Download PDF | The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis) The Ancient Biographies of First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715 Revised edition, translated with introduction and notes by RAYMOND DAVIS, Liverpool University Press 1989.
200 Pages
PREFACE
Itis a pleasure to record how unstintingly I have been assisted at every stage of this work by friends and colleagues. Above all Dr Margaret Gibson's patience and endurance in reading and criticizing various drafts of everything in this volume have been of inestimable help. I am also much indebted to two other members of the editorial committee of this series, Dr John Matthews, under whose guidance I originally began research into aspects of the LP and who has never failed to encourage me, and Dr Henry Chadwick, whose sagacity has removed blemishes and added jewels in the introduction and the glossary.
I owe much also to the Master and Fellows of University College, Oxford, and particularly to Mr George Cawkwell, to the Director, Librarian and staff of the British School at Rome, where amongst other work part of this volume was prepared, to the British Academy which contributed to my support whilst I was there, to Dr Samuel Barnish, to Mr Jonathan Doria Pamphilj and Dr Anthony Luttrell. They deserve and have my gratitude, as do my colleagues in Belfast: especially Professor Alan Astin who has advised me on the introduction and encouraged me throughout, Dr Brian Campbell, Dr Margaret Mullett, Dr Clemence Schultze (who generously made her word processor available for the completion of this work), Dr Brian Scott, and Dr Anna Wilson, who have all helped in the elucidation of Obscurities in the text, and Miss Janis Boyd who introduced me to the art of word processing and herself typed much of the first draft of the translation. I am also grateful to Mrs Sandra Mather of the University of Liverpool for her skilled work on the maps. It goes without saying that for errors which remain I bear sole responsibility.
PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION
This volume has now been fully revised in the light of years of further study, of the work involved in preparing the two volumes in which I translated and commented on the rest of the LP down to A.D. 891 (see Bibliography), of the comments of reviewers, and especially of discussions with my former colleague John Curran. The translation has been carefully emended, and in places the underlying text has been reconsidered. Some changes have been made to achieve even greater consistency in the use of equivalents for technical language, and (be it acknowledged) to remove some errors. As in my two later volumes, the Vignoli section numbers have been inserted (on these see the end of the Introduction). In the translation the presentation has been redesigned in an attempt to distinguish more clearly the status and value of additions to the standard LP text by the use of different fonts. The glossary has been revised, and extended by about a third in length. The bibliography has been revised and extended. Appendix 3 now contains even more material from the epitomes of the first edition. My greatest sorrow is that Alan Astin and Margaret Gibson, to both of whom I owe so much, are no longer alive to see this work.
INTRODUCTION
The Liber Pontificalis is the title now universally given to the collection of Latin biographies of the Roman bishops once generally cited as the work of Anastasius, librarian of the Roman see in the ninth century; in fact this title occurs in no good manuscript—the work seems originally to have had none. It is just over a century since Louis Duchesne issued the first volume of his magisterial edition. It is not too much to say that his vast labour (to which Mommsen paid tribute in his own edition a few years later) made the material contained in these biographies fully usable for the first time to students of Christian archaeology and art, Roman topography, and the social and economic history of Italy and the papacy in the late antique and early medieval periods.
Itis hoped that this volume will make the contents of the first 90 lives in the Liber Pontificalis (hereafter, LP) available in a reliable form to readers unable to cope with its often extraordinary Latinity. For the increasingly fuller biographies from A.D. 715 (the point to which Mommsen's published text goes) down to 891 (where the LP properly so called finally breaks off) the reader may now refer to my Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes and Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes, published in this same series, which provide translation and full commentary. The present volume covers about one quarter of the total text, but it would be impossible to provide an extended commentary within the limits of a single volume. Duchesne's commentary is several times longer than the text itself, and the century since his work was published has produced a vast amount of material which would need to be added. Nor has there been scope to provide more than the bare minimum in this introduction and in the glossary to guide the reader on the value and reliability of the work. Readers interested in the activities of a particular pope will consult a work such as Kelly's Oxford Dictionary of the Popes to complete and correct the material given by the LP; and for a full commentary on each of the biographies readers will turn to Duchesne's commentary (in French). The bibliography should be consulted for details of these and other relevant works. Reasons of space have also precluded any index of the huge number of personal and place names in the text; the glossary and index of churches may supply the deficiency in part, but the reader wishing for more should consult the index of Mommsen (covering the lives here translated) or that in the third volume of Duchesne.
EARLY PAPAL CHRONICLES
The origins and history of the Roman bishopric evoked interest at a very early date. The work of Eusebius in the early fourth century preserves the successions of bishops at Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, as well as Rome. No doubt these lists were all much earlier compilations but only for the Roman list is there evidence to prove its existence as early as the second century (it is given in the fragments of Hegesippus and in Irenaeus). The succession in the prestigious see at the imperial capital was of deep interest soon after the middle of that century, in part because of the crucial role it played in polemics against gnosticism with its notions of private succession. But it is not clear what exact position was held by the owners of the earliest names on the list before a monarchical episcopate had emerged at Rome.
As time passed the list was continued and chronological indications were given, with the curious consequence that for much of the third century papal chronology can be reconstructed more exactly than that of the Roman emperors themselves. This list reaches us in two forms, in the 'Index Catalogue' (see p. xx) and, more importantly, in a section of the work of the anonymous 'Chronographer of A.D. 354^; the latter form is known as the 'Liberian Catalogue' after the bishop, Liberius, who held the see at the date this Chronography was completed. Apart from the names of the bishops and the chronological indications, the Chronographer gave, albeit very sparingly, some additional historical information.
THE LIBER PONTIFICALIS
This information was included almost verbatim in a later work by an author who found in it inspiration to search out (or sometimes, it must be acknowledged, invent) additional material. In this way he not merely brought the information down to his own times but also transformed what had been little more than a catalogue of names and dates into a real series of biographies, which later writers would in turn continue.
His sources of additional information were clearly limited—snippets of Rufinus and Jerome, and a fair amount of apocryphal material: but amongst this farrago he was willing to include matter of great value which would not otherwise have been preserved, most notably the endowment catalogues (church plate, lighting equipment and landed estates for revenue) of a large number of churches founded from Constantine's time onwards in Rome or elsewhere in central Italy.
His finished compilation he foisted on to his readers as the work of Damasus, bishop from 366 to 384, and prefaced it with two letters: one from Jerome requesting information on the Roman bishops and a reply from Damasus introducing the lives that follow. Those letters (translated before life 1) are certainly apocryphal. The extraordinarily bad imitation of the epistolary style (which the translator has made no attempt to reproduce) is alone enough to exclude Jerome and Damasus as authors.
Rejection of those letters removes any evidence that the LP was first compiled in the fourth century. When did the compiler put pen to paper? The dating arguments are complicated, and a brief summary of them will be given later (pp. xlv-xlvii). For the moment it is enough to state that the LP went through two editions not far apart in time. The earlier of them contained the lives down to A.D. 530, and was presumably completed soon after; it does not survive as such, though we have two epitomes made from it (extracts translated in Appendix 3). The second edition (the one here translated) reworked the earlier lives and continued the series to the middle of Silverius (536—537); it was produced no later than the 540s.
The work was then left aside, it seems, for two or three generations before anyone took it up again. It may have been in the time of Honorius (625—638) or shortly afterwards that continuations were again made to the work long suspended. From this point on there is no real doubt that we are dealing with a series of contemporary additions. Each life was added to the LP soon after its subject's demise. Some continuators did not wait even for that: the Venerable Bede (who is the first author ever to cite material from the LP) uses material from the biography of the pope who was still alive at the time Bede was writing. In this way the LP was kept going through to 870 (the already mentioned librarian Anastasius may have been one of its last continuators; there is also a brief fragment dealing with the events of 885—886). Much later, efforts were made to continue the work even further, but nothing could then be done for the popes from the late ninth century to the middle of the eleventh beyond the provision of a catalogue with little more than their names and the length of their tenure of the see. With subsequent developments, which took one form of the LP as late as 1431, we are not here concerned. The large number of surviving manuscripts vouches for the work's popularity in the middle ages. From the time of Bede onwards it became the source for much western medieval knowledge and prejudice about the earlier history of the church: most of Dante's information on the early popes is derived from it, directly or otherwise (compare Inferno XI 8 with life 52, that of Anastasius II).
THE COMPILER AND HIS CONTINUATORS
Who was the original sixth-century author and who were the continuators? The manuscripts offer no guidance beyond the impossible attribution to Damasus. At any rate for the lives translated here the writers remain anonymous. There is little doubt that all were Roman, if not always by birth, at least by affection and domicile. They have not merely an interest in, but a positive enthusiasm for, the bishopric of whose occupants they are the chroniclers. Their product, certainly no work of literature, excludes members of any cultured literary élite; their Latinity equally rules out men of great education.
Where the information they give must depend on written sources and not on contemporary knowledge or legend (as particularly with all the material on church buildings and repairs, and the gifts and endowments made for their upkeep) the sources are of a kind that can mostly easily be supposed to have been available to relatively junior officials (the *middle management) in the papal bureaucracy, whether laymen or, more probably, minor clerics—precisely the kind of men whose level of education would have been enough to enable them to do their day to day jobs but not to write literary Latin. Our authors are best imagined as humble clerks (conceivably, keepers of archives at the Lateran vestiarium) working for the Roman church and devoted to it, interested in its history though lacking the knowledge to see that history in its full context, concerned about the honour of the bishopric and the damage which emperors and even some of its own incumbents seemed to do to it, and taking sides (*the Roman populus usually does" is the comment on the events of 687 at 86:2) in disputes over papal elections.
Disputed elections and their consequences may have provided one element in the motivation of the compilers, if affection for their church was not enough to justify their labours. There existed an earlier series of papal biographies down to Symmachus (498—514); only the last life has survived intact (translated in Appendix 2), but it is enough to show that its author's sympathies lay entirely with Symmachus' defeated rival Laurence. The LP's first compiler took the opposite point of view, so his account shows no contact with this *Laurentian Fragment! (whether he used material from the lost earlier lives we cannot say). Perhaps he decided to take up his pen precisely to display his prejudices. The composition in the early sixth century of two sets of papal biographies which take opposing points of view can be no coincidence. Factional strife was nothing new to the streets of Rome; that it should now focus on papal elections (first in 366) need not surprise. But the events of the early sixth century were traumatic: the dispute between Symmachus and Laurence for possession of the see split the clergy and Roman senate. There were wider political ramifications; Symmachus had been elected by those dissatisfied with Anastasius II's efforts at a rapprochement with Byzantium (whence the view taken of this pope in the LP), and at first king Theoderic supported him. But the pro-eastern faction did all it could to achieve his replacement by Laurence, and when Symmachus fled back to Rome rather than face charges before Theoderic at Ravenna it seemed like an admission of guilt, and in 502 the Laurentians persuaded Theoderic to appoint a visitor to the see. Although a synod acquitted Symmachus, the grounds on which it did so (that it was not competent to pass judgment on the pope) would not please everyone, least of all Theoderic, who did not interfere when Laurence returned to Rome. For four years Laurence held the Lateran and all the Roman churches except St Peter's, while Symmachus was confined by street violence as a prisoner in the Vatican. It was only because by 506 Theoderic was taking an anti-eastern political stand that he ordered the surrender of all the churches in Rome to Symmachus; Laurence tactfully withdrew.
As we shall see (p. xxiv), the dispute gave birth to literary forgeries designed to support Symmachus' claim. There is no reason why Laurence should not have been similarly supported in his claim to hold the authentic tradition against Symmachus. We know that until its destruction in 1823 St Paul's basilica included Laurence in its famous series of papal portraits, and it may be that the series was originally painted in his time to assert his place in the papal succession. The Laurentian Fragment was produced after Symmachus' death, but as it makes clear there were those who had never been reconciled to him. It is easy to suppose that the victorious side would also continue its propaganda. Here, surely, is the niche in which our pro-Symmachus LP belongs. And when the compiler of the LP's second edition decided to extend the lives beyond 530, he too may have been influenced by partisanship: he had supported Dioscorus against Boniface II (530—532) and makes no effort to disguise his antipathy to the victor.
