Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5 (Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian)

In this state of the controversy, commentators turned their attention toward Hippolytus, in favor of whose authorship the majority of modern scholars have decided. The arguments that have led to this conclusion, and those alleged by others against it, could not be adequately discussed in a notice like the present. Suffice it to say, that such names as Jacobi, Gieseler, Duncker, Schneidewin, Bernays, Bunsen, Wordsworth, and Döllinger support the claims of Hippolytus. The testimony of Dr. Döllinger, considering the extent of his theological learning and in particular his intimate acquaintance with the apostolic period in church history, virtually, we submit, decides the question.

For a biography of Hippolytus, we do not have many authentic materials. There can be no reasonable doubt but that he was a bishop and passed the greater portion of his life in Rome and its vicinity. This assertion corresponds with the conclusion adopted by Dr. Döllinger, who, however, refuses to allow that Hippolytus was, as is generally maintained, Bishop of Portus, a harbor of Rome at the northern mouth of the Tiber, opposite Ostia. However, it is satisfactory to establish, and especially upon such eminent authority as that of Dr. Döllinger, the fact of Hippolytus’ connection with the Western Church—not only because it bears on the investigation of the authorship of The Refutation, the writer of which affirms his personal observation of what he records as occurring in his own time at Rome, but also because it overthrows the hypothesis of those who contend that there were more Hippolytuses than one (Dr. Döllinger shows that there is only one historical Hippolytus) or that the East, and not Italy, was the sphere of his episcopal labors. Thus Le Moyne, in the seventeenth century, a French writer resident in Leyden, ingeniously argues that Hippolytus was bishop of Portus Romanorum (Aden), in Arabia. Le Moyne’s theory was adopted by some celebrities, viz., Dupin, Tillemont, Spanheim, Basnage, and our own Dr. Cave. To this position are opposed, among others, the names of Nicephorus, Syncellus, Baronius, Bellarmine, Dodwell, Beveridge, Bull, and Archbishop Ussher. The judgment and critical accuracy of Ussher is, on a point of this kind, of the highest value. Wherefore the question of Hippolytus being bishop of Portus near Rome would also appear established, for the reasons laid down in Bunsen’s Letters to Archdeacon Hare and Canon Wordsworth’s St. Hippolytus. The mind of inquirers appears to have been primarily unsettled in consequence of Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, vi. 10) mentioning Hippolytus in company with Beryllus (of Bostra), an Arabian, expressing at the same time his uncertainty as to where Hippolytus was bishop. This indecision is easily explained and cannot invalidate the tradition and historical testimony which assign the bishopric of Portus near Rome to Hippolytus, a saint and martyr of the Church. Of his martyrdom, though the fact itself is certain, the details furnished in Prudentius’ hymn are not historic. Thus the mode of Hippolytus’ death is stated by Prudentius to have been identical with that of Hippolytus the son of Theseus A mythological figure from Greek tragedy who was torn apart by horses., who was torn limb from limb by being tied to wild horses. St. Hippolytus, however, is known on historical testimony to have been thrown into a canal and drowned; but whether the scene of his martyrdom was Sardinia, to which he was undoubtedly banished along with the Roman bishop Pontianus, or Rome, or Portus, has not as yet been definitively proved. The time of his martyrdom, however, is probably a year or two—perhaps less or more—after the commencement of the reign of Maximin the Thracian, that is, somewhere about A.D. 235-39. This enables us to determine the age of Hippolytus; and as some statements in The Refutation evince the work to be the composition of an old man, and as the work itself was written after the death of Callistus in A.D. 222, this would transfer the period of his birth to not very long after the last half of the second century.

The contents of The Refutation, as they originally stood, seem to have been arranged thus: