After the death of Clement, about the last year of the first century, for nearly a hundred years we hear little of the Church of the Metropolis of the Empire. The shadow, and only the shadow, of the names of its bishops falls upon the page of the historian Eusebius. Even tradition is well-nigh silent as to their life story. Brief mentions are made of a visit of Polycarp in the middle of the century, when the veteran Bishop of Smyrna conferred with Anicetus of Rome, of a residence in Rome of Irenaeus, the famous Gallic scholar and writer, subsequently Bishop of Lyons. Of the duration of this visit we know nothing. These scanty references together with the "Acts" of S. Felicitas and her sons, which tell us something of the trials and sufferings of Christians in the days of Marcus, are the best authenticated notices connected with the Church in Rome that we possess. But that the Church in Rome during this period was growing in numbers, was perfecting its organization, was planning and gradually excavating its mighty City of the Dead beneath the suburbs of the Metropolis, is clear from what we find in contemporary writings, dating from early in the third century.
In the last years of the second century began the famous disputes concerning "church discipline," on which we are about to dwell at some length; disputes which more or less affected the whole of the Catholic Church, and determined in great measure the attitude which the Christian communities everywhere were to assume in their relations with the society of the Empire. About this time, the close of the second century, the Roman community possessed perhaps the profoundest scholar and thinker in Christendom. This was Hippolytus, generally styled Bishop of Tortus.
Hippolytus seriously disagreed with the policy of the Bishop and governing body of the Roman community in the matter of Church discipline; and his opposition here gravely affected that all-important question, daily pressing with greater insistence upon the fast growing body of Christians, of the general relations of Christianity to the society of the Empire. The Roman theologian was supported in his austere views by another writer and teacher of the highest rank in another powerful Christian community. This was Tertullian of Carthage. These two eminent men, the Roman and the African, were by no means alone in their contention respecting the alleged laxity of discipline prevailing in the Church in those days, a laxity which included certain concessions to the Pagan society around them.
The severer and more austere policy of Hippolytus, Tertullian, and their school was finally rejected by the Church of Rome; and the views of Zephyrinus and Callistus, successively Bishops of the Church of the Metropolis, in the end prevailed, and determined generally the attitude of the Catholic Church to the Empire.
But the powerful advocacy of these two eminent dissidents, as contained in their many writings, some of which have come down to us, although it failed to influence the policy of Rome and the majority of the Churches, was by no means thrown away. These men have left their impress upon the Church, and their noble, if at times curiously exaggerated, views have in all ages strongly influenced and colored the lives of not a few devoted toilers for God.
This section of our history will be devoted to the great dispute which had so far-reaching an influence upon the future of Christianity.
We learn much respecting the inner life of the Church in Rome as it existed in the reign of the Emperor Severus, in the last years of the second and early years of the third century, from one of those strange "finds" which now and again so marvelously assist the chroniclers of the early days of Christianity.
In the year 1842 an anonymous MS. of the fourteenth century was brought by a learned Greek in the employment of the French Government to Paris from a monastic library on Mount Athos. On examination it was found to contain the continuation of a fragment entitled Philosophumena, printed in the Benedictine edition of Origen's works, and generally considered as one of his writings. Certain scholars, however, had already questioned Origen's authorship of the fragment. The University of Oxford printed the newly discovered MS., and it was at once seen to be a literary treasure of rare value. Scholars pronounced it to be, not a work of Origen, but a long lost writing of Hippolytus, a famous writer and teacher of the closing years of the second and earlier years of the third century. It was of considerable length, and was divided into ten books, the second and third of which were still missing. Its title was "The Refutation of all Heresies." Books V. and X. are, perhaps, the most important, as a piece of history, and contain an interesting and valuable account of the early heresies, composed by a great scholar, who may be termed a contemporary witness of many of the things about which he was writing. The value of such a testimony can scarcely be over-estimated; for Hippolytus was a well-known and often quoted teacher, and a disciple of Irenaeus. The tenth book of the "Refutation" is a summary of the whole work, and contains besides an exposition of the learned writer's own religious opinions. As we have said, Hippolytus and his works were very widely known and highly esteemed in ancient times. To give a few instances out of a long catena of patristic references, Eusebius and Jerome in the fourth century speak of him, Epiphanius (fourth century) in his great work on Heresies largely borrowed from him, and Photius (ninth century) in his marvelous epitome of ancient Greek literature, describes with some detail a yet earlier and shorter work of Hippolytus on heresies. He has been well described as one "who linked together the learning and tradition of the East, the original home of Christianity with the marvelous practical energy of the West, the scene of his own life's labors . . . He was besides in his time, as far as we know, the most learned man in the Western Church."
