when reproached for it, compounded his sin by denying christ’s divinity, saying, “It is not God I have de-nied, but a man.” Pope Victor, next in suc-cession after eleuterius, excommunicated

him, and he and his followers fell back on human reason as an alternative to the truth taught by the church. christ is not the truly begotten Son of God, but only his adopted son, theodotus claimed. the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation were rejected. Passag-es of Scripture, taken in isolation, were given distorted interpretations to fit this thesis. The Adoptionists found themselves a bishop in rome and for a time set up a little schismatic church there; but the bishop, Natalis, repented and was reconciled with the catholic church, and the

Pope Pius I

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heresy faded until renewed half a century later in a new form by Paul of Samosata.

and to rome, at the end of the second christian century, came monarchianism, the heresy of Noetus of Smyrna, which abolished the distinction of father and Son, denying the triad of persons in the one God, teach-ing instead that the Son and the holy Spirit are mere “modes” of the divine being (hence its alternative name of modalism). by merging the father and the Son, No-etus claimed to be glorifying christ. unable to match his brilliant rhetoric and display of Scriptural scholarship, the elders of the church in Smyrna who judged his case nevertheless knew something was wrong. they called on him to abandon his novel opinion, setting against his ar-guments the Catholic sense of their hearts:

we also confess truly one sole God; we confess the christ; we confess the Son who suffered as he suffered, who died as he died, who rose again the third day, who is at the right hand of the Father, who will come to judge the living and the dead. and this we say as we have learnt. (adv. Noet. 1)

Noetus too founded a church, and Praxeas brought it to Rome-Praxeas who had correctly warned Pope eleuterius of the dangers of montanist enthusi-asm. but when the essential elements of Praxeas’ mo-narchian teaching became known, he too was promptly condemned by the firm and uncompromising Pope Vic-tor-the same Pope who had excommunicated Theodotus the adoptionist and threatened the excommunication of all churches in asia minor refusing to follow rome’s liturgical discipline in desig-nating the day for the annual celebration of Easter. Praxeas-more tractable or more hum-ble than marcion and theodo-tus and Noetus-repented and withdrew his errors.

but monarchianism re-appeared in rome in the next pontificate, that of. Epigonus, another disciple of Noetus, set up a monarchian school there. one of its students, Sabellius, soon emerged as the leader of the monarchian sect not only

in rome but throughout the empire, while Pope Zephy-rinus held aloof from the controversy, refusing to con-demn Sabellius.

During Zephyrinus’ pontificate, persecution of the Christians by the imperial authorities-temporarily al-lowed to lapse during the reign of the emperor commo-dus who succeeded Marcus Aurelius, and in the first part of the reign of Septimus Severus-was resumed under a new imperial edict prohibiting conversion either to Ju-daism or to christianity. at carthage in 203 two young women catechumens, Sts. Perpetua and felicity, both mothers of newborn babies, were handed over to the wild beasts in the arena for disobeying this edict by seek-ing baptism. the narrative of their passion, universally recognized as contemporary and authentic, is one of the most beautiful of its kind.

A LAST STRUGGLE: SIN AND REPENTANCE

Persecution without, heretics within, and a slave, Callistus I, sat in the chair of the fisherman. Accused of christianity, he had been arrested, scourged and de-ported to the infamous mines of Sardinia in the year 186. released later through the intercession of the emperor commodus’ christian wife, he was placed in charge of the roman catacombs by Pope Zephyrinus, on whose death callistus was unanimously elected Pope.

the emperor now was the mad youth elagabal-us; the church was torn almost to her heart by raging fac-tions. her greatest latin writer, champion and apologist, Tertullian, had left her to join the Montanist charismatics, now in open rebellion; her second greatest latin writer

and scholar, hippolytus, incensed at Pope Zephy-rinus’ failure to condemn the monarchian heresy of Sabellius, had fallen into the opposite heresy of ditheism-that Christ and the Father are two gods-and set himself up as the first antipope. Victims of the Severan persecution, in which Sts. Perpetua and felicity had been martyred, who unlike them had weakened and denied christ, came pleading for for-giveness, penance and reconciliation but were cold-ly rejected by Tertullian and Hippolytus and their followers, who also took it upon themselves to deny absolution to all those who had committed mor-tal sins of the flesh. The category of “unforgivable sins”, according to these proud and learned puri-tans, was large. they seemed to forget what christ had said to the woman taken in adultery, or that he Pope Zephyrinus

