(4.) Dr. Salmon offers a modification of the Döllinger-hypothesis by assuming that Hippolytus was a sort of independent bishop of a Greek-speaking congregation in Rome. He thus explains the enigmatical expression ethnon episkopos,which Photius applies to Caius, but which probably belongs to Hippolytus. But history knows nothing of two independent and legitimate bishops in the city of Rome. Moreover there still remains the difficulty that Hippolytus notwithstanding his open resistance rose afterwards to such high honors in the papal church. We can only offer the following considerations as a partial solution: first, that he wrote in Greek which died out in Rome, so that his books became unknown; secondly, that aside from those attacks he did, like the schismatic Tertullian, eminent service to the church by his learning and championship of orthodoxy and churchly piety; and lastly, that be was believed (as we learn from Prudentius) to have repented of his schism and, like Cyprian, wiped out his sin by his martyrdom.
III. But no matter whether Hippolytus was bishop or presbyter in Rome or Portus, he stands out an irrefutable witness against the claims of an infallible papacy which was entirely unknown in the third century. No wonder that Roman divines of the nineteenth century (with the exception of Döllinger who seventeen years after he wrote his book on Hippolytus seceded from Rome in consequence of the Vatican decree of infallibility) deny his authorship of this to them most obnoxious book. The Abbé Cruice ascribes it to Caius or Tertullian, the Jesuit Armellini to Novatian, and de Rossi (1866) hesitatingly to Tertullian, who, however, was no resident of Rome, but of Carthage. Cardinal Newman declares it "simply incredible" that a man so singularly honored as St. Hippolytus should be the author of "that malignant libel on his contemporary popes," who did not scruple "in set words to call Pope Zephyrinus a weak and venal dunce, and Pope Callistus a sacrilegious swindler, an infamous convict, and an heresiarch ex cathedra." (Tracts, Theological and Ecclesiastical, 1874, p. 222, quoted by Plummer, p. xiv. and 340.) But he offers no solution, nor can he. Dogma versus history is as unavailing as the pope's bull against the comet. Nor is Hippolytus, or whoever wrote that "malignant libel "alone in his position. The most eminent ante-Nicene fathers, and the very ones who laid the foundations of the catholic system, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian (not to speak of Origen, and of Novatian, the Anti-Pope), protested on various grounds against Rome. And it is a remarkable fact that the learned Dr. Döllinger who, in 1853, so ably defended the Roman see against the charges of Hippolytus should, in 1870, have assumed a position not unlike that of Hippolytus, against the error of papal infallibility.
[1418] Dr. Caspari (III. 351 note 153) thinks it probable that Hippolytus came from the East to Rome in very early youth, and grew up there as a member, and afterwards officer of the Greek part of the Roman congregation. Lipsius (p. 40 sqq.) supposes that Hippolytus was a native of Asia Minor, and a pupil there of Irenaeus in 170. But this is refuted by Harnack and Caspari (p. 409)
[1419] He calls it schisma Novati, instead of Novatiani. The two names are often confounded, especially by Greek writers including Eusebius.
[1420] Ultima vox autdita senis venerabilis haec est. "Hi rapiant artus, tu rape, Christe, animam."
[1421] No. xi. of the Peristephanon Liber. Plummer, in Append. C. to Döllinger, p. 345-35l, gives the poem in full (246 lines) from Dressel's text (1860). Baronius charged Prudentius with confounding three different Hippolytis and transferring the martyrdom of Hippolytus, the Roman officer, guard, and disciple of St. Lawrence, upon the bishop of that name. Döllinger severely analyses the legend of Prudentius, and derives it from a picture of a martyr torn to pieces by horses, which may have existed near the church of the martyr St. Lawrence (p. 58).
[1422] So first the Paschal Chronicle, and Anastasius.
[1423] Salmon says: 'Of the fragments collected in De Lagardes edition the majority are entitled merely of 'Hippolytus,' or 'of Hippolytus, bishop and martyr,' but about twenty describe him as 'bishop of Rome,' and only three place him elsewhere. The earliest author who can be named as so describing him is Apollinaris in the fourth century .... Hippol. likewise appears as pope and bishop of Rome in the Greek menologies, and is also honored with the same title by the Syrian, Coptic, and Abyssinian churches."See the authorities in Döllinger.
[1424] The reasons for this early age are: (1) The artistic character of the statue, which ante-dates the decline of art, which began with Constantine. (2) The paschal cycle, which gives the list of the paschal full moons accurately for the years 217-223, but for the next eight years wrongly, so that the table after that date became useless, and hence must have been written soon after 222. (3) The Greek language of the inscription, which nearly died out in Rome in the fourth century, and gave way to the Latin as the language of the Roman church. Dr. Salmon fixes the date of the erection of the statue at 235, very shortly after the banishment of Hippolytus. A cast of the Hippolytus-statue is in the library of the Union Theol. Seminary in New York, procured from Berlin through Professor Piper.
[1425] Peri tou pantos. See the list of books in the notes.
[1426] On the chair of the statue, it is true, the Philosophumena is not mentioned, and cannot be concealed under the title Pros Hellenas, which is connected by kai with the work against Plato. But this silence is easily accounted for, partly from the greater rarity of the book, partly from its offensive opposition to two Roman popes.
