Saint Hegesippus

The Catholic Encyclopedia calls him "a writer of the second century, known to us almost exclusively from Eusebius." ¹ No copy of his work is known today, although Chapman reports that it was still to be found in three Eastern libraries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ¹ What remains is what Eusebius chose to copy, and Eusebius used him often: he says he had "already quoted his words a number of times, relating events which happened in the time of the apostles." ²

Eusebius describes the work as five books recording "the true tradition of apostolic doctrine in a most simple style," and calls them Memoirs. ² Chapman explains that the Memoirs were written against the new heresies of the Gnostics and of Marcion, and that Hegesippus "appealed principally to tradition as embodied in the teaching which had been handed down in the Churches through the succession of bishops." ¹

Jerome understood the work differently. He describes "a History of all ecclesiastical events from the passion of our Lord, down to his own period," in five volumes "in simple style, trying to represent the style of speaking of those whose lives he treated." ⁵ Butler follows Jerome, and so does the Roman Martyrology, which says he composed in simple language a history of the Church from the Passion of the Lord to his own times. ⁶⁷ Chapman disagrees directly: "St. Jerome was wrong in supposing him to have composed a history." ¹

Eusebius says that Hegesippus quoted from "the Syriac Gospel according to the Hebrews" and wrote some passages in Hebrew, "showing that he was a convert from the Hebrews," and that he also drew on "the unwritten tradition of the Jews." ² Butler goes further and says he "was by birth a Jew, and belonged to the church of Jerusalem." ⁶ Chapman is more cautious, saying only that he "seems to have belonged to some part of the East, possibly Palestine," and insists that he was "clearly an orthodox Catholic and not a 'Judaeo-Christian.'" ¹

His own words fix his date. Writing of the honors paid to the dead, he mentions Antinous, the favorite of the emperor Hadrian, "in whose honor are celebrated also the Antinoian games, which were instituted in our day." ²⁵ Chapman takes the death of Antinous, in 130, to fall in his lifetime, and dates his arrival in Rome under Anicetus and his writing under Eleutherus. ¹ Jerome says he "lived near the apostolic age," and Eusebius that he "lived immediately after the apostles." ³⁵

The best-known passage of his work describes a journey. Eusebius says that "on a journey to Rome he met a great many bishops, and that he received the same doctrine from all." ² Hegesippus wrote of Corinth: "the church of Corinth continued in the true faith until Primus was bishop in Corinth. I conversed with them on my way to Rome, and abode with the Corinthians many days, during which we were mutually refreshed in the true doctrine." ² He also bore witness, Eusebius says, that there had been a sedition at Corinth in the time of Pope Clement's letter. ⁴

In McGiffert's translation he goes on: "And when I had come to Rome I remained there until Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. And Anicetus was succeeded by Soter, and he by Eleutherus. In every succession, and in every city that is held which is preached by the law and the prophets and the Lord." ² Elsewhere Eusebius says that Hegesippus "was in Rome at this time," when Anicetus became bishop, "and that he remained there until the episcopate of Eleutherus." ² Jerome repeats this, and Butler puts the stay at nearly twenty years. ⁵⁶

Chapman argues that the key phrase has been mistranslated. The manuscripts, he says, read "I made for myself a succession," meaning a list of the bishops of Rome, and the reading "I remained" is a conjecture which, he says, "makes nonsense." ¹ On his reading, Hegesippus made the same argument as Irenaeus: that the true teaching can be traced through the lists of bishops in every church. ¹ He adds that Eusebius probably took his list of the early bishops of Jerusalem from Hegesippus. ¹

Eusebius preferred Hegesippus to every other witness for the death of James, "the brother of the Lord," calling his account "the most accurate," from the fifth book of the Memoirs. ³ Hegesippus describes James as "holy from his mother's womb," a man who drank no wine and ate no meat, and who prayed in the temple so constantly "that his knees became hard like those of a camel." ³ He tells how James was set on the pinnacle of the temple to turn the crowd from Jesus, confessed him instead, was thrown down and stoned, and prayed for his killers before a fuller struck him with a club. ³ Chapman calls it "a long and apparently legendary account." ¹

He also recorded that after James's death Symeon, the son of Clopas, was chosen as the next bishop, "because he was a cousin of the Lord," and that Clopas was a brother of Joseph. ²⁴ He described how Symeon, accused under Trajan, was tortured for many days and crucified at the age of a hundred and twenty. ⁴

Another story from him concerns the grandsons of Jude, who were brought before the emperor Domitian as descendants of David. ⁴ Asked what they owned, they said they had a small farm, which they worked themselves, and showed their hands, hardened "by continuous toil." ⁴ Asked about the kingdom of Christ, they answered that it was "not a temporal nor an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly and angelic one." ⁴ Domitian let them go as men of no account, and they afterward led the churches "because they were witnesses and were also relatives of the Lord." ⁴

Hegesippus said that until that generation the Church had remained "a pure and uncorrupted virgin," and that the heresies came into the open only once the apostles were dead. ⁴ He named their founders, and listed the sects among the Jews as well. ²

Butler warns against a confusion. A work in five books on the destruction of Jerusalem, drawn chiefly from Josephus, once circulated under his name, but Butler says it is "not the work of this father," and belongs to "a younger Hegesippus" who wrote after Constantine. ⁶ Butler also reports, from the Chronicle of Alexandria, that Hegesippus returned to the East and died very old, probably at Jerusalem, about the year 180. ⁶

None of the sources used for this page names Saint Hegesippus the patron of anything, and none is supplied here. ¹⁶⁷ The Martyrology remembers him as the author of a history of the Church, and Chapman as a witness to the teaching handed down through the succession of bishops. ¹⁷

Saint Hegesippus's feast is April 7. ¹⁷ The Catholic Encyclopedia gives that date from the Roman Martyrology, the current Martyrology commemorates him that day, and Butler enters him under April 7. ¹⁶⁷

He went looking for the teaching of the apostles by going to the churches and staying long enough to listen. ² At Corinth he stayed many days, and wrote that he and its people had refreshed each other in the true doctrine. ²

His work is gone, and he is known through another man's quotations. ¹ What survived is what later Christians wanted to keep: James on his knees in the temple, Symeon at a hundred and twenty, and two farmers showing an emperor their hands. ³⁴

Eusebius praised the simplicity of his style, and Jerome thought it an imitation of the people he wrote about. ²⁵ The sources do not agree on what kind of book he wrote, and the page leaves them disagreeing. ¹⁵