For our present work the importance of the comparatively recently discovered writing of the great scholar Hippolytus consists not in his elaborate and learned history of the many heresies more or less connected, though many of them but remotely, with Christianity, but with the strong side-light which his great treatise throws upon the inner life of the Italian Church with which he was especially connected.
He dwells with peculiar insistence upon a bitter feud which apparently raged for some years in the Roman community, and in his description of it he incidentally shows us how far-reaching was the influence of Christianity on Roman society before the second century had yet run its course.
It is, of course, saddening for those who fondly picture to themselves the Church of the first and second centuries as a Church of saints, without spot or wrinkle, to hear of bitter enmities and fierce wrangling in the very center of her blessed activities; to be compelled slowly and painfully to disentangle the confused threads of the over-colored narrative of one of the principal disputants. But the truth must be told, and it must be confessed that in the laying of the early storeys of Christianity light ever alternated with darkness. Then, as now, human passions, jealousies, shortsightedness, sadly interfered with the building of the City of God. It was a strange sight indeed, under the very shadow of the sword of persecution which then hung over the Churches of God, ready to fall at any moment! All through this eventful story, the special incidents related of this or that individual teacher or confessor, of this or that lonely community—incidents on whose authenticity no shadow of doubt rests—have been only examples or instances of what was taking place in many another Christian center. So also here, what was taking place on the larger and more prominent stage of Imperial Rome no doubt often took place in less public and notorious centers. The troubles of Rome, of which Hippolytus tells us were not peculiar to the great Church of the capital.
The story of these Roman dissensions, grievous though they doubtless were to the sorely tried Christian persecuted ones, is very suggestive for us who read it after all these centuries of anxiety and disappointment, of baffled hopes and weary expectations, but on the whole of real progress. First and foremost it reminds us that our Lord and Master has ever worked on earth with poor and often faulty instruments, and yet that these, in the long run, do His work—as then, so now. With no uncertain voice it tells those among us often disappointed and discouraged at the grave cleavages and sharp strife which still divide Christian folk on earth, which set church against church, communion against communion, family against family, that it was ever so from the very beginning, when the sharp dissension between Paul and Barnabas separated men who had seen the Lord, and even heard His voice; that it was so in the days of Hippolytus, so near, as we have seen, to the men who had learned their lessons from a Polycarp and a John. And it tells us too, singularly enough, as far as we can judge from the very words of Hippolytus himself, that Hippolytus, the most learned of living Christian teachers, was, on the whole, in the wrong.
The story of the feud is as follows (we give it from Hippolytus' own narrative, contained in his recently discovered "Refutation of all Heresies," Book IX., Chap. VII). In the reign of the Emperor Commodus, Marcus' son and successor, there lived in Rome a Christian slave named Callistus. His master was one Carpophorus, also a Christian, and an official in the Imperial palace. Apparently Callistus was an able business man, for Carpophorus entrusted him with money, and set him up in business as a money-changer and banker. In this calling he evidently for a time was successful; for many Christians and others were in the habit of depositing money with him. Then came on a period of difficulty, and Callistus lost all his capital and, fearful of his master's anger, attempted to fly; but was arrested at Portus and brought back to Rome. The angry Carpophorus at once dispatched his unlucky slave to the "pistrinum," or prison where refractory slaves were sent for punishment by their masters. How terrible was the fate of a slave thus punished we learn from a weird description by a contemporary writer, Apuleius. "Ye gods! what men I saw there, their white skin cut about with the lashes of a whip, and marked as if with paint; their gashed backs hung over with the tatters of their jackets, rather than covered; some of them wore only a small girdle round their loins, in all of them their naked body could be seen through their rags. They were branded on their foreheads, their heads were half shorn, on their feet they wore iron rings, their pallor was hideous, their eyelids were as it were eaten away by the smoke and vapor of the dark atmosphere, so that they scarcely had the use of their eyes any more." After a time Carpophorus had him released on the prayer of some pitiful Christian, who persuaded him that some of the lost money could be recovered by Callistus from parties who were in debt to him. These parties were Jews, who, evidently indignant with Callistus when he tried to collect his debts, accused him to the Prefect of the City, alleging that he had made a tumult and had disturbed them in their synagogue. The Prefect, too readily believing any accusation against a Christian, condemned the unhappy Callistus to the unhealthy mines of Sardinia. From these mines he was eventually released, with many other Christian sufferers, owing to the good offices of Marcia, the favorite of Commodus, who was kindly disposed to the Christians—possibly a Christian herself Callistus then dwelt at Antium, where he was assisted by Victor, who was Bishop of Rome, A. D. 192-202.
This sad tale of slavery, misfortune and suffering is related by Hippolytus, who, it must be remembered, was Callistus bitter foe. Much, apparently, is omitted, for there was evidently something in the slave's life very striking, something that marked him out as especially capable and able, more sinned against than sinning; for we find the next Bishop of Rome, Zephyrinus, who succeeded Pope Victor in A. D. 202, sending for Callistus from Antium, and conferring on him high and responsible office in the Christian community of Rome.
Pope Zephyrinus, "to his own great misfortune," writes Hippolytus, appointed Callistus "over the cemetery," and entrusted him besides with the direction and supervision of the Roman clergy. Zephyrinus, too, is depicted by Hippolytus as a man of little education, ignorant of ecclesiastical law, and even covetous. Upon the death of Zephyrinus, Callistus was elected by the clergy Bishop of Rome, A. D. 219. Hippolytus thus curiously writes of the great promotion of the former slave, who had suffered so much and such grievous things in his earlier life: "He believed that on Zephyrinus' death he (Callistus) had attained the goal at which he had aimed." No doubt by his wise administration of the cemetery and the burial of Christians, and by his skill and tact in the direction and supervision of the clergy to which the late Pope had appointed him, he had won the respect and love of at least the majority of the numerous body consisting of presbyters, deacons, and the inferior orders of sub-deacons and others who made up the official ranks of the Roman Church. Such is the strange and somewhat painful story with which Hippolytus prefaces his account of the grave differences which arose between the newly elected Bishop of Rome, Callistus, and himself. One point more, however, must be briefly touched upon before we dwell upon these differences, the recital of which throws so much light upon the practice and teaching of the Church at the beginning of the third century. What office or position was it which this Hippolytus held in the Catholic Church?
He describes himself as "a bishop;" he is also generally so styled by all the ancients who refer to his teachings and writings, as for instance by Eusebius and Jerome. But strange to say no one among the comparatively early writers mentions his diocese. Among the Greek and Oriental Churches a common tradition existed that Hippolytus was Bishop of Rome, But then the earliest Eastern author who can be quoted here wrote at Constantinople circa A. D. 582, that is to say late in the sixth century, and Hippolytus lived in the first quarter of the third century. In the seventh and eighth centuries this opinion was apparently a common one in the Eastern Church.
A still more general tradition placed the see of this famous writer at Portus, a harbor situated on the right arm of the Tiber, which eventually superseded the more ancient Ostia as the harbor of Rome, the port of Ostia becoming gradually blocked with sand; but here again the tradition which made him Bishop of Portus is an Oriental one, and does not appear in any writing earlier than circa A. D. 630.
The testimony of Eusebius, who wrote much earlier, circa A. D. 325, is interesting. Eusebius, who flourished within some eighty years of Hippolytus' death, simply confesses his ignorance. Hippolytus, he says, "was a bishop somewhere or other." Jerome, writing about half a century later than Eusebius, confesses that he has "not been able to find out the city" of which he was bishop. Among eminent modern scholars, Dollinger, at considerable length, argues that he was a schismatic Bishop of Rome, in fact the first anti-Pope. Bishop Lightfoot, with considerable ingenuity, maintained that he never held any definite see, but was simply bishop in charge of the various shifting nationalities represented in the busy Roman harbor of Portus, and was appointed to the charge by Pope Victor, who preceded Zephyrinus in the see of Rome.
The question of the site of his bishopric, which has been much debated, will probably never be definitely answered now. Rome, however, it is certain was the scene of his activities for many years. This would fit in with either of the above mentioned hypotheses of the German and the English scholars. Round the complete life story of this great theologian and writer, however, rest clouds of uncertainty and doubt. What is absolutely certain is that during a considerable portion of his life he was the Roman leader of the party of rigorous unbending severity, in open opposition to the policy of the Catholic Church which allowed to Christian converts a certain liberty in their actions, and encouraged them to share, to a considerable extent, in the public life around them. The first friend and patron of Hippolytus was Pope Victor, whose rule was coterminous with the last decade of the second century. Zephyrinus succeeded Victor, and during his reign over the Roman Church of nearly seventeen years Callistus appears to have been his adviser and minister. The approximate dates of the Popes or Bishops of Rome of the period are as follow:
Pope Victor...192; Zephyrinus...202; Callistua...219; Urban...222; Pontianus...223; Anteros...230; Fabianus...235; Cornelius...236; Lucius...250
During the pontificates of Zephyrinus and Callistus, A. D. 202-222, the deadly feud we are about to speak of raged between the great scholar Hippolytus and the two Popes, largely on questions connected with discipline, although questions on the Trinitarian doctrine also divided them for a time. During the pontificate of Urban, who succeeded Callistus as Bishop of Rome, we hear no more of the feud. It is possible, after the passing away of the two men Zephyrinus and Callistus, that Hippolytus ceased from active opposition to the recognized policy of the Church, and devoted himself exclusively to his scholarly work. This pontificate of Urban, A. D. 223-230, was a time generally speaking of perfect stillness for the Church. The Emperor Alexander Severus was reigning, and though not a convert himself was ever most favorably disposed to Christianity. In this period Hippolytus, then an old man, put out his most famous works, one of which, the "Refutation of all Heresies," we have been speaking of as lately re-discovered, and which as throwing a flood of light upon the organization and teaching of this early period has been well described as having laid these latest generations of Christians under the deepest debt of gratitude.
