Hippolytus of Rome

Hippolytus was the most learned man in the Roman church of his generation, and one of the most difficult.

He was born around 170. Photius reports that he had heard Irenaeus, which would place him in the chain running back through Polycarp to the apostle John, and his theology reads like a man who was proud of that line. He wrote in Greek at a time when Rome was going over to Latin, which is one reason so much of his work was later lost in the West.

His output was enormous. His Refutation of All Heresies traced thirty-three heretical systems back to Greek philosophy and pagan mystery cults, on the argument that the heretics had not received revelation but recycled Plato and the astrologers; it quotes gnostic sources so extensively that it remains a primary text for the study of gnosticism. His Commentary on Daniel is the oldest surviving Christian commentary on any book of the Bible. His On Christ and Antichrist set out an end-times scheme the church argued about for centuries.

The Apostolic Tradition, a church order describing baptism, ordination, and the eucharist in detail, is generally associated with him, though scholars now debate how much of it is his.

Then he fought his own church and lost. He accused bishop Zephyrinus of ignorance and of a confused doctrine of Christ, and accused the deacon Callistus of forgiving sins no bishop had the right to forgive. When Callistus was elected bishop in 217, Hippolytus refused to accept it, and a group in Rome elected him instead. He was the first antipope. The split ran through the terms of Callistus, Urban, and Pontian, nearly twenty years.

In 235 the emperor Maximinus Thrax went after the Roman clergy and did not distinguish between them. Hippolytus and Pontian, the two rival bishops of Rome, were arrested together and deported to the lead mines of Sardinia, which the Romans called the unhealthy island because sentences there were death sentences with extra steps.

Both men died there. And somewhere in that place, the record indicates, the schism ended: Pontian resigned his office so Rome could elect a working bishop, and the followers of Hippolytus were reconciled.

In 236 or 237 the new bishop, Fabian, had both bodies brought back to Rome and buried with honor on the same day. The fourth-century Roman calendar of martyrs lists them together under 13 August.

A damaged marble statue found in Rome in 1551, inscribed with a paschal table and a list of titles, has long been connected with him.

Sources: Eusebius, Church History VI.20, VI.22; Jerome, On Illustrious Men 61; the works of Hippolytus (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5); the Depositio Martyrum of the Chronographer of 354; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, article St. Hippolytus of Rome.