Calixte Ier

Calixte (or Calliste , then Holy Calixte ) is the sixteenth Pape of Rome, born in 155 of a family of Esclave S of Greek origin which lived the district of the Trastevere to Rome. Its festival is celebrated the October 14th.

Its name means in the “most beautiful” Greek ( kallistos ). It became Christian at the adulthood. He worked with the service of a senior official of the emperor Commode, named Carpophore, which was also Christian. Its Master charged it with managing his goods. In business connection with the Jewish community of Rome, it made bad operations, panicked, escaped, finally was caught up with and locked up in a dungeon.

Carpophore, which carried much regard to him, made it slacken, thinking that he would manage to recover the lost money. To this end, Calixte penetrated in the synagog one day of Sabbath to claim the money that one owed him. The Jewish community put it at the door and delivered it to the Tuscianus prefect by denouncing it like Christian.

He was condemned to the sulfur mines of Sardinia. He thus worked during three years with the extraction of the ore, showing devotion near the other convicts.

The mistress of the emperor of the time, Commodus (Convenient), knew the Calixte young person, and obtained that it was released and freed towards 190, it spent a few years to Antium to the south-east of Rome on mission for the Pape Victor Ier. Zéphyrin, as of its election like pope in 199, called it at its sides, doing it its personal secretary like archdeacon of the city.

For Hippolyte, one of the most cultivated priests of Rome and most intelligent, it is about “ambitious, covetous, degenerate”. The violence of the tone lets foresee that Calixte is without any doubt a character who does not leave indifferent. But it is necessary to be wary of the liveliness of Hippolyte, whose objectivity is more than doubtful. Itself was candidate with the succession of Zéphyrin but was seen preferring Calixte in 217, under the reign of the emperor Caracalla.

Calixte was the creator of the first Christian cemetery which was built in the tuff on the Via Appia and which bears today the name of “Catacombe of Saint-Calixte”. He inaugurates also a new habit: from now on, three times per annum, saturdays which precede the harvests, the grape harvest and the beginning of the gathering of olives, one observe a fast in order to attract the blessing of the sky.

During its five years pontificate he recognized like valid the marriage between free slaves and women and accepted the remarriage of the widowers like their possible entry in the clergy. Moreover it made prevail the use to exonerate all the sins. It is finally an experienced financier, phenomenon finally rather rare with the head of the Roman Church, and which gives to the latter an unequalled prosperity hitherto.

He died the October 14th 222 in his district of the Trastevere, victim of a riot directed against the Christians, at the time of the assassination of the emperor Élagabal. Défenestré, then thrown in a well, covered with debris, it was withdrawn from it by a priest a fifteen or so days afterwards. One buried it with haste, with the foot of the staircase of the catacomb of Calépode on the Via Aurelia . It is to date the first bishop of Rome which one found the burial.

Thereafter, the Popes (until Eutychien in 283), were buried in the funerary room which is reserved to them in the “Catacombe of Saint-Calixte”, except for Corneille.

It is at the 4th century that Calixte was declared Martyr then canonized.

External bonds

http://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saints_2014.html

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