P. Coustant, O.S.B., Notitia altera de S. Pontiano papa

ANOTHER NOTICE

(D. Coustant, Letters of the Roman Pontiffs, vol. I and only, p. 115.)

1. In the Bucherian Catalogue, as also in the Fossatensian and the other of the Queen of the Swedes, concerning Pontianus these things are found: Pontianus five years, two months, seven days. He lived in the times of Alexander from the consulship of Pompeianus and Pelignianus. At that time Nepotianus (read Pontianus) and Hippolytus the presbyter were banished as exiles to the noxious island of Sardinia in the consulship of Severus and Quintinianus. In the same island he was divested of office on the fourth before the Kalends of October, and in his place Anteros was ordained on the eleventh before the Kalends of December, under the aforesaid consuls, that is, those written above.

2. What discinctus ["ungirt"] means there, although there is no agreement among the learned, nevertheless they do not doubt that the death of Pontianus is declared by this word. And indeed, if discingere [to ungird] among the grammarians means the same as to deprive of office and dignity, not inaptly is the pope called discinctus whom death deprived of the pontifical dignity. Now when this is granted, it follows that Pontianus, having been ordained in the year 230, on the 22nd day of July, on Thursday, lost in the year 235, on the 28th day of September, together with his life the dignity he had undertaken. Nor is it an obstacle that in the year 230 not Pompeianus and Pelignianus, but Agricola and Clementinus held the consulship. For thus far, as I have already observed under Telesphorus, the Bucherian catalogue was composed, and in imitation of it the others, in such a way that he who compiled it, content with having noted once the consuls under whom each pontiff ended his life, avoided repeating the same in marking the beginning of their successors. And although it is established that most succeeded their predecessors under the same consuls under whom the latter died, nevertheless he was accustomed to record the beginning of these not from the same, but from the following consuls. Moreover, by the aforesaid calculation Eusebius is reconciled with himself, who writes that Pontianus held the episcopate in the Chronicle indeed for five years, and in the History for six years. For he governed the Church both for five completed years and for six uncompleted years. In passing I note here that in the Victorian canon in Bucherius, p. 34, not Pelignianus, but Felicianus is joined as colleague to the consul Pompeianus. Yet that canon must be corrected not only from the catalogue of the Roman pontiffs, but also from the ancient fragment of the consular fasti in the same Bucherius, page 247.

On the condemnation of Origen, and on the epistles of Pontianus.

1. After Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, condemned Origen,

Rome subscribed to this sentence. Jerome's words on that matter Rufinus in Book II of his Invectives reports thus: (Origen) is condemned by Bishop Demetrius... The city of Rome consents to his condemnation. She herself convenes the senate against him, not on account of novelty of doctrines, not on account of heresy, as rabid dogs now feign against him; but because they could not bear the glory of his eloquence and knowledge. Moreover, this stain of envy is branded by Jerome upon the Alexandrian, not the Roman prelate. Nor undeservedly does a man illustrious for religion and erudition apply to the Roman pontiff and his clergy what Augustine said concerning another, yet similar case: Credit was given to the letters of the council; nor indeed ought it to have been otherwise... For with a safe conscience they had believed the letters of the council; for neither was anything incredible said by men concerning other men, nor was credit given to them contrary to the Gospel... Assuredly the concord of the Churches demands, just as the Council of Nicaea, canon 5, subsequently ordained, that one excommunicated by his own bishop should not be received by others, unless his innocence be ascertained from elsewhere, until his case, having been examined afresh, is absolved. Hence, furthermore, the agreement of the Romans with Demetrius in the condemnation of Origen is excused, because, as Rufinus testifies in his Apology for Origen, books falsely attributed to Origen had been brought to Rome, or rather, as Jerome relates in Epistle 65 to Pammachius, chapter 5, certain ones of his own not sufficiently revised, in which some things were blameworthy, and which Origen, as he himself afterwards confessed in his epistle to Fabian, repented of having written. Now since the death of Demetrius is assigned to the close of the year 231, or, on a later reckoning, to the year 232, this condemnation of Origen must be said to have happened while Pontianus was pontiff, and indeed in his first years. On this matter Pontianus pronounced not alone, but with the senate, that is, with the clergy. Nor ill was that assembly of the clergy, which the ancients are wont to call the presbytery, called the senate by Jerome. For in Latin senate aptly corresponds to the Greek word πρεσβυτέριον. For the rest, that assembly is named the presbytery from the worthier part, although clerics inferior to presbyters were also accustomed to meet in it.

There are extant two epistles of Pontianus put together by Isidore the contriver, and therefore to be relegated to the class of those which he likewise forged.