S. HIPPOLYTUS.
At length the long, laborious, and troubled life of the great scholar was closed by banishment and death. About the year 230 Urban was succeeded by Pontianus as Bishop of Rome. In A. D. 235 Alexander Severus was murdered, and was succeeded by the Emperor Maximinus, a fierce, rough soldier, who reversed the policy of Alexander Severus, and during his brief tenure of the Imperial power bitterly persecuted the Christians. Pope Pontianus was banished to the unhealthy island of Sardinia. With Pontianus Hippolytus was also sent to the dread Sardinia mines, and there both Pope and scholar, according to some accounts, died very soon. Of the circumstances of their death we know nothing for certain. Their bodies were, however, brought back to Rome. Pope Pontianus was laid in the Papal Crypt, a chamber of the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way, and Hippolytus was buried in another Christian cemetery on the Tiburtine Way, not very far from the famous Praetorian Camp, hard by the spot where subsequently arose the great basilica of S. Laurence.
The exact dates are a little confused. An ancient tradition, however, tells us that the two martyrs were deposited in their several resting-places on the self-same day, viz. the Ides of August, A. D. 236, and this traditional date is the one generally accepted.
In the year 1551 a mutilated statue was discovered in the place where originally the sanctuary of Hippolytus had been built. The head of the statue was missing, and there was no name to identify it, but on the back and sides of the chair, in which the figure sits, was engraved a list of writings known to have been the works of Hippolytus. On one side of the chair is inscribed a calendar for determining the Paschal full moon. No doubt rests upon the universally received assumption that the statue is a figure of Hippolytus. It is considered to be the oldest marble statue of Christian workmanship, and probably belongs to the first half of the third century. We have no knowledge of any similar mark of respect ever paid to any bishop or eminent teacher in the first few centuries.
Testimonies from ancient writers to the widespread influence of Hippolytus and his works have been already briefly referred to. After his death he was the recipient for a long period and in various lands of many posthumous honors besides the dignity of saint-ship in the Church where he labored for so many years; a dignity which, however, he shares with not a few whose claims to it are perhaps somewhat questionable. Pope Damasus, A. D. 366-384, the great restorer of the Roman sanctuaries, found a small chapel containing the remains of the eminent writer and scholar, which he enlarged and beautified. In the last years of the fourth or very early in the fifth century, the Spanish Christian poet, Prudentius, devoted some two hundred and forty-six lines in his series of fourteen poems in honor of various martyrs (the Peri Stephanon liber) exclusively to Hippolytus. But when Prudentius wrote, legendary history had already gathered thickly round the memory of the scholar-martyr, and the details he gives us are quite unreliable. Historically, the only value of Prudentius' poem is to show how magnificently the shrine of Hippolytus was adorned in his, Prudentius', days—end of the fourth century. The cult of the famous teacher was then evidently at its zenith.
In the barbarian raids of the following centuries the shrine and basilica of Hippolytus seems to have suffered severely. Pope Paul I., between A. D. 757 and A. D. 768, amongst other precious relics is said to have translated the remains of Hippolytus to the Church of S. Silvestro in Capite (so called from the head of John the Baptist, which has ever been its most precious relic). Curiously enough, another translation of the body of Hippolytus is related to have taken place under Pope Leo IV., A. D. 847-55, to the Church of the Quattro Coronati on the Coelian; and yet a third translation of the honored remains under Pope Honorius III., circa A. D. 1216, to the neighboring basilica of S. Laurentius is chronicled in trustworthy records. These stories of successive translations, and of different churches, each possessing the body of the saint, are probably due to the not uncommon practice of calling any limb or portion of the saint "the body"—a custom responsible for not a little confusion in many cases.
These successive mentions of the translation of the remains, or more probably portions of the remains, of Hippolytus, in different ages to important Roman churches by no means exhaust our records of the enduring respect shown by the Catholic Church to the memory of one of the earliest and greatest of her theologians.
In the pontificate of Siricius, A. D. 384-98, another memoria or chapel of the holy martyr Hippolytus is known to have been erected among the buildings of the famous church and monastery of S. Pudentiana. In Portus, the harbor of Rome, with which important maritime center the name of the great scholar, as we have mentioned already, is closely connected as bishop, the tower of an ancient church bearing his honored name can still be seen rising above the desolate and lonely Campagna.
