Hippolytus of Rome

Roman bishop

• Born: c. 170
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: c. 235
• Place of death: Sardinia (now in Italy)

Initiating Christian commentary on the books of the Old Testament, Hippolytus also provided the first systematic handbook regulating the ordination of the ministry and the conduct of worship. In addition, he elaborated the connections among the Greco-Roman philosophical schools and popular practices and the diversity of opinions that divided the Christian communities.

Early Life

While it remains impossible to construct an early life for Hippolytus (hihp-AHL-uht-uhs), it is possible to identify what he studied and when. It is instructive to compare his education with those of the great Alexandrians who were his contemporaries, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 220) and Origen (c. 185-c. 254). His style is more spirited and argumentative—perhaps more typical of his Western roots. Hippolytus wrote in Greek and was the last Christian author in Rome to do so. He is often thought to have been a student of Saint Irenaeus in Gaul; both tackled the subject of heresy, which at that time meant simply a variety of opinions or practices. Nevertheless, Hippolytus’s work Kata pasōn haireseōn elenkhos (The Refutation of All Heresies, 1868, also known as Against All Heresies), written before 199, took on its own character.

Two special dimensions gave focus to his thought. In order to elaborate the catalog of heresies and extend it into his own time, Hippolytus sought the intellectual foundations for that “diversity of opinions.” He looked to Greco-Roman philosophers, magicians, astronomical inquiries, and what he could learn of the inner working of the “mystery religions.”

Hippolytus’s study of astronomy and astrology preserved what had taken shape in the centuries immediately following the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. He cataloged details of horoscopes and their attempted applications as well as the calculations of the sizes of Earth and planets and their respective distances from one another. These calculations led to arithmetic considerations, including the interrelationship between numbers when expressed by letters of the alphabet and words or names. The role of magicians, with their amulets and contrivances for illusion, indicated other activities competitive with Christianity. His quotations from others’ works, extensive though disjointed, remain a principal source for studies of pre-Socratic and later ancient intellectual tendencies.

The summary of these inquiries was not the primary focus of Hippolytus’s concern, but he used his subjects’ words as a basis for his theory that the Christian intellectual formulations at odds with his own teaching originated in this environment. His conclusion is that the truth is found by a method of intellectual contrast: Let the other side speak and demonstrate its own inherent falsity. His books belong to his mature years; his method illustrates how and what he learned in his early life.

The other dimension of his formative years was the practice of the so-called apostolic tradition. In it were both patterns for administering the internal core of Christian worship and the external requirements necessary for church structure. Hippolytus’s later account of the tradition indicated the status of developments within the expanding Christianity of the second century, in which his religious practice was grounded, and the reason that in later years he critically opposed every alternative form with such vigor.

Life’s Work

Hippolytus was already a mature thinker and author when he became well known. The Roman emperor Septimius Severus (r. 193-211) initiated a Christian persecution in 202, the tenth year after his power was secured against rivals. Hippolytus’s response was a treatise on the Antichrist and a commentary on the Book of Daniel. These works illustrate how Hippolytus perceived that the Imperial demand for acts of obedience (emperor worship) violated the inhabitants of the Roman world. He reflected Greek concerns that went back to the power of the demos (urban people in ekklesia, or “assembly”). He recognized that the Roman state, with “feet of clay,” had usurped the divine prerogatives, in a manner analogous to the example first propounded in the Book of Daniel. His interpretation was cautioned by his own chronological considerations: Like others of his day, he affirmed the world to be not more than fifty-seven hundred years old, so that the millennium remained at least three hundred years in the future. His discussion of the Antichrist is the most comprehensive written in antiquity.

Severus’s persecution was severe in Alexandria, where it touched the life of an adolescent whose father was executed and who, but for his mother’s intervention, would have followed in his father’s path. That youngster was the budding biblical scholar Origen, who became, in spite of his youth, the director of the greatest Christian school. Origen spent considerable time in hiding. Accompanied by his principal benefactor, Ambrose, Origen came to Rome to hear Hippolytus speak. When Origen returned to Alexandria, Ambrose provided funding for secretarial staffing and encouraged Origen to emulate Hippolytus in the production of biblical commentaries and other works against critics of Christianity, especially those of greatest intellectual impact.

