Hippolytus (mentioned above in chap. 20) was one of the most learned men and celebrated writers of his age, and yet his personal history is involved in the deepest obscurity. The earliest mention of him is by Eusebius in this passage and in chap. 20, above. But Eusebius tells us there only that he was a bishop of “some other church” ( ἑτέρας που ἐκκλησίας ), and Jerome ( de vir. ill. c. 61) says that he was a bishop of some church whose name he did not know ( Hippolytus, cujusdam Ecclesiæ episcopus, nomen quippe urbis scire non potui ).
In the East, from the fourth century on, Hippolytus was commonly called bishop of Rome, but the Western tradition makes him simply a presbyter. The late tradition that he was bishop of Portus Romanus is quite worthless. We learn from his Philosophumena, or Refutation of Heresies, that he was active in Rome in the time of Zephyrinus and Callistus; but what is significant is the fact that he never recognizes Callistus as bishop of Rome, but always treats him as the head of a school opposed to the orthodox Church.
This has given scholars the clue for reconciling the conflicting traditions about his position and his church. It seems probable that he was a presbyter of the church of Rome, and was at the head of a party which did not recognize Callistus as lawful bishop, but set Hippolytus up as opposition bishop. This explains why Hippolytus calls himself a bishop, and at the same time recognizes neither Callistus nor any one else as bishop of Rome. The Western Church therefore preserved the tradition of Hippolytus only as a presbyter, while in the Orient, where Hippolytus was known only through his works, the tradition that he was a bishop (a fact directly stated in those works; see the preface to his Philosophumena ) always prevailed; and since he was known to have resided in Rome, that city was made by tradition his see.
The schism, which has left no trace in the writings either of the Western or Eastern Church, cannot have been a serious one. Doubtless Callistus had the support of by far the larger part of the Church, and the opposition of Hippolytus never amounted to more than talk, and was never strong enough to enlist, or perhaps even attempt to enlist, the support of foreign bishops. Callistus and the body of the Church could afford to leave it unnoticed; and after Callistus’ death Hippolytus undoubtedly returned to the Church and was gladly received, and the memory of his brief schism entirely effaced, while the knowledge of his orthodoxy, and of his great services to the Church as a theologian and a writer, kept his name in high repute with subsequent generations.
A Latin translation of a Chronicle written by Hippolytus is extant, and the last event recorded in it is the death of the Emperor Alexander, which took place early in the year 235. The Liberian catalogue, in an entry which Lipsius ( Chron. d. röm. Bischöfe, p. 194) pronounces critically indisputable, records that, in the year 235, the bishop Pontianus and the presbyter Hippolytus were transported as exiles to the island of Sardinia. There is little doubt that this is the Hippolytus with whom we are concerned, and it is highly probable that both he and Pontianus died in the mines there, and thus gained the title of martyrs; for not only is the account of Hippolytus’ martyrdom given by Prudentius in the fifth century not reliable, but also in the depositio martyrum of the Liberian catalogue the bodies of Pontianus and Hippolytus are said to have been buried in Rome on the same day; and it is therefore natural to think that Hippolytus’ body was brought from Sardinia, as we know Pontianus’ was.
The character of Hippolytus, as revealed to us in the Philosophumena , is that of a strictly, even rigidly, moral man, of a puritanic disposition, who believed in drawing the reins very tight, and allowing to the members of the Christian Church no license. He was in this directly opposed to Callistus, who was a lax disciplinarian, and favored the readmission to the Church even of the worst offenders upon evidence of repentance and suitable penance (see the previous chapter, note 3). We are reminded greatly of Tertullian and of Novatian in studying Hippolytus’ character.
He was, moreover, strictly orthodox and bitterly opposed to what he considered the patripassianism of Zephyrinus and of Callistus. He must be admired as a thoroughly independent, sternly moral, and rigidly orthodox man; while at the same time it must be recognized that he was irascible, bitter, and in some respects narrow and bigoted. He is known to have been a very prolific writer, composing all his works in Greek. Eusebius mentions but eight works in this chapter, but says that many others were extant in his day.
Jerome, who in the present instance has other sources of information than Eusebius’ History, mentions some nineteen works ( de vir. ill. c. 61), including all of those named by Eusebius, except the commentary on portions of Ezekiel and the work on the Events which followed the Hexæmeron (but see note 4, below). In the year 1551 a statue representing a venerable man sitting in a chair, and with an inscription upon it enumerating the writings of the person commemorated, was found near the church of San Lorenzo, just outside of Rome.
The statue, though it bears no name, has been shown to be that of Hippolytus; and with the help of the list given upon it (which contains some thirteen works), together with some extant fragments of writings which seem to have been composed by him, the titles known to us have been increased to about forty, the greater part of which are entirely lost. We cannot discuss these works here. For the most complete list of Hippolytus’ writings the reader is referred to Caspari’s Taufsymbol und Glaubensregel, III. 377 sq., or to the more accessible article by Salmon in the Dict. of Christ.
Biog. In 1842 was discovered the greater part of a work in ten books directed against heresies, the first book of which had been long before published by the Benedictines among Origen’s works with the title of Philosophumena. This discovery caused great discussion, but it has been proved to the complete satisfaction of almost every scholar that it is a work of Hippolytus (cf., among other discussions, Döllinger’s Hippolytus und Callistus, translated by Plummer, and the article in the Dict. of Christ.
Biog. already referred to). The work was published at Oxford in 1851 by Miller (who, however, wrongly ascribed it to Origen), and at Göttingen, in 1859, by Duncker and Schneidewin. It is given also by Migne; and an English translation is found in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Amer. ed.), Vol. V., under the title the Refutation of All Heresies.