Beyond the confines of Italy even we can find traces of the ancient reverence paid to the famous Italian scholar. In Aries, the ancient city of Southern Gaul, there is a church of great antiquity dedicated to him. Nor is this the only relic of the honors shown him in the Gallic province; for in the north, among the sacred treasures of the royal and illustrious abbey of S. Denis, close to Paris, for a long period portions of the body of Hippolytus were venerated under the name of S. Bilt. Even in distant Cologne, on the Rhine, the Church of S. Ursula claims to possess other relics.
We are brought into very close touch with this far back time when Hippolytus and Callistus lived, by the recent discoveries of De Rossi in the catacomb named after the latter. It will be remembered that Pope Zephyrinus appointed his Mend and adviser Callistus over "the Cemetery." Now we learn from the Liber Pontificalis and from various other sources that the earliest successors of Peter, with rare exceptions, were laid near the body of the blessed Peter in the Vatican crypt. But very early in the third century a special chamber was prepared, evidently with extraordinary care, by Callistus under the direction of Zephyrinus; and in this sacred chamber a long line of Popes were laid to rest. De Rossi, in the course of his excavations in that catacomb, came upon an exceptional number of "graffiti" or rough inscriptions carved by early pilgrims to these shrines; and recognized at once that he was on the threshold of a very special sanctuary of the ancient Church. This was the Papal crypt on which for many centuries no eye had looked. It was in a state of utter ruin and disorder; but the remains of beautiful and costly work were there, traces of the reverent care with which several generations of the ancient Church had adorned the sacred chamber. A few partly shattered gravestones found among the ruins and the broken debris revealed to the great scholar the cause of this evidently long continued veneration on the part of the pilgrims of early times.
THE PAPAL CRYPT, AS FIRST DISCOVERED BY DE ROSSI.
Cemetery of S. Callistus (Third Century).
THE PAPAL CRYPT IN THE TIME OF POPE DAMASUS (4TH CENTURY).
These "graffiti" are little more than rough scribbling of names of these early visitors; sometimes the names are accompanied with a few words of prayer for those they loved best. They fancied, did these pilgrims, that a prayer carved in such a place hard by the Sepulcher of a saintly person, such as a martyr, would be peculiarly efficacious. The presence of a number of these ancient pilgrim " graffiti" on the walls is a sure index that a specially hallowed shrine is close by the stones of Anteros, Fabianus, and Eutychianus the title Episcopus (Bishop) followed the name, and the jet prouder title of martyr was added to the name of Fabian. Anteros and Fabianus were contemporaries of Hippolytus. De Rossi has no doubt that these four broken stones were the original tombstones of the third century Popes whose names they bear. In this chamber of undying "memories" it is recorded that Zephyrinus also was buried; not so Callistus, who was interred in a cemetery in the Trastevere quarter, near the spot where he suffered martyrdom in a popular tumult. Urban, who succeeded Callistus, Pontianus, Anteros, Fabianus, Lucius, Eutychianus, and probably others, were all buried in this sacred chamber. The graves of other famous third century Popes have been identified in different parts of the vast subterranean area occupied by the great cemetery or catacomb of the Appian Way.
The charges which Hippolytus brings against the acts of Pope Callistus during his government of the see of Rome are specially important and interesting to the Church historian; for they, as it has been said, give many particulars respecting the inner life of the Christian Church in the first years of the third century.
Within the same decade as Hippolytus, i.e. the closing years of the second and the opening years of the third centuries, the brilliant and eloquent Tertullian, at great length and with much detail in his "Apology" and in various other treatises and "studies," covers much of the same ground and makes very similar charges against the current Church policy of the age. Tertullian's pictures, to which we shall presently revert, are drawn from Christian life in Carthage and the wealthy and populous pro-consulate of North Africa. Hippolytus, of course, founds his strictures on the government and management of the Christian Church in his age and time, on his own personal experiences of the great Christian community at Rome and in the immediate neighborhood of the Imperial city.
One of the leading accusations of Hippolytus charged the Bishop of Rome, Callistus, with being the first who had publicly proclaimed the principle of the possibility of the Church granting absolution of all sins, even of the gravest character. The arrangements which Callistus had made on, the subject of absolution were evidently not transitory but lasting, as Hippolytus speaks of them as still in force circa A. D. 230, some seven years after the Bishop's death.
The question of a reconciliation of sinners with the Church had already been mooted in the Roman community; the predecessor of Callistus, Pope Zephyrinus, having mitigated the original strict penance discipline by declaring that even those who had been guilty of the grave sins of adultery and idolatry might again be admitted to communion after performing public penance. It appears that a further movement in the direction of leniency took place after the Decian persecution, circa A. D. 249, and the principle of not shutting out from communion for ever those who had lapsed in the days of trial was admitted.