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had said one should forgive “not seven times, but seventy times seven”.

but Pope callistus, having the mind of christ, remembered. he opened the door to confession and ab-solution even for those guilty of the most grievous sins, who sincerely repented. he excommunicated Sabellius as an irreconcilable heretic-only to have Hippolytus re-spond that the Pope was a secret monarchian who had acted against Sabellius simply to throw his critics off the track! there seemed to be no pleasing this vain, irascible scholar. yet the patient slave who held the keys to the Kingdom of heaven saw good in him yet, saw that despite what he had said and done he still loved christ and his church, that he was honestly mis-led; so Pope callistus bore hippolytus’ slashing attacks (some of which have come down to us) in silence, refus-ing to condemn him publicly as he had condemned Sabellius, even though hippolytus continued to insist that he was Pope.

In the end Callistus’ judgement was vindicated. hippolytus died a martyr for the faith in the mines of Sardinia where callistus himself had once labored, side by side with a later Pope, St. Pontian, his pride forgot-ten, reconciled at last to the church, honored by her as a saint-the only antipope ever canonized.

Pope Callistus I reigned for five years, during which he had to endure the savage invective of tertul-lian as well as hippolytustertullian, a former lawyer and master of scorn and sarcasm. callistus’ detractors gained new impetus from his order allowing christian women to contract marriages valid before God with their social inferiors, marriages which would not be recognized by roman civil law. It was the church’s declaration of in-dependence from the state regarding the sacrament of marriage, but hippolytus could see in it only more im-morality: high-born women having affairs with low-born men, claiming to be married in the sight of the church,

and aborting their offspring to conceal the relationship from others at their level of society. Pope callistus, hated by the rebel intellectuals and the puritanical moralists, and scorned by the “better elements” in society, cuts a modern figure indeed, in many ways similar to Paul VI. In the end, callistus gained the martyr’s crown. he was set upon by a mob and thrown to his death from a height. the reasons for the attack are obscure, but it did come to

be honored as a martyrdom.

we have not a word from Pope callistus himself. he lives for us in

the impassioned attacks of his en-emies, tertullian and hippoly-tus, which comprise almost all we know about him. out of their mouths, unwittingly, comes his praise. from their writings emerges the figure of a sane, solid, loving man in a disintegrating age-one of the greatest of all the Popes,

and one of the kindest.

but there would be more like him. Pope St. Pontian died beside hippoly-

tus a martyr in the mines of Sardinia in 236, after resigning his office to permit a worthy

successor to reign again from Romethe first Papal resig-nation, honorable and right as all but one of the Papal resignations have been. Pope St. fabian was martyred at rome during the persecution of the emperor decius in 251; Pope St. Sixtus II was seized while saying mass in the catacombs in 258 during the persecution of the emperor Valerian and beheaded on the very spot where he had re-enacted the sacrifice of God the Son on Calvary. The emperors and their bureaucrats still could not, would not learn that persecution did not work against christianity. the church grew with every martyrdom; even those who weakened and lapsed were brought back to an awareness of their true duty by the inspiration of those who did not weaken. they availed themselves of the door opened by Pope St. callistus to return to the church. meanwhile the God-given heroism of the martyrs led not only to con-tinuing hatred but also to new conversions, often among the persecutors themselves.

Pope Callistus I

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FurTHEr rEAdINg donald attwater, Martyrs (New york 1957).

Karl baus, From the Apostolic Community to Constantine (New york 1965) (Vol. I of Handbook of Church History, ed. h. Jedin)

rev. Patrick J. healy, The Valerian Persecution (boston 1905)

eric John, ed. The Popes, A Concise Biographical History (New york 1964)

Jules Lebreton and Jacques Zeiller, The History of the Primitive Church (New york 1949)

e.G. weltin, The Ancient Popes (westminster, md. 1964) michael m. winter, St. Peter and the Popes (london 1960)

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“Just as the substantial Word of God became like men in

every re-spect except sin, so too the words of God, expressed in human languages, became like human language in every

respect except error”

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Notes

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