Early Christian heresiography

Hippolytus of Rome

170 – 235

Hippolytus of Rome was the most prolific theologian and writer of the early Roman Church before the Constantinian era, a pupil of Irenaeus, and the first antipope, who died as a martyr in the Sardinian mines around 235 CE. His Refutation of All Heresies (Philosophumena) is an indispensable primary source for the study of Gnosticism, preserving detailed descriptions and often verbatim quotations from Gnostic sects — Valentinians, Sethians, Naassenes, and others — that would otherwise be entirely lost. Western esoteric scholars rely on his heresiological writings as one of the richest ancient witnesses to the diversity of Gnostic cosmology, mythology, and ritual practice in the second and third centuries.