The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus / Translated into English with Introduction and Notes

by Antipope Hippolytus

THE CANONS OF HIPPOLYTUS

A work containing thirty-eight “canons”, which “Hippolytus, the chief of the bishops of Rome, wrote according to the commands of the apostles”. This paraphrase for his “Apostolic Tradition” indicates the source with an explicitness unusual in a Church Order. Its alterations are much less radical than those in the Testament, and wholly new matter is limited to a brief introduction and an appendix concerned chiefly with moral and ascetic directions. The revision was made almost certainly in the fifth century and beyond reasonable doubt in Egypt.

The text (originally Greek) has been preserved only in an Arabic version. The only reliable edition is the German translation by Riedel; an English version is badly needed.

For the sake of completeness there may be added: