Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/500

 The extant writings of Hilarius are his letters referred to above. Anastasius Bibliothecarius mentions his decreta sent to various parts, confirming the synods of Nice, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, condemning Eutyches, Nestorius, and all heretics, and confirming the domination and primacy of the holy Catholic and apostolic see (Concil. Rom. u.s.; Thiel. Epp. Pontiff. Rom. i.).

[J.B—Y.]

Hippolytus (2) Romanus. Though so celebrated in his lifetime, Hippolytus has been but obscurely known to the church of subsequent times. He was at the beginning of the 3rd cent. unquestionably the most learned member of the Roman church, and a man of very considerable literary activity; his works were very numerous, and their circulation spread from Italy to the East, some having been translated into Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and perhaps other languages. His name assumes various disguises, as Poltus in the popular memory of Italy, in Egypt as Abulides. There is evidence also that he took a very active part in the affairs of his own church; but there are no contemporary witnesses to inform us concerning his personal history. A century after his death Eusebius evidently knew nothing of him beyond what he could infer from such works of his as had reached him. These works were soon superseded by those of other more able and learned writers. Scarcely one has come down to us without mutilation, and the authenticity of almost every work assigned to him has been disputed. Yet his celebrity survived, and various legends, not always carefully distinguished from the authentic history of the saint, arose. It has been disputed whether Hippolytus was a presbyter or a bishop; and if a bishop, of what see; whether he laboured in Italy or Arabia; whether he was orthodox or a schismatic; whether he was a martyr, and if so, by what death he died. At length the recovery of the work on heresies, now by general consent attributed to him, cleared away some obscurities in his personal history, though many questions can still receive only doubtful answers.

The earliest notice of Hippolytus is by Eusebius in two passages (H. E. vi. 20, 22). In the first, speaking of ecclesiastical writers of whom letters were then preserved in the library at Jerusalem, Eusebius mentions "likewise Hippolytus, who was bishop of another church somewhere." In the second he gives a list of the works of Hippolytus which he had met with (not including any letters), this being probably the list of those in the library at Caesarea, but adds that many other works by him might be found elsewhere.

If the earliest witnesses give no certain information as to where Hippolytus laboured, they enable us to determine when he lived. Eusebius says that he wrote a work on the Paschal feast, in which he gives a sixteen-years' Easter table, and accompanies it with a chronology, the boundary of his calculations being the first year of the emperor Alexander, i.e. 222. In 1551, in some excavations made on the Via Tirburtina, near Rome, a marble statue was found, representing a venerable person sitting in a chair, clad in the Greek pallium. The back and sides of the chair contain Greek inscriptions. The back has a list of works presumably written by the person represented. One side has a sixteen-years' cycle, exactly corresponding to the description of Eusebius and beginning with the first year of Alexander. Other evidence makes it certain that this cycle is that of Hippolytus. The works sufficiently agree with those ascribed to Hippolytus by Eusebius and Jerome; and no doubt is entertained that Hippolytus is the person commemorated. The list of Paschal full moons in the cycle gives accurately the astronomical full moons for the years 217–223 inclusive. For the next eight years the true full moons are a day or two later than those given, and after that deviate still further; so that after two or three revolutions of the cycle the table would be useless. This table must, then, have been framed about the time specified, 222, and the chair must be a nearly contemporary monument, for it is not conceivable that the table would be put on record, to do its author honour, after it had been tried long enough to make its worthlessness apparent. Further, the inscription is in Greek, and the early Roman church contained a large section, if not a majority, of foreigners, whose habitual language was Greek. This inscription must have been placed before that section had disappeared and Latin had become the exclusive language of the church. A further proof of antiquity is furnished by the list of writings, which is independent of those of Eusebius and Jerome, and which no one in the West could have drawn up long after the death of Hippolytus. The date thus fixed agrees with what we otherwise know, that Hippolytus was a contemporary of Origen, Jerome telling us that it appeared from a homily of Hippolytus then extant that it had been delivered in Origen's hearing. We know from Eusebius (H. E. vi. 14) that Origen visited Rome in the reign of Caracalla and episcopate of Zephyrinus, i.e. some time in the years 211–217. In one of these years he might thus have heard Hippolytus preach. We must place the commencement of the activity of Hippolytus as early as the 2nd cent. Photius tells us that the treatise of Hippolytus Against all the Heresies professed to be a synopsis of lectures delivered by Irenaeus. The simplest supposition seems to be that Hippolytus heard Irenaeus lecture in Rome. Eusebius tells of one visit of Irenaeus to Rome c. 178. A note in a Moscow MS. of the martyrdom of Polycarp (Zahn's Ignatius, p. 167) represents him as teaching at Rome several years before. It is not unlikely that Irenaeus came again to Rome and there delivered lectures against heresies. The time could not have been long after the beginning of the last decade of the 2nd cent. It has been shewn that the author of the cycle engraved on the chair must also have been the author of a chronicle, a Latin translation of which is extant, the last event in which is the death of the emperor Alexander (235). In that year an entry in the Liberian Catalogue of bishops of Rome records that Pontianus the bishop, and Hippolytus the presbyter, were transported as exiles to the pestilent island of Sardinia. It is difficult to believe that the