The Lives and Times of the Popes - Saint Calixtus I – A.D. 219

Saint Calixtus I, son of Domitian, was a member of the family of Domitia. He was created 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; for 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 do 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 Christian doctrine, and destructive of that feeling of surprise affected by Protestantism when it is compelled to recognize the great power of Catholicism 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 church, 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.

- from "The Lives and Times of the Popes", by Alexis-François Artaud de Montor