Hippolytus is known for commentaries on many biblical books. A close examination of these studies reveals an emerging New Testament. He recognized twenty-two books as authoritative: four Gospels, thirteen of Paul’s Epistles, one Acts of the Apostles, three catholic Epistles, and the Revelation. He also knew and used the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Epistle to the Hebrews, Second Peter, James, Jude, Shepherd of Hermas, Revelation of Peter, and Acts of Paul. The distinction seems to be based on what was allowed to be read in “our churches” and what, while proper for private reading, could not be publicly used because such had come into being “in our own times.”

In the period of Severus’s persecution and the following relative prosperity for the Church, Zephyrinus was bishop of Rome (198-217). By the early third century, urban Rome counted some one million people, with thirty to forty thousand estimated to be Christian. This number was spread throughout the metropolis and not located in any single area. The tradition of “house churches,” which goes back before the Constantinian revolution in 325, provides evidence for this diversity of location, as does the development of catacomb burial grounds.

Hippolytus described Zephyrinus as “an ignorant and illiterate individual,” one “unskilled in ecclesiastical definitions,” “accessible to bribes and covetous,” and “incapable of forming his own judgment or of discerning the designs of others.” The bishop also apparently represented a theological stance, relative to the interrelationship of Father and Son within the Christian Godhead, which was at odds with Hippolytus’s understanding, so that there were continual disturbances among the diverse Christians of the capital. The theoretical formulation developing during the third century that there was but one bishop for each conurbation prevented the ancient acknowledgment that Hippolytus was a rival bishop in Rome itself. In modern times, he receives the designation “first antipope.”

His principal rival was Callistus, also known as Calixtus, who became bishop of Rome on the death of Zephyrinus. During the reign of the emperor Commodus (180-192) and his urban prefect Sejus Fuscianus, Callistus had been a slave to Carcophorus, a minor official in the Imperial household; both were Christian. Carcophorus handled money deposited by widows and others toward burial expenses, and Callistus was directed to make a profitable return on these deposits through banking transactions. A failure led to his flight and capture, a further confrontation with the law, scourging, and sentencing to the mines on Sardinia. While Victor was bishop of Rome (189-199), an Imperial concubine, Marcia, also a Christian, obtained release for the captives from Commodus. As a “martyr,” Callistus came to the attention of Victor, who pensioned him to Antium. When Zephyrinus became bishop, he brought Callistus into his service to take charge of the clergy and of the one principal asset held by the churches—the cemetery catacombs.

At Zephyrinus’s death, none of these men was any longer young. Callistus officially succeeded, but Hippolytus held a rival claim, leading directly to theological disputes. Callistus claimed that Hippolytus’s view of the relation of Father and Son was “ditheistic,” while Hippolytus accused Callistus of so unifying the Persons of the Godhead that the Father could be said to have suffered equally when the Son was crucified. Some of the confusion may have arisen from the difference between the Greek of Hippolytus and his followers and the Latin of Callistus and his followers. (There was a sizable Greek-speaking population in officially Latin Rome.)

Conflict of theology moved into conflict of administration. The actual role of Hippolytus became more evident, especially in his linguistic use of the episcopal “we” for pronouncements against the decisions of Callistus. These decisions included permission for those married more than once to enter the clergy, for clergy to marry and remain in orders, for women to live in concubinage with slaves (Roman law did not permit full marriage to occur between slaves or between them and free persons), and for second baptism of those reconciling with the Church after lapse. In Hippolytus’s opinion, such decisions were bad enough, but Callistus, on his own authority, determined that as bishop of Rome he could forgive any sin, including that of abortion.

Like his North African contemporary Tertullian, Hippolytus was a champion of old causes in a rapidly changing world; tradition was encountering a variety of internal opinions and external pressures. This conservatism is nowhere better illustrated than in Apostolikē paradosis (second or third century; The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, 1934). This handbook contains the most ancient forms and prayers for the ordination of bishops, presbyters, and deacons; for the consecration of confessors; and for the appointment of widows and readers. It also contains instructions for catechumens for baptism and first participation in the Lord’s Supper and for fasting and praying.