From letters written from Rome to Cyprian of Carthage, circa A. D. 250, we find that the severe discipline of earlier days had been considerably modified, in accordance with the policy so hateful to Hippolytus and Tertullian and the school of the Rigorists. Callistus, however, and in a measure his predecessor and friend. Pope Zephyrinus, were probably the first who publicly urged this; the principle which was eventually endorsed by Cyprian was first formally recognized at Rome, and a hope of re-admission to the Church was held out even to those who had sinned most grievously.
But even before Callistus and the Roman community publicly affirmed the Church's willingness to receive back into her fold grievous sinners if they repented, this milder discipline had found advocates; or we find Dionysius of Corinth, circa A. D. 169, writing to Christian communities in Pontus, urging that all who had in any way been regarded as heretical, or had committed any crime whatever, ought to be received again into the fold if they turned again to the Church, thus gravely condemning the idea of perpetual excommunication.
In this as in other matters, as we shall see, Callistus and the Roman Church adopted a liberal and generous policy, but one which was by no means universally followed; since from the canons of the Council of Elvira, a very important assembly held scarcely eighty years after Callistus' death," we see that the Spanish Church still held to the principle of perpetual excommunication in the case of certain grievous sins.
Hippolytus further charges Callistus with sanctioning the ordination of men who had been married twice or thrice to the higher ranks among the clergy, including here bishops, priests, and deacons. The words of Paul in 1 Tim. iii. 2-12, and Titus i. 6, have been in all ages variously understood. Origen, however, circa A. D. 230, writes that it was the rule that a bishop, a presbyter, and a deacon (and he adds a widow, referring, of course, to the "office bearing" widows of 1 Tim. v. 3-10) should not, when ordained, have married a second time. Tertullian's express reference to the custom in the same period tells us that this was generally the ecclesiastical rule. But it is clear from Tertullian's words that exceptions had been not infrequently made, especially in cases where the second marriage had been concluded before baptism.
Dr. Dollinger (Hippolytus and Callistus, chap, iii.), in the course of a lengthy dissertation on the disputed question, weightily remarks with reference to these charges brought by Hippolytus and Tertullian against the practice of the Catholic Church of the time, that the difference was evidently made between second marriages contracted before and after baptism, and that several were made bishops in spite of the double marriages, because it was thought their stain might be overlooked as something belonging to the heathen period of their life. This concession was not, however, recognized by stricter teachers like Hippolytus and Tertullian, the latter of whom asks contemptuously: "Being a digamist dost thou baptize? Being a digamist dost thou make the offering?"
But the dispute concerning the propriety of second marriages for the clergy, as time went on, was submerged in the far more important and hotly contested question, Was marriage at all to be sanctioned for the clergy of the Catholic Church?
Outside the recognized paramount importance of the need of guarding pure and unadulterated the great fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the necessity or the non-necessity of insisting on the celibacy of the clergy has perhaps exercised the minds of practical theologians more than any other question in the general administration of the Church. From the early years of the third century, down to our own day and time, the question has agitated and disturbed the Church. Since the period of the Reformation the Western Church has been formally divided on the question. In the Roman Communion the decision of the Council of Trent forbidding sternly all clerical marriages is accepted. In the Protestant communities absolute freedom on the point is conceded. Among the last-named there is, besides, no rule, written or implied, existing on the subject of digamy in the case of the clergy.
Hippolytus, the subject of our present study, was the first (Tertullian probably writing a very few years later) who formally inveighed against the principle of clerical marriages. His words are very strong. "Callistus," he says, "ordered that if a cleric married he was to remain among the clergy, just as if he had committed no offense." During the previous century and a half nothing formal apparently was taught on this subject. What little is said in the New Testament distinctly recognizes marriage as honorable and legal for all Christians without distinction, for the office-bearer in the Church as well as for the ordinary layman. Alone in that mystic passage in the Apocalypse (Rev. xiv. 4) does any hint appear that a higher excellence in the case of celibates was recognized in the courts of heaven.
In the early Christian writings very little respecting marriage appears, and when any reference is made it is simply to repeat the New Testament advice or to warn men not to boast of any such austere way of life and thus to exalt themselves above others.
