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Athanasius, and an Augustin.

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Jerome, among his hundred and thirty-six church celebrities, of

the first four centuries, brings in only four Roman bishops, Clement, Victor, Cornelius, and Damasus,

and even these wrote only a few epistles. Hippolytus, in his Philosophumena, written about 225,

even presents two contemporaneous popes, St. Zephyrinus (202–218) and Callistus (St. Calixtus

I., 218–223), from his own observation, though not without partisan feeling, in a most unfavorable

light; charging the first with ignorance and avarice,

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27 the second with scandalous conduct (he

is said to have been once a swindler and a fugitive slave rescued from suicide), and both of them

with the Patripassian heresy. Such charges could not have been mere fabrications with so honorable

an author as Hippolytus, even though he was a schismatic rival bishop to Callistus; they must have

had at least some basis of fact.

§ 51. Chronology of the Popes.

I. Sources.

The principal sources for the obscure chronology of the early bishops of Rome are the catalogues

of popes. These are divided into two classes, the oriental or Greek, and the occidental or Latin.

To the first belong the lists of Hegesippus and Irenaeus, from the second century, that of Eusebius

(in his Chronicle, and his Church History), and his successors from the fourth century and later.

This class is followed by Lipsius and Harnack. The second class embraces the catalogues of

Augustin (Ep. 55, al. 165), Optatus of Mileve (De schism. Donat. II. 3), the "Catalogus

Liberianus" (coming down to Liberius, 354), the "Catalogus Felicianus" (to 530), the "Catalogus

Cononianus," based perhaps on the "Catalogus Leoninus" (to 440), the "Liber Pontificalis"

(formerly supposed to be based on the preceding catalogues, but according to the Abbé Duchesne

and Waitz, older than the "Liber Felicianus"). The "Liber Pontif." itself exists in different MSS.,

and has undergone many changes. It is variously dated from the fifth or seventh century.

To these may be added the "Martyrologia" and "Calendaria" of the Roman Church, especially the

"Martyrologium Hieronymianum," and the "Martyrologium Romanum parvum" (both of the

seventh or eighth century).

The inscriptions on the papal tombs discovered in Rome since 1850, contain names and titles, but

no dates.

On the "Catalogus Liberianus," see especially the critical essay of Mommsen "Ueber de

Chronographen des Jahres 354," in the "Transactions of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences,"

Philos. histor. Section, vol. I. (1850), p. 631 sqq. The text of the Catalogue is given, p. 634–’37,

and by Lipsius, 

Chronologie der röm. Bischöfe,

 Append. p. 265–268. The oldest MSS. of the "Liber

Pontificalis" date from the seventh and eighth centuries, and present a text of a.d. 641, but with

many variations. "

Mit wahrer Sicherheit,

" says Waitz, "

gelangen wir in der Geschichte des Papsthums nicht über das 7te

Jahrhundert hinauf.

"

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Cardinal Newman says (Apologia, p. 407): "The see of Rome possessed no great mind in the whole period of persecution.

Afterwards for a long time it had not a single doctor to show. The great luminary of the western world is St. Augustin; he, no

infallible teacher, has formed the intellect of Europe." Dean Stanley remarks (Christian Institutions, p. 241): "There have been

occupants of the sees of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Canterbury who have produced more effect on the mind of Christendom

by their utterances than any of the popes."

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He calls him in the ninth book of the Philosophumenon, an 

ἀνήρ ἰδιώτης καὶ αἰσχροκέρδης .

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Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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II. Works.

Phil. Jaffé: Regesta Pontificum Romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad Ann. 1198. Berolini 1851, ed.

secunda correcta et aucta auspiciis Gul. Wattenbach. Lips. 1881 sqq. Continued by Potthast

from 1198–1304, and supplemented by Harttung (Bd. I. a.d. 748–1198, Gotha 1880).

R A. Lipsius: 

Chronologie der Röm. Bischöfe bis zur Mitte des 4ten Jahrh.

