Hippolytus, St. (lTnr6\vT0<:), the name of sev- eral saints and martyrs of the early Church, especially that celebrated one of the fathers of the Church who probably lived in the early part of the od century. Every particular of his life has been made a point of controversy. Thus the oldest ecclesiastical ^vriters who make any mention of him, Eusebius and Jerome, give him the title of bishop, but without stating of what see, the latter even saying that he was unable to ascertain this point. " The Chronicon Paschale, our earliest authority, makes him ' bishop of the so-called Portus, near Rome ;' and as this statement is supported by the authority of CjtiI, Zonaras, Anastasius, Nicepho- rus, and Syncellus (see Bunsen's Ilippobjtus, i, 205), and as Prudentius (lib. Tztpl aTt(puvoiv, Hymn ix) describes his martyrdom as having taken place at Ostia, close by Portus, most critics will probably regard this point as finally settled. His mastery of the Greek language would render him peculiarly fit to be a ' bishop of the nations,' who frequented the harbor of Rome in multi- tudes. In spite of Jacobi's assertion (see below) to the contrary, there seems to be no reason why he should not at the same time have been (what the "EXty yoc shows liim to have been) a presbyter and head of a party at Rome. We know, further, that he was a disciple of Ire- naeus (Phot. Cod. 121), and was engaged in some warm disputes with Callistus on points of doctrine and disci- pline, which are graphically described in his recovered book, Kara TraauJv a'lpiaiojv tXtyxot;" (Kitto, Cyclop, s. v.). On the other hand, the treatise Be cluabus Naturis, attributed to pope Gelasius I, gives Hippolytus the title of metropolitan of Arabia. Le JNIoyne even indicated a town of the district of Aden, called Portus Pomaims, on account of its being the great mart of Roman trade in the East, as the seat of his bishojiric. The same uncer- tainty exists with regard to the time in which he lived. Eusebius places him in the first lialf of the 3d century. Photius states that he was a disciple of Irenasus ; Baroni- us says, of Clement of Alexandria; two assertions which appear etiually well grounded. Portius adds that Hip- polytus was the intimate friend and zealous admirer of Urigen, and that he invited him to comment on the Scriptures, furnishing him for that purjwse seven aman- uenses to write under his dictation, and seven copyists. Hippolytus himself testifies to his rxquaintance with Origen. As for the other details given by Photius, they are based on a misinterpretation of a passage in Jerome. According to this father, Ambrosius of Alexandria, struck with the reputation Hippolytus had acquired by his commentaries on the Scriptiu-es, invited Origen to at- tempt the same task, and furnished him with a number of secretaries for that purpose. The martjTdom of St. Hippolytus is not mentioned by Eusebius. Jerome, Pho- tius, and other writers, however, call him a martyr, and his name appears with that title in the Roman, Greek, Coptic, and Abyssinian calendars. Yet these martyrol- ogies differ so much from each other that they appear rather to refer to different parties of the same name than to one individual only. Prudentius, a Christian poet of the 4th century, -wrote a long poem on the mar- tjTdom of St. Hippolytus, but it is evident that he also
confounded several parties of that name, and his pious legend is devoid of all historical authority. The date of St. Hippolytus's death is very doubtfid. It is gener- ally beUeved to have occurred under Alexander Sev- erus, yet it is well known that this prince did not perse- cute Christians. If we admit that the Exhortatorius ad Severinam, mentioned among Hippolytus's works, is the same which Theodoret states was addressed to a cer- tain queen or empress (irpug l3aci\iSa tivc'i), and, fur- ther, that this Severina, according to Dolluiger (see be- low), was the wife of the emperor Philip the Arabian, this woidd bring the martj-rdom of the saint to the time of Decius's persecution (about 250), and perhaps later. In that case, Hippolytus, having been a disciple of Irenai- us, who died about 190, must have been quite advanced in age at the time of his death. It is generally supposed that he suffered martyrdom near Rome, probably at the mouth of the Tiber. According to general opinion, it is thought he was thrown into the sea with a stone tied around his neck. In 1551 a statue was discovered at Rome, near the church of St. Lorenzo, which appeared to date back to the 6th century, and represented a man in monastic garb, in a sitting posture. The inscription bore the name of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, and on the back of his seat was found inscribed the canon or paschal cycle which he introduced into Rome, and also a list of his principal works. Some of these works, men- tioned by Eusebius, Jerome, Photius, and other ecclesi- astical writers, or named on the statue, are yet extant, and we have extensive fragments of several others. A number of them have been published separately. Fa- bricius gave a complete collection of them under the title S. Hippolyti, episcopi et martyris, Opera non antea col- lecta et partem nunc prinmm e MSS. in lucem edita, Grace et Latine (Hamb. 1716-1718, fol.). This was reprinted, Avith additions by Galland, and inserted in his Bihliothcca Patrum (A'enice, 1766, fol.), vol. ii. A collection of frag- ments of Syriac translations of Hippolytus is given in the A nalecta of Lagarde. The same scholar, m an ap- pendix to his Analectu (Lagardii ad Amdecta sua Syr- iaca Appendix [Lips. 1858]), gives Arabic fragments of a commentary of Hippolytus on Revelation.