Pope Calixtus II (or Calistus II) (died December 13, 1124), born Guy de Vienne, the
fourth son of William I, Count of Burgundy (1057–87), was elected Pope on February 1,
1119, after the death of Pope Gelasius II (1118–19). His pontificate was shaped by the
Investiture Controversy, which he was able to settle through the Concordat of Worms
(in 1122). Although his birth date is not known, his eldest brother was
born in 1061, therefore we can assume that Guy himself was born between
1065 and 1068.
Guy first appeared in contemporary records when, in 1088, he became the Archbishop of Vienne.
He held strong pro-Papal views about the Investiture Controversy. As archbishop,
he was appointed papal legate to France by Pope Paschal II (1099–1118); this was during
the time that Paschal II, yielding to pressure from Emperor Henry V (1105–25), was induced
to issue the Privilegium of 1111, by which he yielded much of the papal prerogatives that
had been so forcefully claimed by Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) in the Gregorian Reforms.
Wikipedia This, however, docs not exhaust the hew information put at our disposal by Mynas' discovery. In the course of an
account of the heresy of Noetus, who refused to admit any difference between the First and Second Persons of
the Trinity, our author suddenly develops a violent attack on one Callislus, a high officer of the Church, whom he
describes as a runaway slave who had made away with his master's money, had stolen that deposited with him by
widows and others belonging to the Church, and had been condemned to the mines by the Prefect of the City, to be
released only by the grace of Commodus' concubine, March.' He further accuses Callislus of leaning towards
the heresy of Noetus, and of encouraging laxity of manners in the Church by permitting the -marriage and re-marriage
of bishops and priests and concubinage among the un-married women. The heaviness of this charge lies in the
fact that this Callislus can hardly be any other than the Saint and Martyr of that name, who succeeded Zephyrinus
in the Chair of St Peter about the year 11S, and whose name is familiar to all visitors to modern Rome from the
cemetery which still bears it, and over which the work before us says he had been set by his predecessor. 1 The
explanation of these charges will be discussed when we consider the authorship of the book, but for the present it
may be noticed that they throw an entirely unexpected light upon the inner history of the Primitive Church.
Philosophumena
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