Where they are recording strictly contemporary events the compilers betray their lack of access to the higher circles, the actual participants in events and the real decision-makers of the Roman church. Typical in this regard is the lengthy and highly circumstantial account of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, at Constantinople in 681, given in life 81 (Agatho). Calendar dates are given for the various sessions of the council, and the chief events at each stage are carefully noted: the whole could almost be mistaken for a summary of the Acts of the Council (except for the delightful remark about the descent of black spiderwebs symbolizing the collapse of filthy heresy). But when all this is compared with the genuine Acts of that Council, we find that while many of the dates are correct, many others are omitted, and that while many genuine events are narrated, they have been assigned to the wrong dates. Much of the detail is inaccurate, yet in general terms the LP's account does reflect knowledge of the actual events. The explanation seems to be that the contemporary continuator had listened to an account given by a perhaps junior member of the Roman delegation to the Council after his return home, and the informant had produced a version based on inadequate notes supplemented from memory. Now the real Acts of the Council were soon available at Rome (82:2); but our compiler's status in the church was not one which gave him access to this material.
For the real history we go to the Acts. But the LP's account retains a very particular value: in it we see what might become commonly known at a lower clerical and social level—the very kind of knowledge which would do more to form public opinion than the precise truth would ever do. Similarly no one today believes that Constantine was cured of leprosy by pope Silvester and baptized by him at Rome (34:2,13); but the story was believed throughout the middle ages and to the end of the sixteenth century, if not later—without it, the inscription still on the base of the Lateran obelisk and the murals in the Lateran Baptistery are incomprehensible. The LP is the earliest account of the story and provides proof that (whatever its ultimate origins) this was the popular version at Rome by the early sixth century. What was believed, whether of recent events or of the more distant past, is of as much importance to the historian as the truth.
THE VALUE OF THE EARLY LIVES
With that point in mind we may now begin to appreciate the LP's value. Signs that the original author has firsthand acquaintance with the events described begin only at the very end of the fifth century. The lives from Leo I (440—461) to Anastasius II (496—498) contain some curious muddles which are best understood as material half remembered from oral tradition, for instance, the confused account of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and the various references to the schism of Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople. What are we to make of other material in these fifth-century lives, and of all the material in those of popes who had died long before the lifetime of the first compiler?
THE TOMBS OF ST PETER AND THE EARLY ROMAN BISHOPS
The description of St Peter's tomb rebuilt by Constantine as a five-foot copper cube (34:16) could still be taken as genuine until the Vatican excavations of the 1940s showed that the rather cramped space beneath the high altar of the basilica could never have afforded room for any such construction. But the LP's account retains value—negatively, as showing that by the early sixth century all genuine knowledge of what lay below the surface had been lost, but perhaps positively, as reflecting a guess made and popular belief about the subterranean levels consistent, presumably, with what was then visible at surface level—and this long before the reconstruction of the whole area of the shrine about 591 (alluded to in Gregory I, 66:4), let alone before the whole shrine was pillaged and largely destroyed by the Saracens in August 846.