Again we have in very early times some distinct mentions of bishops and presbyters who were married, e.g. by Polycarp (early second century), by Cyprian (first half of second century), by Eusebius, quoting from what happened in the Decian persecution (first half of the third century), and in the Diocletian persecution (some half century later). Clement of Alexandria besides speaks of Peter and Philip, the Apostles, as married. There is, however, no doubt that very soon an exaggerated esteem for the celibacy of the clergy made its appearance in the Church. This undue reverence for the unmarried state can be largely traced to the teaching of the Gnostics in the second century, and somewhat later to the doctrines of the Montanists. Various decrees of early Councils opposed or attempted to mitigate these ascetic innovations. Of these, the action of the Council of Nicea, A. D. 325, is the most memorable. But in spite of these attempts to relieve the clergy of the heavy burden which the sterner and more ascetic teachers, such as Hippolytus and Tertullian, insisted upon imposing upon their brethren, the principle of clerical celibacy in the Western Church steadily gained ground. Again and again in all countries in the West ecclesiastical history is never weary of calling attention to the frequent revolts and numberless evasions on the part of the clergy who would not submit to the harsh law of the Church; but revolt and evasion, though repeated a hundred times, were of no avail. The responsible heads of the Church, with scarcely an exception, followed the lead of Hippolytus and Tertullian; to this long line of noted Church leaders all through the Christian centuries the principle of clerical celibacy was the keystone of the Church's influence and power. The ecclesiastical, or, as it was more generally termed, the sacerdotal, order must know neither nation nor family. It must be separated from all common human sympathies, interests, affections. It must own no ties or obligations save those of the Catholic Church. It was a grand, even a magnificent, conception, but to those who look on the work of the Catholic Church from a different standpoint it was a conception erroneous and misleading. Towards the end of the eleventh century, in the course of the great revival of religion which belonged to that period, the principle of clerical celibacy was most positively enforced under the authority of the famous Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.), and from that time until the Reformation of the sixteenth century, was sternly and rigidly required all through the Western Churches. In the East this principle of clerical celibacy was never pressed with the same inflexible rigor, and to this day, while forbidding marriage to her bishops, her changeless Church allows her presbyters to marry.
Another of Pope Callistus' actions in the matter of Church discipline, which had far-reaching consequences, was strangely enough vehemently complained of and opposed by Hippolytus. The laws of the Roman Empire, it is well known, placed an insurmountable barrier between freemen and slaves, and the marriage laws which forbad any legal union between a free woman and a slave were very stringent. Such marriages, already forbidden by the Julian and Papian law, were declared null and void by the Emperors Marcus and Commodus. Now Callistus granted ecclesiastical sanction to such unions in the case of believers. Hippolytus argued that such Church sanction, that such a granting of the Church's blessing to unequal marriages, was equivalent to an invitation to unchastity. It is difficult to understand by what reasoning the great ascetic teacher came to such a conclusion. Its effect really was in some measure to break down the walls which existed between slaves and free persons in the Empire. Henceforth in the Roman Empire there existed a vast society in whose ever-increasing ranks freemen and slaves were to be equals. In the society of the Christian Church the highest ecclesiastical offices were now and again conferred upon slaves and freed-men, as was the case with Callistus himself.
It seems from Hippolytus' language that Pope Callistus was the first, certainly the first among Roman bishops, who ruled that the Church's blessing might be given to these marriages between the two classes of slaves and free. The moment when this great movement in the direction of the overthrow of slavery was adopted by the Church, was the time of quietness which set in after Severus' death, when for a considerable period the Church was comparatively free from persecution. That such a startling innovation upon the ancient marriage customs of the Empire was considered desirable and practical by the rulers of the Church is a striking testimony to the rapid progress of the new religion in all ranks of Roman society.
It is from Hippolytus' writings that we derive our knowledge of the earliest developments of the Sabellian and Patripassian heresy, a heresy which grew up at a very early date in the heart of the Catholic Church. In some of the writings of the earliest Fathers, notably in Ignatius, we come upon expressions dealing with the Persons of the ever blessed Trinity which would scarcely have been used in the clear-cut definitions of the theology of the next century, the age of Councils, by men like Athanasius. Some of these expressions were probably, in the first instance, unduly pressed, and hence the strange views which were developed into what is termed Sabellian or Patripassian teaching.
It is possible that he feared that, where the State recognized no validity in the union and no legitimacy in the offspring, there would he a perpetual inducement to set at naught the ecclesiastical bond.
This widespread form of erroneous doctrine arose in the last years of the second century. Its first public teacher was Noetus of Smyrna. A disciple of his, one Epigonus, brought the doctrine of Noetus to Rome in the pontificate of Victor, A. D. 192-202. Alongside of Epigonus, Praxeas, another able teacher of the same school, worked for a time in the metropolis. When Zephyrinus was Pope, A. D. 202-18, Romenes, the disciple of Epigonus, was looked upon as the chief of this school of thought in Rome; with Romenes the famous Sabellius was associated. This last gave his name to the sect of Sabellians, or Patripassians as they came to be called. Sabellius was by birth a Libyan of the Pentapolis, who had taken up his abode in Rome. Hippolytus gives us a clear description of his curious doctrine. Epiphanius, who died A. D. 403, and Theodoret, who died A. D. 456, both of whom also discuss it, evidently mainly derived their knowledge of this heresy from the great Roman theologian of whom we are speaking. The teaching of this heretical school was as follows:
"The one supreme God is originally, or in so far as He is called Father, invisible, passionless, immortal, uncreated; but on the other side, as Son, by His own will and free self-limitation, He became man, was born of the Virgin, suffered and died, and accordingly is called 'Son' only for a certain time and only in reference to that which He experienced upon earth. The Son, or Christ, is therefore the Father veiled in the flesh, and we must certainly say that it was the Father Himself who became Man and suffered."