[1427] The authorship of Hippolytus is proved or conceded by Bunsen, Gieseler, Jacobi, Döllinger, Duncker, Schneidewin, Caspari, Milman, Robertson, Wordsworth, Plummer, Salmon. Cardinal Newman denies it on doctrinal grounds, but offers no solution. The only rival claimants are Origen (so the first editor, Miller, and Le Normant), and Cajus (so Baur and Cruice, the latter hesitating between Caius and Tertullian). Origen is out of the question, because of the difference of style and theology, and because he was no bishop and no resident at Rome, but only a transient visitor (under Zephyrinus, about 211). The only claim of Caius is the remark of Photius, based on a marginal note in his MS., but doubted by himself, that Caius wrote a work peri tou pantos and an anti-heretical work called " The Labyrinth," and that he was " a presbyter of Rome," and also declared by some " a bishop of the heathen."But Caius was an anti-Chiliast, and an opponent of Montanism; while Hippolytus was probably a Chiliast, like Irenaeus, and accepted the Apocalypse as Johannean, and sympathized with the disciplinary rigorism of the Montanists, although he mildly opposed them. See Döllinger, l. c. p. 250 sqq. (Engl. translation), Volkmar, l. c. p. 60-71; and Wordsworth, l.c. p. 16-28. Two other writers have been proposed as authors of the Philosophumena, but without a shadow of possibility, namely Tertullian by the Abbé Cruice, and the schismatic Novatian by the Jesuit Torquati Armellini, in a dissertation De priscarefutatione haereseon Origenis nomine ac philosophumenon tituto recens vulgata, Rom.,1862 (quoted by Plummer, p. 354).
[1428] This idea is borrowed from Irenaeus.
[1429] The reading here is disputed.
[1430] The passage is obscure: hos ten hamartian ex anthropon apoplunein prosetaxe. Wordsworth translates: " who commanded us to wish away sin from man;" Macmahon: " He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings."Bunsen changes the reading thus: " For Christ is He whom the God of all has ordered to wash away the sins of mankind."Hippolytus probably refers to the command to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sin.
[1431] biblidarion. The more usual diminutive of biblis or biblos is biblidion.
[1432] Lipsius, in his Quellenkrilik des Epiphanios, has made the extraordinary achievement of a partial reconstruction of this work from unacknowledged extracts in the anti-heretical writings of Epiphanius, Philaster, and Pseudo-Tertullian.
[1433] As suggested by Fabricius (T., 235), Neander (I. 682, Engl. ed.), and Lipsius. It bears in the MS. the title "Homily of Hippolytus against the Heresy of one Noëtus" homilia Hippol. eis hairesin Noetou tinos, and was first printed by Vossius in Latin, and then by Fabricius in Greek from a Vatican MS. (vol. II. 5-20, in Latin, vol. I. 235-244), and by P. de Lagarde in Greek (Hippol. Opera Gr. p. 43-57). Epiphanius made a mechanical use of it. It presupposes preceding sections by beginning: "Certain others are privily introducing another doctrine, having become disciple, ; of one Noëtus." The only objection to the identification is that Photius describes the entire work against thirty-two Heresies as a little book (biblidarion). Hence Lipsius suggests that this was not the suvntagma itself, but only a summary of its contents, such as was frequently attached to anti-heretical works. Döllinger (p. 191 sqq.) shows the doctrinal agreement of the treatise against Noëtus with the corresponding section of the Philosophumena, and finds both heretical on the subject of the Trinity and the development of the Logos as a subordinate Divine personality called into existence before the world by an act of the Father's will, which doctrine afterwards became a main prop of Arianism. Döllinger finds here the reason for the charge of partial Valentinianism raised against Hippolytus, as his doctrine of the origination of the Logos was confounded with the Gnostic emanation theory.
[1434] So Volkmar (l.c. p. 165: "Der Cod. Vatic. 'Contra Noëtum' ist der Schluss nicht jener kürzeren Häreseologie, sondern einer anderen, von Epiphanius noch vorgefundenen Schrift desselben Hippolyt, wie es scheint, gegen alle Monarchianer." Caspari (III. 400 sq.) decides for the same view.
[1435] Peri tes tou pantos aitias (or ousias, as Hippol. himself gives the title, Philos. X. 32 ed. D. and Schn.), or Peri tou pantos (on the Hippolytus-statue). Greek and Latin in Fabricius I. 220-222. Greek in P. de Lagarde, p. 68-73. The book was a sort of Christian cosmogony and offset to Plato's Timaeus.
[1436] Comp. Döllinger, p. 330 sqq. He connects the view of Hippolytus on the intermediate state with his chiliasm, which does not admit that the souls of the righteous ever can attain to the kingdom of heaven and the beatific vision before the resurrection. Wordsworth on the other hand denies that Hippol. believed in a millennium and "the Romish doctrine of Purgatory," and accepts his view of Hades as agreeing with the Burial Office of the Church of England, and the sermons of Bishop Bull on the state of departed souls. Hippol. p. 210-216. He also gives, in Appendix A, p. 306-308, an addition to the fragment of the book On the Universe, from a MS. in the Bodleian library.
[1437] SmikrosLaburinthos (Theodoret, Haer. Fa b. II. 5) or spoudasma kata tes Artemonos haireseos (Euseb. H. E. V. 28).
[1438] Caspari, III. 404 sq., identifies the two books.
[1439] Peri charismaton apostolike paradosis. On the Hippolytus-statue.
[1440] Peri tou soteros hemon Iesou Christou kai peri antichristou , in Fabricius I. 4-36 (Gr. and Lat.), and in P. de Lagarde, 1-36 (Greek only).
[1441] Included in Jerome's list, and mentioned by Jacob of Edessa and by Syncellus. Fragments from an Arabic Catena on the Apocalypse in Lagarde's Anal. Syr., Append. p. 24-27. See Salmon in Smith and Wace, III. 105.
[1442] See Döllinger, p. 330 sqq. (Engl. ed.)
[1443] We are indebted for this curious piece of information to Dr. Salmon, who refers to Benson, in the "Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, " I. 190.