In this context we should also consider the LP's references to the pre-Constantinian shrine. The author evidently believed that Peter had been buried where the shrine later stood, and he describes (1:6) this location as on the Via Aurelia close to the Triumphal territory (i.e. in the rather wide sweep of territory west of the Tiber bounded on the south by the Via Aurelia and on the north by the Via Triumphalis), and to Nero's palace on the Vatican (perhaps a reminiscence of the Circus of Gaius and Nero and adjoining buildings—Constantine's basilica would eventually overlap the site of the Circus, though it did not, as was once thought, make use of it as foundation for two of its walls), at the temple of Apollo (unexplained; the fact that a shrine of Cybele stood somewhere in the area is irrelevant, and it should be recalled just how small an area around St Peter's has yet been excavated). He then tells us that Aneclitus (5:2), whom he dates A.D. 84—95, was responsible for the memoria of Peter, along with burial places for the bishops. Now it has long been known that some Kind of tomb or memorial stood on the Vatican before Constantine's time; Eusebius cites the Roman priest Gaius, who lived around 200, as mentioning the *trophies' of Peter on the Vatican and of Paul on the Ostian Way. And the excavations which refuted the LP's description of the Constantinian shrine did reveal that a shrine was built on the spot around 165; no doubt this is what Gaius was referring to, and no doubt this provided the focus round which the architects of Constantine's basilica had to work. The date 165 would fall historically in the pontificate of Anicetus (even if the Liberian Catalogue and the LP date him 150-153); hence it has been assumed that as late as the sixth century a tradition survived that Anicetus built the shrine, and that the LP confused him with the similarly named Aneclitus. Such a use of LP material is unsound. Certainly its author believed there was a shrine before Constantine's basilica was built; but he had no clue who constructed it. His reasoning was this: it must have been built as soon as possible after Peter's crucifixion; it ought to be attributed to an individual whose name he knows; he knows no names of Roman Christians in the first century apart from the bishops; it might be thought unseemly for a bishop personally to build a shrine; the work must therefore be assigned to one who only later became a bishop; but Peter's immediate successors (Linus, Cletus and Clement) had already, according to our author's scheme of things, been ordained bishops by Peter and were thus excluded; Aneclitus was next on his list. He no more knew that the shrine had been built in the time of Anicetus than he knew that his Aneclitus was in any case a mirage—a duplication of Cletus made long before his time.
Nor did Aneclitus, Anicetus or anyone else provide burial places on the Vatican for Peter's successors. The LP's author had genuine records of the burial places of the bishops from the early third century: these details came to him from calendars included, like the Liberian Catalogue, in the compilation made by the Chronographer of 354 (see p. xii), and could have been confirmed from whatever form of the Hieronymian Martyrology was known at Rome in his own time. For the earlier popes he was at a loss; only two could be accounted for. Legends had already wrongly identified Alexander (7) with one of a group of martyrs culted on the Via Nomentana on 3 May, and of Clement (4) it was believed that he had been exiled to, and died in, the Crimea (this remains unexplained: it may be that there was a genuine martyr there named Clement who came wrongly to be identified with the pope— this is yet another case where familiarity with legend remains important: the whole story is depicted in the surviving ninth-century murals at S Clemente in Rome). Failing information, the author could have remained reticent about the unknown burial places. That was not his method. 'Formulaic' material throughout the lives, when not available, should be supplied. Where could be intrinsically a more suitable location for the early burials than the site on which Constantine would one day build St Peter's—the precise location of so many papal burials from the time of Leo I in 461 and thus in the compiler's own time? 'The excavators in the 1940s and subsequently have found nothing around the apostle's shrine to confirm the statements in the LP, and any expectation that further excavation (were it possible) will one day uncover these early burials is misplaced. Were it to happen it would merely mean that the author made a lucky guess.
THE COMPILER'S CHRONOLOGY
Since the author had genuine information about the calendar dates of most papal burials (from the same sources) from the early third century, it was desirable to complete the earlier lives in this respect too. No record existed (in all probability none was ever kept) of the dates on which the early bishops had died. Dates could be supplied for Clement and Alexander thanks to the liturgical observances referred to above. The joint festival of Peter and Paul on 29 June would conveniently start the list; the author was not to know that this was not a genuine anniversary. (See Appendix 1; the origin of this celebration remains obscure, and the notion that on 29 June 258 there took place a transfer of relics to the shrine on the Via Appia has little to commend it, despite the legend assigned in the LP to the time of Cornelius, 251—253, about a transfer away from that location.) The remaining information did not exist; the author appears simply to have scattered the names around the calendar. There is no discernible principle, no known earlier source, and no way that the dates can be reconciled with the lengths of each pontificate given in the LP itself in years, months and days. Eventually these invented dates, with minor variations, would be used by Ado, the ninth-century bishop of Vienne, when he thought it desirable that the martyrology he was compiling should contain the names of virtually all popes down to his own time about whom there was no positive evidence of a lack of sanctity; and from Ado the dates passed into many medieval calendars. It was only in 1969 that they were expunged from the Roman Calendar—so long lasting was the ingenuity of our compiler.
