Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy

3. How Irenaeus Has Misled the Archaeologists

35 ChAPtER thREE How Irenaeus Has Misled the Archaeologists Allen Brent The anonymous author of the Elenchos, a work clearly in the literary genre of heretical 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. Victor 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 Liberian 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 project 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. 36 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy If Irenaeus is to be regarded as the ideologue of Victor’s revolution, it seems strange that they should have clashed on the former’s treatment of the Quartodeciman congregations . Admittedly, the later dispute between Stephen and Cyprian shows well a characteristic human behavior that one can accept a principle in theory though dissent from it in practice when the full enormity of what becomes possible from its application is felt. But there are further problems with reading Irenaeus’s view of apostolic succession in this way. The assumption that Irenaeus is the ideologue of Victor’s activity and of what is presupposed by the development of the catacomb by Callistus and that bears his name from the time is, as I will show, questionable. My deconstruction of such a view may be summarized in a number of brief points that I will subsequently develop in greater detail: 1. The view that Irenaeus’s Episcopal succession is modelled on a monarchical succession with supreme power handed on from St. Peter presupposes that his model is that of a chronographer charting the succession of kings, consuls, high priests along with consular and regnal dates, based upon Olympiads and other forms of parallel calendar dating. But the attempts of Ehrhardt and Telfer to identify Irenaeus’s model as based upon succession lists of Jewish high priests mentioned by Josephus fails both on the basis of Irenaean theology of church order and on the fact that his list is undated and therefore unrelated to chronographical literature. 2. Irenaeus’s view of succession is that of a teaching succession, and arises not from the study of chronography but from the general ideology of succession within Hellenistic philosophical schools. It was that scholastic model, combined with one piece of independent literary evidence that is available to us as well as to him, namely Clement ’s letter to the Corinthians, that produced his (and/or Hegesippus’s) construction of Episcopal or presbyteral succession lists. 3. The creation of a papal mausoleum in the cemetery that bears Callistus’s name for rulers...