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SAINT CALIXTUS I—A.D.
219
SAINT CALIXTUS I, son of Domitian, was a member of the family of Domitia. He was created Pope in the year 219. There
was no persecution during his pontificate;
nevertheless there were some martyrs. Those calamities, however, must not be attributed to the emperor himself; fot it may be said of Alexander Severus that, though a
pagan by education, he was Christian by disposition, and was one of the princes who go the most honor to Roman history and to our common humanity. It is affirmed that he admired the maxims of Christianity, and that one of those
maxims—"We should not do unto others what we would not that they should do
unto us"—was by his order written in large
letters in his palace. He venerated Christ as one worthy of divine honors, and had our Saviour's image among his Lares, or household gods, as the image of a benefactor to
humanity, and would have erected a temple to him in the year 222 (more than a
century before Constantine), had not the obstinate pagans objected that if
that were done, the altars of their false gods would be deserted. There is
much in this history that is consecrated to the glory of Christ, illustrative of Chrisian doctrine, and
destructive of that feeling of surprise affected by Protestantism when it is
compelled to recognize the great power of Cartholicism under Constantine. It was not in the power of that prince to postpone the
striking homage that he paid to the Catholic worship.
Caesarotti, in the article which he devotes to Calixtus, asks whether the violent death of that pontiff is
to be attributed to a humane and generous emperor; he replies that the emperor was at a distance from
Rome, and ignorant of the causes of that death. And he goes still further, and
attributes it to the prefects of the city, and especially to the consulters of the law. Of these officers he says: "They
formed a very powerful order; professional pedantry urged them to display their
zeal for the old laws, and to sacrifice the law of conscience to the written law." This pontiff perished during a popular insurrection, and ecclesiastical memoirs state that he was
thrown from a window and into a well. He did not die on the spot, and men daily went down to maltreat the glorious martyr, who made
no complaint. The well is still to be seen in the
Church of Saint Calixtus, of the Benedictine Fathers,
near that of Saint Mary in Trastevere, which is
itself built on the former site of the house. That little cnurch,
built with the permission of the emperor, was renewed by Gregory III, about the
year 740; then it was granted to the Benedictine monks, with the palace built
by the Cardinal Moroni, in exchange for the monastery
which they possessed on the Quirinal, where the
Quirinal Palace now stands.
It is related that this pope expressly ordered that
priests, on receiving holy orders, should make a vow of continence, and should never contract marriage; that marriage should not be contracted
between relatives, and that the fast of the ember days of the year, which in some countries
was neglected,
should be strictly observed. He re-established, on the Appian Way, the cemetery which takes the name of Saint Calixtus,
and which subsequently has received the bodies of a hundred and seventy-four
thousand martyrs and of forty-six pontiffs. From this we may calculate how
vast a number of bodies must be contained in the other cemeteries in Rome.
In five ordinations this pontiff created eight
bishops, sixteen priests, and four deacons. He
governed the Church about; four years.
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