The Liberian Catalogue comments that from the martyrdom of Xystus II on 6 August 258 there was an interval till the following July before a successor was chosen; meanwhile priests were in charge. Later on we are informed that after Marcellinus there was an interval (cessauit episcopatus—episcopal government ceased) of 7 years 6 months 25 days during Diocletian's persecution. These statements seem to have inspired in our compiler the idea of finishing every life with a statement of the length of the ensuing vacancy; he used that Latin formula, but to him it meant no more than 'the see was vacant". His figures are simply invented; they cannot be reconciled with the other data given, any more than with reality, at any rate until the early sixth century. Even for the interval after Xystus II, though preserving much of the information from his source, he reckons the vacancy as a mere 35 days. Could he count?
It may be remarked here that problems were caused to our compiler by the existence of a source other than the Liberian Catalogue for the early chronology, the so-called *Index Catalogue', perhaps of fifth-century date. Variant figures from this permeate at least the second edition of the LP and the situation is not made any clearer by the efforts of some later copyists to modify the chronological system. The translation makes no attempt to draw attention to such variants, or to their agreement or conflict with reality; it has seemed sufficient to translate what the compiler probably wrote and leave readers to make their own comparisons with the dates now generally accepted, inserted at the head of each life.
OTHER *FORMULAIC' MATERIAL
Each bishop is regularly ascribed a place of origin, and the name of his father is given. This information does not occur in known source material. For the bishops of the compiler's own time, these details may have been easily obtainable (the paternity of 50, Felix III, is correct), and St Peter could be safely ascribed to Bethsaida in Galilee and made son of John (i.e. Bar-Jona) on New Testament data; everything in between is probably fiction. In the one verifiable case before the sixth century, that of Innocentius (42), the LP is wrong about the father's name: Jerome (Ep. 130.16) tells us Innocentius was the son of his predecessor Anastasius I. Statements, often still made, that Victor (15) was African (and may therefore have preferred the use of Latin in a Roman church which then still used Greek), or that Damasus (39) was Spanish, should not be accepted. In passing we may note the facade of studious research the compiler tries to present when he acknowledges his inability to trace the ancestry of Hyginus (10) and Dionysius (26). At times he could clutch at straws: Xystus II (25) had long before been wrongly identified with a Pythagorean philosopher named Sextus, an idea which reached our compiler from Rufinus, and similar reasoning provides the same profession for Hyginus.
Much the same should be said of the statements about the numbers of ordinations performed by each pope. Those for Leo I (440—461) are not plausible (47:9), and it is even less likely that any earlier ones are genuine. But from the latter part of the fifth century onwards we may well have reliable and usable statistics. A good picture can be made to emerge; around 500—530 we can see what replacements were needed to keep the deacons and priests of the Roman church at full strength before the Gothic wars and the horrors then brought on Rome, whereas from the seventh century the emerging picture is one of a much smaller establishment of priests (the deacons were always supposed to be seven in number). The compiler evidently believed (and here he may have been correct) that until the time of Simplicius (468—483), the local ordinations were performed only in December; he is referring to the Ember Saturday falling in that month. These Ember days were groups of three days set aside for fasting in a particular week at each of the four seasons of the year; the LP attributes this to the third-century pope Callistus (17:2, where the spring ember days are ignored: the compiler believed that fasting at that season would already be required because of Lent, which he had already attributed to Telesphorus, 9:2). The December observance originally had no connexion with the preparation for Christmas—Advent was a later idea. Later on ordinations at the other Embertides are mentioned, particularly at that of February or March (i.e. the Saturday at the end of the first full week of Lent). The calendar date given for the ordinations in 683 incidentally proves that the summer Embertide was not then kept at Rome in the week immediately following Whit Sunday.
The ordinations of bishops, on the other hand, were not confined to any one time of year. The pope claimed the right to consecrate at Rome all bishops at least for *Suburbicarian' Italy (the more southerly of the two divisions of Italy); and lives 82, 84, 89 and 90 show the claim extended to Ravenna, Sardinia, Corsica and Ticinum (Pavia). Consequently the fact that the number of bishops consecrated, unlike the number of priests ordained, tends to increase with the passing of time can be used as an indicator of how far the popes were able to exercise the right claimed.
