**HIPPOLYTUS of ROME,** Saint, Martyr. – A distinguished writer of the Roman Church in the 3rd century and the first antipope, about whom only a few and fragmentary biographical details are known. Even his works, written in Greek at a time when the Church of Rome was about to abandon that language, were little read or used in the West, while they enjoyed considerable diffusion in the East, where they were also translated into several languages.
**I. LIFE.** – The principal source of information on H. consists of the autobiographical notes contained in the *Refutatio omnium haeresium*, improperly called *Philosophia*.