Feast day: August 13

Sts. Pontian & Hippolytus

Martyrs · d. c. 235

Patron of —

A pope and the rival churchman who had set himself up against him, both condemned to the deadly mines of Sardinia, where they were reconciled before dying for the same faith.

Pontian and Hippolytus are honoured together on the same day, though for much of their lives they were rivals — a pope and the man who set himself up against him, reconciled at last by a shared martyrdom. They lived in third-century Rome, in the troubled decades when the Church was hammering out its discipline of penance for serious sin.

Hippolytus was the most learned churchman of his age in Rome, a prolific writer and a rigorist who believed the Church should be a community of the pure. When successive popes — including Pontian, who became pope in 230 — readmitted repentant sinners to communion, Hippolytus broke away in protest and let himself be made a rival bishop, becoming, in effect, the first antipope.

In 235 a new persecution under the emperor Maximinus fell upon the leaders of the Roman Church, and both men — the pope and his rival — were arrested and deported to the deadly mines of Sardinia, a virtual death sentence. There, in their shared suffering and exile, they were reconciled. Pontian resigned the papacy so that a successor could be chosen, and Hippolytus made his peace with the Church, urging his followers to return to unity.

Both died of their hardships in the Sardinian mines. Their bodies were later brought back to Rome on the same day and honoured together — the schismatic and the pope he had opposed, united in death as martyrs.

Bitter opponents in life — one a pope, the other the first antipope — they made peace in the mines and died as brother martyrs.

Image: Spinello Aretino (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/12229b.htm · newadvent.org/cathen/07360c.htm