Callixtus

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Callixtus is counted by Dante among the ranks of the popes of the early centuries who, with their blood, founded the primitive purity of the Church. The mention is included in a roll-call pronounced in the speech of Saint Peter within the Heaven of Paradise: the list includes Linus and Anacletus, cited immediately after the reference to the blood of Peter, and continues with Sixtus, Pius, Callixtus, and Urban. The notes to the passage specify that these are pontiffs all of whom died as martyrs for the faith: Linus and Anacletus are said to have died respectively under Vespasian and Domitian, in the first century. The form «Calisto» of the Dantean verse is the name by which Dante designates the pope whom tradition identifies as Saint Callixtus I, a martyr of the third century, placed here by the poet himself in a single sequence of martyred pontiffs set in the eighth heaven of Paradise, that of the starry heavens where the triumphant are found.