Michael Flexsenhar III: Seeking Death in a Synagogue: Satire in the Refutation of All Heresies (9.12.7-9)

In the Book 9 of his Refutation of all Heresies, the third-century polemicist conventionally called ‘Hippolytus of Rome’ makes an unusual claim about his opponent: Callistus, a domestic slave, entered a synagogue of the Jews on the Sabbath, caused a disturbance by saying he was a Christian, and so sought his own death. This claim by ‘Hippolytus’ has received only passing attention in scholarship. While some commentators use the reference to the “synagogue of the Jews” to elucidate contemporaneous Jewish worship practices, the Jews’ legal status in Rome, or Callistus’s own relationship to those Jews, what has been overlooked is the thoroughly satirical nature of Hippolytus’s account. This essay explains that the claim about Callistus seeking his own death in a would-be suicide attempt is not only a counter-claim on his status as a martyr. It is character assassination modeled on Second Sophistic satire. The larger story about Callistus in the Refutation parallels Lucian of Samosata’s ‘slave satires’. The similarity to Death of Peregrinus is especially strong. The Refutation’s satirical story complicates any attempt to reconstruct the history, whether of Callistus or the Jews. The claim against Callistus does, however, reveal social conflict and tension between Roman Christians and Jews at that time—at least as envisioned by the author ‘Hippolytus.’ The idea that a person like Callistus would enter a synagogue gathering and proclaim himself to be a Christian is itself ridiculed. The story thus helps us plot yet another voice in the “parting of the ways.”