Callistus died naturally and was buried not in the catacomb that bears his name but in a crypt on the Via Aureliana; his feast day is October 14. Hippolytus outlived Callistus and his successors Urban and Pontian. When Maximinus became emperor in 235, severe persecution was resumed, going after the ranking leadership. Both Pontian and Hippolytus were sent to the mines of Sardinia, where they were worked to death. Anterus was bishop for three months during this upheaval, before Fabian, a layman, was elected directly into the episcopal office in 236.

Fabian was able to recover the bodies of both Pontian and Hippolytus and bring them back to Rome. Pontian was interred in the papal crypt of Saint Callistus. In 236 or 237, Hippolytus was interred in the cemetery on the Via Tiburtina that subsequently carried his name. The date of his burial, August 13, remains his feast day.

Significance

The historical testimony to Hippolytus’s role within the Church, even to location, became vague. The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, writing less than a century later, identified Hippolytus as a bishop of “some” church; that vagueness might be excused were it not that Eusebius knew directly of Hippolytus’s writings from the library at Aelia Capitolina (Roman Jerusalem) and of his contemporaneity with Zephyrinus and the Roman persecutions of that era. A century after Eusebius, the Latin biblical scholar Saint Jerome, in De viris illustribus (392-393; lives of illustrious men), repeats this vague affirmation of Hippolytus’s bishopric—“the name of the city I have not been able to learn”—in spite of extending the list of publications and confirming the correlation with Origen, whom Jerome knew had called Hippolytus his “taskmaster.”

In 1551 a statue of a person seated on a throne was discovered in Rome. Because the throne base had engraved on it Hippolytus’s table for computing the date of Easter and a list of his writings, the statue was reconstructed with a bearded head—as though it were Hippolytus—even though the statue in body and dress is that of a woman, probably a follower of the philosopher Epicurus.

It was not until the mid-nineteenth century—an era refueled with conflict centering on the bishop of Rome and pronouncements of “infallibility”—that the personality and concerns of Hippolytus were rediscovered. Those of his works that had survived had in the interim been confused with the writings of others, and only a chance manuscript-discovery permitted his own works to be disentangled from the hodgepodge of other writings.

Bibliography

Eusebius. The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine. Translated by Hugh Jackson Lawlor and John Ernest Leonard Oulton. 2 vols. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1927-1928. The text of Eusebius’s history in English translation appears in the first volume. Eusebius sets in time, space, and circumstance the earliest Christian figures, including the “succession from the apostles” and the variety of alternative opinions as well as the Roman Imperial context with its intermittent persecutions. The second volume provides extensive notes.

Grant, Robert. Augustus to Constantine: The Thrust of the Christian Movement into the Roman World. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. By placing the history of early Christianity within its widest socioeconomic context, Grant provides the reader with an interpretation of Christianity within, rather than apart from, its world. Chapters 10 through 13 most concern Hippolytus, though he informs many other sections.

Hippolytus. The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, Bishop and Martyr. Edited by Gregory Dix. Ridgefield, Conn.: Morehouse, 1991. Along with a readable edition of the text concerning the earliest Christian liturgical practice, this work provides a discussion of it with an account of its rediscovery and its centrality to Hippolytus’s thought. Includes preface, bibliography, and index.

Quasten, Johannes. The Ante-Nicene Literature After Irenaeus. Vol. 2 in Patrology. Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1962-1966. This handbook presents in chronological and geographical order those Christian authors who provide the literature and thought of the ancient Church. Hippolytus is a major figure in this volume.

Wordsworth, Christopher. St. Hippolytus and the Church of Rome in the Early Part of the Third Century. Reprint. Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 2001. This first reconstruction of the life of Hippolytus is significant for the history of the Church in the mid-nineteenth century. A major feature is the Greek text and English translation of the ninth book of The Refutation of All Heresies, which includes autobiographical information.