medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The surviving portion of Zephyrinus' entry in the so-called Liberian Catalogue (composed shortly after 352) tells us that he was bishop of Rome from 198 to 217. He succeeded pope St. Victor I and was followed by pope St. Callistus I. His entry in the _Liber Pontificalis_ says that he was a native of Rome, ascribes to him with doubtful accuracy some regulations of church practice, and says that he was buried in a separate chamber in the cemetery of Callistus (one above the so-called Chamber of the Popes has been interpreted as his). According to the tendentious _Philosophoumena_ or _Refutatio omnium haeresium_ of an Hippolytus who tends be called Hippolytus of Rome, Zephyrinus was simple and uneducated and did not do enough to please Hippolytus when it came to repressing heresies; furthermore, still according to Hippolytus, he was covetous, took bribes, and routinely allowed his even more dishonest creature, the likewise theologically naive Callistus (this is the future Callistus I), to influence his decisions to the detriment of good order in the church.
Eusebius of Caesarea (_Historia ecclesiastica_ 5. 28. 8-12) offers a rather different picture of this pope. Following the now lost anti-heretical _Smikros labyrinthos_ ("Little Labyrinth") and followed by Theodoret of Cyr[rh]us (_Haereticarum fabularum compendium_, 2. 5), he is silent about Zephyrinus' failings as alleged by Hippolytus. What he does relate is an incident in which Zephyrinus comes across as a stern but ultimately merciful disciplinarian. In Eusebius' telling a person of orthodox belief named Natalius -- in Rufinus' translation, normative for the medieval Latin West, he's called Natalis -- allowed himself to act as bishop of a community of Roman heretics in return for a hefty monthly salary. Repeated admonitory dream visions failed to dissuade him from this course. But a nightlong painful beating administered by angels led Natalius to repentance. Donning a hair shirt and sprinkling himself with ashes, he went immediately to Zephyrinus, threw himself at the latter's feet, and tearfully confessed his error. He then publicly abased himself before both clergy and laity until the entire church sought forgiveness for him. Displaying to Zephyrinus the welts from his beating, he was just barely allowed re-admittance to the communion of the faithful. (For the passage both in Eusebius' Greek and Rufinus' Latin, go to <http://archive.org/stream/p1eusebiuswerke02euse#page/502/mode/2up>.)
Zephyrinus is absent from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354. In the eighth- or ninth-century calendar of male saints in the atrium of Rome's San Silvestro in Capite <http://tinyurl.com/5harwr> he and St. Tarsicius are entered under 26. July but only Tarsicius is designated a martyr. Similarly, the ninth-century martyrologies of St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard of Saint-Germain (following the _Liber Pontificalis_, these record Zephyrinus under 26. August) do not consider him a martyr. But later medieval calendars do so to designate him and he was so designated as well both in the general Roman Calendar prior to his removal from it in 1969 and in the Roman Martyrology prior to its revision of 2001. In the latter Zephyrinus' commemoration was moved from 26. August to today (20. December), the day under which he has the first of his two entries in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology (the other is under 21. December).
Some period-pertinent images of pope St. Zephyrinus:
a) as depicted (at center, hearing Natalis' appeal for forgiveness, in the illumination in the left-hand column) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of books 9-16 of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1335; Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080, fol. 160v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7100627v/f326.item.zoom
b) as depicted (roundel at lower left) in the margin of the August calendar in the mid-fifteenth-century Hours of Louis de Savoie (betw. 1445-1450 and 1460; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 9473, fol. 10v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105326055/f32.item.r=.zoom
c) as depicted (at center, hearing Natalis' appeal for forgiveness) in a mid-fifteenth-century copy of Giovanni Colonna's _Mare historiarum_ (betw. 1447 and 1455; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 4915, fol. 211r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6000905v/f491.item.zoom
d) as depicted in a late fifteenth-century Roman breviary of French origin (after 1482; Clermont-Ferrand, Bibliothèque du patrimoine, ms. 69, fol. 536r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht4/IRHT_081379-p.jpg
e) as depicted (right margin, second from bottom; as _Sepherinus_) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CXIIIIv:
http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/left_page/18%20%28Folio%20CXIIIIv%29.pdf
Best,
John Dillon
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