But the glory of this now ruined cemetery was the tomb of S. Hippolytus. He has been well described by Bishop Lightfoot in his long and exhaustive Memoir (Apostolic Fathers, Part 1. vol. ii.).
“The position and influence of Hippolytus were unique among the Roman Christians of his age. He linked together the learning and the traditions of the East, the original home of Christianity, with the practical energy of the West, the scene of his own life labours. He was by far the most learned man in the Western Church.... Though he lived till within a few years of the middle of the third century, he could trace his pedigree back by only three steps, literary as well as ministerial, to the life and teaching of the Saviour Himself, Irenæus, of whom he was the pupil, Polycarp, and S. John. This was his direct ancestry. No wonder if these facts secured to him exceptional honour in his own generation.”
The position he occupied in the Christian world has been much disputed. He is usually described as Bishop of Portus, the harbour of Rome, and modern scholarship has come to the conclusion that he exercised a general superintendence with the rank of a bishop over the various congregations of foreigners, traders and others, on the Italian sea-board, with Portus as his headquarters.
A very dignified and striking statue, alas much mutilated, has been found amid the ruins over the Cemetery of Hippolytus. On the back and sides of the chair on which the figure of the scholar-bishop is sitting, is engraved a generally received list of his works. There is no doubt as to the genuineness of the statue in question, which dates from about the year 222. It ranks as the oldest Christian statue which has come to light; indeed, it stands alone as an example of very early Christian sculpture, and was probably erected in an interval of the Church’s peace in the reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus, and is a striking proof of the unique position which the writer and scholar held in the Christian community.
There is no doubt he was done to death—what, however, was the peculiar form of his martyrdom is uncertain. We know he was exiled to Sardinia, where he suffered, and his remains were brought back to Rome with the remains of Pontianus, somewhile Bishop of Rome, who also suffered martyrdom at the same time in Sardinia; Pontianus being laid in the papal crypt in the Cemetery of Callistus, and Hippolytus in the catacomb which bears his name on the Via Tiburtina, about the year 237.
Pope Damasus, the great restorer of the sanctuaries of Rome, enlarged and beautified the crypt where the honoured remains were deposited, in the latter years of the fourth century, and a few years later Prudentius the Christian poet in his collection of hymns entitled Peristephanôn—the Crowns of the Martyrs—devotes a long poem to the shrine and memory of Hippolytus.
In the opening years of the fourth century, when Honorius, Theodosius’ son, was reigning over the Western Empire, it is evident that the fame and reputation of Hippolytus, scholar and martyr, were among the popular histories of Christendom, and his tomb one of the chief objects of pilgrimage.
The lines of Prudentius, written in the closing years of the fourth century, are quoted as giving a picture of a famous catacomb as it appeared to a scholar and poet in the days of Theodosius and Honorius. They also give some idea of the estimation and reverential regard with which the martyrs and confessors of the first age of Christianity were held in the century which immediately followed the Peace of the Church:
“Hard by the City walls—amid the orchards—there is a Crypt.... Into its secret cells there is a steep path with winding stairs.... As you advance, the darkness as of night grows more dense.... At intervals, however, there are contrived openings cut in the roof above, which bring the bright rays of the sun into the crypt. Although the recesses twisting this way and that form narrow chambers, with galleries in deep gloom, yet some light finds its way through the pierced vaulting down into the hollow recesses.... And thus throughout the subterranean crypt it is possible still to revel in the brightness of the absent sun.
“To such secret recesses was the body of Hippolytus borne, quite near to the spot where now stands the altar dedicated to God.
“That same altar-slab provides the sacrament, and is the trusty guardian of its martyr’s bones, which it guards there in the waiting for the Eternal Life, while it feeds the dwellers by the River Tiber with holy food.
“Marvellous is the sanctity of the place. The altar is close by for those who pray, and it assists the hopes of such by mercifully giving what they require. Here, too, have I when sick with ills of soul and body, often knelt in prayer and found help.... Early in the morning men come to salute (Hippolytus); all the youth of the place worship here; they come—they go—until the setting of the sun. Love of religion gathers into one vast crowd both Latins and strangers.”—Translated from Prudentius, “Peristephanôn,” Passion of S. Hippolytus.
The close proximity of the Cemetery and Basilica of S. Laurence (above described) as years passed on was fatal to the memory of S. Hippolytus. From very early times S. Laurence, the deacon of Sixtus II, received extraordinary honour. He suffered, as we have stated, in the persecution of Decius, circa A.D. 258, and occupies the place of S. Stephen in the Church of the West. It was of this famous and popular saint that Augustine wrote: “Quam non potest abscondi Roma, tam non potest abscondi Laurentii corona.” In the prayer of the oldest Roman sacramentary we read, “De beati solemnitate Laurentii, peculiaris præ ceteris Roma lætatur.” “No marvel,” writes Bishop Lightfoot, “that the aureole which encircled the heads of other neighbouring saints and martyrs, even of the famous Hippolytus himself, should have faded in the light of his unique splendour.”