On one matter the original compiler was not willing to chance his arm with fiction. In the Liberian Catalogue he found synchronisms between the popes and the reigning emperors; these he generally copied, though not for Urban (222-230) where there was an obvious conflict with a story making that bishop a contemporary of Diocletian. The series reached down to Liberius (352-366) as the contemporary of Constantius II (337—361), though the latter's name has been confused with that of Constantine. He then unfortunately synchronized their respective successors Damasus (from 366) and Julian (died 363); some manuscripts prudently remove this. Wiser counsels then prevailed (he could be too easily caught out) and synchronisms with kings and emperors are resumed only near his own time (in Felix III, 50:1). For the same reason, the dating of the bishops in terms of Roman consuls is not continued beyond Liberius, until it is resumed with Symmachus whose dates, 498—514, are correctly given in terms of consular years (53:5).
THE EARLY POPES AS MARTYRS
The unfortunate truth is that too little was known in the compiler's time about the history of the Roman Church before Constantine for him to flesh out the material of the Liberian Catalogue in an adequate fashion. He could, perhaps, have made more use of martyrological material: from calendars and itineraries we know the names, burial places and anniversary days of a large number of Roman martyrs in the imperial persecutions of Christianity from Decius to Diocletian, from 250 to 305. But we know little more than that. 'Passions' were not written for Roman martyrs until reliable history had been overwhelmed by legend to such an extent that the writings emerging from the middle ages contain little trustworthy material beyond names, anniversaries and burial places. Of the earlier period we know even less; the cult of martyrs was slow to develop at Rome, and without a cult not even the barest details were remembered. But it is clear that the popular view by the sixth century was that a great deal of information was known: the legends had already taken over, supplying and supplanting history. Our author used what he could, even if impossibilities resulted: Urban, as we have seen, is made a contemporary of Diocletian, a synchronism wisely excised in many later manuscripts. Much more existed than was used; too often he could not attach stories closely enough to the lives of particular bishops. But where a pope himself was a martyr (or was believed to have been one), or where he was closely connected in reality or legend to a martyr (as pope Urban with Valerian and Caecilia), something could be used by the LP's compiler.
It is here that the LP is excellent evidence for popular belief in the early sixth century. The compiler uses some of this material in forms clearly not unlike those which have come down to us; in other cases he uses earlier forms of later legends; in others he uses material of the same kind which has not otherwise been preserved (as with Marcellinus, 30:3, where the names of his martyred companions are nowhere else recorded, but could be genuine). It is even possible to trace the developments. In the second edition of the LP all the popes down to Marcellus are claimed as martyrs except Aneclitus, Hyginus, Pius, Soter, Eleuther, Zephyrinus, Urban (a confessor) and Dionysius. Their turn would come in later legends. But the epitomes of the first edition show that slightly earlier in the sixth century a martyr's crown had not yet been assigned to Anicetus, Eutychian or Gaius. In sober history, the only successors of Peter in the first three centuries who may have been martyrs were Telesphorus (if a remark of Irenaeus, adv. haer. 3.3.3 — Eusebius, HE 5.6.4, really refers to martyrdom), Callistus (victim of an antiChristian pogrom?), Pontian (died unpleasantly in exile in Sardinia), Fabian (a prominent early victim of Decius' persecution), Cornelius (died in exile), Xystus II (beheaded in 258 shortly before his archdeacon St Laurence) and Marcellinus (controversial: even if he did not sacrifice to the pagan gods as the LP claims, he may have been somehow compromised: perhaps he handed over the scriptures and the title deeds to Roman church property a little too quickly—before, as Eusebius, HE 6.32.1, obscurely and perhaps coyly remarks, he was *overtaken' by the persecution of Diocletian).
There is no point in deploring the mendacity of a compiler who was prepared to invent material to fill the lives before his own time. We should rather be thankful that he gave the lead to the continuators who would preserve analogous and genuine information in the later lives. The historian thus has to discount a great deal of fiction in the earliest parts of the LP. But the material retains its value for bringing us into contact with beliefs held in the early sixth century by those of no great learning, with the developments taking place in the genre of hagiographical literature and with the working methods of a chronicler at that time.
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