Hippolytus was an uncompromising opponent of this Sabellian teaching, and his fervid refutation led him into some extreme and somewhat exaggerated statements which enabled his enemies, who were many, to accuse him of being di-theistic; that is of teaching erroneously that alongside God there was a second God brought into existence, viz. the Logos or Son. It was really a baseless charge, but the rancor of theological disputes, even at that early date, led men to seek out and to find heresy even in the doctrine of the Church's noblest teachers. And, indeed, Hippolytus courted such accusations by the bitterness with which he persistently attacked Popes Zephyrinus and Callistus, whom he charged, if not with sharing, at least with sympathizing with the errors of Sabellius.
But Pope Callistus we know excommunicated Sabellius as a teacher of false doctrine. There is no doubt that in these early disputes the Catholic Church was on the side of Callistus, and that his teaching and definitions on the subject of the Divine Personality of Christ, in preference to what was advanced by Hippolytus, were maintained in the influential Roman communities. Indeed, from Hippolytus' own work it seems that the teaching of Callistus on this abstruse subject avoided two errors, that of Sabellius on the one side, who confuses the Father with the Son, and the exaggerated expressions of Hippolytus on the other, who while combating the heresy of Sabellius occasionally seems to suggest separation of the Logos from God. It will be useful, however, in this little account of an early theological dispute in the Catholic Church, to see what was the doctrine taught by Popes Zephyrinus and Callistus, which we maintain was the doctrine of the Catholic Church in the first half of the third century, on the subject of the Divine Personality of the second Person of the Trinity. Zephyrinus, advised by Callistus, came publicly before the congregation and made this confession of faith, "I know but one God, Jesus Christ, and besides Him I know no one that was born and has suffered." About fifty years later the confession of Pionius and the martyrs of Smyrna in the Decian persecution (circa A. D. 250) was to the same effect. We will give the words of these famous confessors from the "Acts" of their martyrdom. Pionius and his companions being asked, "Whom do you worship as God?" replied, " The omnipotent God who made heaven and earth, and all that they contain, whom we know through His Word Jesus Christ." Then when Asclepiades, one of Pionius' companions, was interrogated, "Whom do you worship as God?" he answered, "Christ." The judge then said, "What, then, is that another?" "No," said Asclepiades, "It is the same whom they (his companions) had confessed a little while before." When they were interrogated again at the altar of the heathen deities and again confessed that they believed in the God who made the world, the judges asked, "Are you speaking of Him who was crucified?" Pionius replied, "I speak of Him whom the Father sent for the salvation of the world."
It was thus that the Church of Rome which, to use Dollinger's words, "by its superior grandeur, antiquity, and dignity formed the center of the whole Christian world, to which all directed their eyes, with which all held communion and intercourse," without, however, asserting any special claim to enforce obedience from other Churches, slowly formulated the great doctrinal definitions of the Divine Personality of Christ, which in the next century, the age of great councils, were expressed in the great Catholic creeds and expounded in treatises by Catholic theologians such as Athanasius.
To sum up, Hippolytus, the learned Roman theologian, in the first instance, argued against and combated the Sabellian errors. In his zeal to refute what was undoubtedly false teaching he went into the other extreme, and the Popes Zephyrinus and Callistus, viewing his definitions as dangerous, corrected them; and their exposition of the doctrines of the Divine Personality of the Son, adopted by the Roman Church, was virtually identical with the language used by prominent martyrs of the Faith, such as Pionius of Smyrna and his companions about fifty years later.
The comparative reticence we have before noticed in early Christian theology in the matter of the Divine Personality of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is very marked in the works of Hippolytus. This great scholar and divine, who taught in Rome roughly from A. D. 190-230, gives to this article of faith exactly the same kind of testimony as did the yet earlier Christian writers. They bear witness to its truth, but at the same time they dwell but little upon it. Now Hippolytus has been charged by students of his earlier long-known writings with ascribing no Personality to the Holy Spirit; and the newly discovered great work we have been speaking of apparently bears out this contention, for no mention of the Holy Spirit occurs in the summary of doctrine in his Tenth Book. Still that Hippolytus did hold and teach the Divine Personality of the Third Person is clear from a passage in his treatise against Noetus of Smyrna, one of the reputed founders of the Patripassian heresy. These words are clear and most definite, and run as follows: "By means of the incarnate Logos we recognize the Father, we believe in the Son, and we adore the Holy Ghost." And again he writes: "The Father has put all things under Christ, excepting Himself and the Holy Spirit."