Hippolytus, a Christian writer who enjoyed great celebrity in the first half of the 3d century, but of whose personal history we know but little with certainty. He was born most likely about 155-160 A.D., and died about 235 or 236. The first to mention him is Eusebius, who says he was a bishop somewhere, and some writers have placed his diocese in Arabia, while almost all the eastern writers style him Bishop of Rome. He is usually described by modern writers as Bishop of Portus, near Rome, but for this title there is no evidence earlier than the middle of the 7th century. He may have been a native of the East, and he is said to have been a disciple of Irenæus; but this may have been either in Asia Minor, in Gaul, or in Rome itself, which Eusebius tells us that Irenæus visited about 178. An entry in the Liberian Catalogue of bishops of Rome tells that Pontianus the bishop and Hippolytus the presbyter were transported as exiles to the mines of Sardinia, where ere long they perished, their bodies being carried back to Rome. Prudentius (5th century) gives a different but much less credible account of the martyrdom of Hippolytus, according to which he was torn in pieces by wild horses like the Hippolytus of mythology. He tells us that he was infected with the Novatian heresy, but recanted on the way to martyrdom. Such was the unsatisfactory state of knowledge when the recovery at Mount Athos by Minoides Mynas in 1842 of the treatise against heresies cast fresh light upon Hippolytus as its presumptive author. It was contained in a 14th-century MS., and when published by Miller in 1851 was recognised as forming part of the fragment ascribed to Origen and entitled the Philosophumena. Its appearance opened up a grave discussion. The Origenistic authorship was soon abandoned, and attempts were made by Baur to ascribe it to Gains, by De Rossi to Tertullian, by Armellini to Novatian. Jacobi advanced the claims of Hippolytus, and this theory was supported by Bunsen and Wordsworth, and so conclusively proved by Döllinger as to persuade almost every scholar save Lipsius, who still continued to describe the author as Pseudo-Origenes.
From the treatise itself we learn that the autho. lived at Rome, and took an active part in church affairs under the bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus. Döllinger points out that throughout Hippolytus never recognises Callistus as bishop, and treats him only as the founder of a school. Besides he assails his moral character and his antecedents, charging him with dishonesty, with criminal laxity of discipline, and with the Patipassian heresy; while Callistus again retorted upon his opponent with a counter-charge of Ditheism. Döllinger held that Hippolytus claimed to be the real Bishop of Rome himself, and that he was thus the first antipope in the history of the Roman Church. This would explain the circumstance that a writer so learned and outstanding as Hippolytus could be taken by the Eastern Church for the actual Bishop of Rome, while to western writers who did not receive him as such he seemed guilty not only of schism but of heresy. But the grave difficulty remains of being obliged to believe that a schism so serious, headed by the most illustrious theologian of the time, and lasting at the very lowest five or six years, could have occurred without its being known outside of Rome, and still further could be utterly forgotten for fifteen centuries. Again, if Hippolytus had headed a party so inimical to the authority of the bishop, how comes it that his name has descended without a stain as that of a saint and a martyr? Dr Salmon suggests the explanation that Hippolytus may have been the head of the Greek Christians at Rome, and that as such he may have been specially entrusted with some episcopal functions—an anomalous state of matters which would come to an end with the necessity for it. His attacks on Callistus were written in Greek for Greek-speaking people, hence the faintness of the impression they made upon the Latin world; while at the same time most of the recollections of the earlier part of the century were lost in the severity of persecution under Decius and Valerian. At any rate the state of the controversy shows that in the 3d century Christians elsewhere than at Rome itself were not much interested in the question who was Bishop of Rome at all. Hippolytus seems to have championed the severe and ultra-orthodox party in the Roman Church, and at the least to have been bitter and prejudiced as a controversialist. The ecclesiastical charges brought against Callistus in this famous treatise are his giving easy absolution to sinners excommunicated by Hippolytus and others, admitting digamists and triganists to the ranks of the clergy, allowing the clergy to marry, and permitting Christian ladies to contract illegal marriages with men of inferior social rank.
The date of Hippolytus and his importance among his contemporaries are proved further by the statue of him discovered at Rome, on which is engraved the sixteen years' cycle which he invented to find the time of Easter. This cycle is an erroneous one, the error being of such a nature as could not fail to be discovered after a dozen years, hence it follows that the statue in his honour must have been inscribed before that discovery occurred, about 240 A.D.
The extant writings of Hippolytus were first collected by Fabricius (2 vols. Hamburg, 1716-18), and have since been printed in vol. ii. of Galland, Bibl. Vet. Pat., and vol. x. of Migne's Patr. Gr. The most accessible edition is that of Lagarde (1858). English translations of the Refutation, as well as the other extant works and fragments, may be found in Clark's 'Ante-Nicene Christian Library.' Bishop Lightfoot thought it more than probable Hippolytus was the author of the famous Muratorian Canon, as there was no other man at that time at Rome capable of writing it.
See Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age (1852; 2d ed. 1854); Christopher Wordsworth, St Hippolytus and the Church of Rome (1853; 2d ed. 1880); Döllinger, Hippo- lytus and Kallistus (1853; Eng. trans. by Plummer, 1876); Volkmar, Hippolytus u. die Römische Zeitgenossen (1855); Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanius (1865), also Die Quellen der ältesten Ketzergeschichte (1875); and Harnack, Zur Quellenkritik der Geschichte des Gnostizismus (1873-74).