 Kiel, 1869. Comp. Hort’s review of this

book in the "Academy" for Sept. 15, 1871. Lipsius: 

Neue Studien zur Papstchronologie,

 in the "Jahrbücher

für Protest. Theol." Leipz. 1880 (pp. 78–126 and 233–307). Lipsius denies that Peter ever was

at Rome.

Abbé L. Duchesne: 

Étude sur le Liber Pontificalis.

 Paris, 1887. 

La date et les recensions du Liber Pontificalis.

 1879

. Le

Liber Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire

. Paris, 1884 and 1889, 2 vols. 4° (with facsimiles).

Adolf Harnack: 

Die Zeit des

Ignatius

und die Chronologie der antiochenischen Bischöfe bis Tyrannus

, Leipz. 1878 (p. 73).

G. Waitz: 

UEber die verschiedenen Texte des Liber Pontificalis,

 in the "Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche

Geschichtskunde," IV; and his review of Duchesne, and Lipsius, in H. v. Sybel’s "Histor.

Zeitschrift" for 1880, p. 135 sqq.

The oldest links in the chain of Roman bishops are veiled in impenetrable darkness. Tertullian

and most of the Latins (and the pseudo-Clementina), make Clement (Phil. 4:3), the first successor

of Peter;

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 but Irenaeus, Eusebius, and other Greeks, also Jerome and the Roman Catalogue,

give him the third place, and put Linus (2 Tim. 4:21), and Anacletus (or Anincletus), between him

and Peter.

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 In some lists Cletus is substituted for Anacletus, in others the two are distinguished.

Perhaps Linus and Anacletus acted during the life time of Paul and Peter as assistants or presided

only over one part of the church, while Clement may have had charge of another branch; for at that

early day, the government of the congregation composed of Jewish and Gentile Christian elements

was not so centralized as it afterwards became. Furthermore, the earliest fathers, with a true sense

of the distinction between the apostolic and episcopal offices, do not reckon Peter among the bishops

of Rome at all; and the Roman Catalogue in placing Peter in the line of bishops, is strangely

regardless of Paul, whose independent labors in Rome are attested not only by tradition, but by the

clear witness of his own epistles and the book of Acts.

Lipsius, after a laborious critical comparison of the different catalogues of popes, arrives

at the conclusion that Linus, Anacletus, and Clement were Roman presbyters (or presbyter-bishops

in the N. T. sense of the term), at the close of the first century, Evaristus and Alexander presbyters

at the beginning of the second, Xystus I. (Latinized: Sixtus), presbyter for ten years till about 128,

Telesphorus for eleven years, till about 139, and next successors diocesan bishops.

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Or at least the first appointed by Peter. Tertullian De Praescr. HaeR.C. 32 "Romanorum Clementem a Petro ordinatum."

The Apost. Const. VII. 6 make Linus (Comp. 2 Tim. 4:21) the first bishop, appointed by Paul, Clement the next, appointed by

Peter. According to Epiphanius (Haer. XXVII. 6) Clement was ordained by Peter, but did not enter upon his office till after the

death of Linus and Anacletus.

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The Catalogue of Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. III. 3, 3) down to his own time (a.d. 177) is this: The apostles Peter and Paul, Linos,

Anacletos, Clement, Evaristus, Alexander, Xystos, Telesphoros, who died gloriously as a martyr, Hyginos, Pios, Aniketos, Soter,

Eleutheros, who then held "the inheritance of the episcopate in the twelfth place from the apostles." Irenaeus adds: "In this order

and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles and the preaching of the truth have come down to us."

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Langen (l. c .p. 100 sqq.) carries the line of Roman presbyter-bishops down to Alexander, and dates the monarchical

constitution of the Roman church (i.e. the diocesan episcopacy) from the age of Trajan or Hadrian. Irenaeus (in Euseb. V. 27)

calls the Roman bishops down to Anicetus (154) 

πρεσβύτεροι.

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