Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/894

854   HIPPOLYTUS, an ecclesiastical writer belonging to the . Of the details of his life little that is authentic is known. He appears to have been born in the. From the fact that he employs Greek as his mother tongue, it has been supposed that he belonged to the eastern portion of the Roman empire ; but this conclusion is by no means stringent, and there are various indications in his writings that he had passed some at least of his early years in Rome. On the apparently trustworthy authority of Photius (cod. 121), he is believed to have been while still a youth a personal dis ciple of Irenaeus, perhaps in Rome, but most likely in Lyons. By inference from the vivid minuteness with which he relates details of the personal history of Callistus in the 9th book of his Refutation he is believed to have been in Rome from the beginning of the episcopate of Victor (–). It is certain that in the he was stationed in that city as a presbyter conspicuous for energy, zeal, eloquence, and learning. He was a prominent defender of Victor s view on the much vexed Paschal controversy, but came into collision with Victor s successors, Zephyrinus and Callistus, on several questions of ecclesiastical dogma and discipline. As regarded the rela tion between the Father and the Son in the Trinity, for example, Hippolytus defended what is known as subordina- tianism against the patripassianism of the bishops, he accus ing them of Noetianism while they retorted upon him with a charge of ditheism. Again, in the dispute as to whether the lapsed could ever be lawfully restored to the fellowship of the church visible, Hippolytus took the severer and Callistus the milder view. So also on the subject of clerical marriages. From his own language in the 9th book of the Refutatio, combined with his designation of himself in the proem, it appears that Hippolytus ultimately came to occupy in Rome the position of a bishop (cf. Euseb., //. E., vi. 20), although not in communion with the &quot;Catholic&quot; party ; and the difficulty of reconciling this with the strong evidence we have that Portus (i.e., the Roman harbour opposite Ostia, and not Portus Romanorum or Aden, as Le Moyne and others founding upon a misunderstanding of Eusebius, have conjectured) was the scene of his activity is probably best got over if we assume that as dissenting bishop he undertook the episcopal superintendence of his adherents in both places, but took his title from the smaller. As regards the close of his life our most trustworthy information is derived from the chronographer of (jMbmmsen, Ueber den Chronographen vom Jahre 354, Leipsic, 1850), according to whom &quot;the presbyter&quot; Hippolytus in the time of Alexander Severus was banished along with the Roman bishop Pontianus to Sardinia, where, it seems to be suggested, he died.

{{11fine|In 1551 a marble statue of Hippolytus &quot;Portuensis,&quot; of uncertain date but not later than the {{9link|400|5th century}}, was dug up in Rome ; it is now to be seen in the Vatican. He is represented as seated upon an episcopal throne, wearing the Greek pallium, over which the Roman toga is thrown. On the sides of the throne is inscribed in Greek the rude Easter Cycle of which he is known to have been the author ; behind is given an imperfect list of his numerous works. The catalogues given by Eusebius, Jerome, and NicephorUs differ slightly in details ; but all bear witness to his diligence as a writer. The extant fragments were first collected by Fabricius (Hippolyti Opera gr. et lat., 2 vols. fol., Hamburg, 1716-18), and were after wards reprinted by Gallaud in the second volume of his BiUiothcca Veterum Patrum (1766). See also Migne, Curs. Patr. Gr., vol. x. They include fragments of commentaries on various books of Scrip ture, a treatise &quot;On Christ and Antichrist,&quot; an &quot;expository&quot; (a.Tro5eiKTinii} discourse &quot; To the Jews,&quot; a fragment &quot; To the Greeks&quot; or &quot;On the Universe,&quot; tracts &quot;Against Noetus,&quot; &quot;Against Beronaud Helix,&quot; and &quot;On the Holy Theophany,&quot; fragments of homilies (in which kind of composition he particularly excelled), and a few short quotations preserved by the author of the Chronicon Pas- chale&amp;gt; The appendix in Fabricius, containing doubtful or spurious pieces, includes &quot;A Discourse on the End of the World, and on Antichrist, and on the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,&quot; also a short account of the twelve apostles, stating where each of them laboured and where each of them died, a list of the seventy apostles, heads of the canons of Abulides or Hippolytus as used by the ./Ethiopian Christians, and the canons of the Church of Alexandria. Of the spuriousness of the last mentioned at least there can be no doubt. A new interest in Hippolytus as an eccle siastical writer was awakened among scholars about 1851 in connex ion with his Omnium Hceresium Refutatio, which has an interest ing history. As an anonymous MS. of the it had in 1842 been brought among various other manuscripts from Mount Athos to Paris by Minoides Mynas, a learned Greek who had been commissioned by the French Government to search for such treas ures, and had been deposited in the great national library where it was registered as a work On all Heresies. It failed for some time to attract any special notice ; but the attention of M. Emmanuel Miller, an official of that institution, having been at length excited by some fragments of Pindar and of an unknown lyric poet which it contained, he was led to examine it more closely and to adopt the conclusion that it was the continuation of the fragment entitled Philosojjhumena, printed in the Benedictine edition of Origen as the work of that author. Under this persuasion he offered it for publi cation to the university of Oxford, from whose press it appeared in 1851 under his editorship, bearing the title Originis Philosophumena, sive Omnium Hcercsium Refntatio. It was at once welcomed by the learned world as a literary treasure of singular value ; but it was almost immediately perceived that, though Miller had certainly judged rightly in affirming it to be a continuation of the fragmentary Philosophumena, he had as certainly erred in attributing its compo sition to Origen, whose authorship of the previously known portion had already been disputed by Huet, Heumann, and Gale. By Jacobi and Duncker in 1851, who were speedily followed by Giese- ler, Bunsen, Wordsworth, and Dollinger, it was with increasing con fidence claimed for Hippolytus, to whom it is now attributed with almost entire unanimity by critics, the arguments of Baur (Thcol. Jahrbb., 1853) in favour of the presbyter Cains, and still more those of Armellinus (De prisca refutatione hccrcscon, Rome, 1863) in favour of Novatian, having been found to be quite unconvincing.}|undefined} 1em 1em

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