Hieromartyr 3rd century

Hieromartyr Hippolytus of Rome and Companions

Also known as Hippolytus, Censorinus, Sabinus, Chryse the Virgin and those with them

A pastor of the Roman Church and a company of martyrs, among them the virgin Chryse, who suffered together for confessing Christ.

Feast Day

January 30

Also Aug 10

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Commemorated as

The Holy Hieromartyr Hippolytus of Rome and his Companions

Life

Hippolytus of Rome is commemorated in the Orthodox synaxarion as a hieromartyr who suffered together with a company of fellow martyrs, among them the magistrate Censorinus, the virgin Chryse, and Sabinus. The synaxarion places their deaths during the reign of the emperor Claudius (268-270), while a governor named Vicarius, also called Vulpius Romulus, held office. The group is commemorated together on January 30, with a further commemoration kept on August 10.

By the account preserved in the synaxarion, the persecution claimed several distinct figures before Hippolytus himself was put to death. Censorinus, described as a leader of the senate council and a magistrate, confessed Christ when he was denounced and was imprisoned; the tradition relates that a miracle worked through him led some twenty soldiers to believe, and that they were beheaded together. The virgin Chryse, distinguished by her family and piety, endured a series of torments and was finally cast into the sea with a stone hung about her neck, and her servant Sabinus likewise died under torture.

According to the synaxarion, when Hippolytus learned of these sufferings he went to rebuke the governor for his cruelty. He was struck in the face, and he, along with other presbyters and deacons, was bound hand and foot and cast into the depths of the sea. The Orthodox tradition further identifies this Hippolytus as a pastor of the Roman Church, a disciple of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, and an author of theological treatises against the heresies of his day.

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The Companions

The commemoration gathers Hippolytus with a named and unnamed company rather than a single figure. The synaxarion describes Chryse's martyrdom in detail: she was suspended and her sides lashed with strips of rawhide, beaten with rods, her wounds burned with lamps, imprisoned, struck on the jaw, and, the tradition relates, her spine crushed with lead balls before she was drowned in the sea. Sabinus, named as her servant, had heavy lead balls tied around his neck, was suspended and lashed, and his body burned with lit lamps.

Orthodox sources list a larger group of martyrs commemorated with these principal figures, and the title used in the Church preserves the collective character of the feast: Hippolytus, Censorinus, Sabinus, Chryse the Virgin, and those with them. The relics of Hippolytus are recorded by tradition as resting in Rome, in the church of the holy martyrs Laurence and Pope Damasus.

Question of Identity

The Orthodox tradition associates this Hippolytus with the noted theologian of the early Church who wrote against the heretics, and the synaxarion itself acknowledges uncertainty about his precise identity. One strand of the tradition suggests he was the Bishop of Portus rather than a pope of Rome. In Western scholarship the historical theologian Hippolytus is described as a presbyter at Rome in the late second and early third centuries who opposed the penitential leniency of his contemporaries, was for a time a rival claimant to the Roman see, and was reconciled before his death; that figure is held to have died in exile in Sardinia under the persecution of Maximinus Thrax around 235. These accounts differ in date and circumstance, and the sources do not fully reconcile them; the Orthodox commemoration follows the synaxarion's narrative of martyrdom by drowning under Claudius.

Sources: OCA Synaxarion (oca.org), Jan 30