De anonymo Chronici sub Alexandro Severo conscripti auctore

ON THE ANONYMOUS AUTHOR OF THE CHRONICLE COMPOSED UNDER ALEXANDER SEVERUS.

Various opinions of the learned on the author of this Chronicle.

Among the Works of St Hippolytus, bishop and martyr, concerning which we have hitherto discoursed, some learned men have thought that that Chronicle also ought to be reckoned which an anonymous writer, who flourished under the last times of the Emperor Alexander Severus, coeval with Africanus, about the year of Christ 236, is found to have written. This opinion above the rest the illustrious Du Cange embraced. But Pearson and Dodwell went over to another: the latter of whom maintained that the anonymous writer of whom we are treating wrote a few years after Hippolytus; since otherwise that holy martyr and bishop is known to have begun his Cycle in the first year of the same Alexander Severus. For the rest, says he, our anonymous writer has many things which seem to agree with the chronological hypotheses of Hippolytus observed in the same writer's Paschal Canon, and which therefore it is right that we should suspect the anonymous writer owed to Hippolytus. To the opinion of which learned men indeed those things in the first place compel us to accede which the illustrious prelate Francesco Bianchini has discoursed nobly enough concerning this matter. Thus therefore he speaks:

"We grieved that that book had perished wherein Hippolytus had arranged the demonstration of the times of Easter, just as in a table. For that work, if it had come down to us entire, ought to be held after sacred letters the most precious of all. Since before Hippolytus no one had arranged the sacred annals into a certain series, nor reduced them to the rule of a cycle: which he accomplished first of Christian writers

There came to the relief of our grief the most learned Lord Du Cange in the latest edition of the Paschal Chronicle; where, when he had discoursed at great length concerning the Canon of Hippolytus and the Commentary on Easter with that more solid erudition in every kind of letters wherewith he excels, he seemed to bring us into some hope of finding the Hippolytean book in that ancient codex which Canisius in vol. III of the Antiquae lectiones, and Labbe in the first volume of the Bibliotheca manuscriptorum, had brought to light for the public good. Moreover, the illustrious man himself also prepared a third edition of the same little work, no. IV in the Selecta for illustrating the Chronicle which he was preparing: the title whereof, in the little index prefixed to the Selecta, when he rendered it from the ancient parchments on p. 403, he commended thus: IV. The Book of the generation from Adam even unto the order, which (sic) are contained in this book. A work which we have judged in the preface capable of being ascribed to Hippolytus of Portus: revised from the edition of Henry Canisius and Philip Labbe according to the standard of the codex of the Paris college of the Society of Jesus. And behold, in the preface he is very full in seeking out conjectures, whence it ought above others to be attributed to Hippolytus the martyr, whom he supposes to have been bishop of Portus out of the seven suburbicarian sees."

Truly, if that marble Canon is to be referred to Hippolytus the bishop and martyr, as by the vote of all learned men and even of Du Cange himself it is referred; I trust that I shall demonstrate that to the same Hippolytus there does not belong that Canisian

and Labbean codex, otherwise notable: but that it is rather to be referred even to that Heron, from a philosopher a Christian and martyr: whom he himself suspects, from a Greek inscription in Spon, sect. X, no. 22, to have been called from the temple-wardenship of the temple of Serapis in the Roman Portus to the faith of Christ while Severus Alexander was reigning, and thus contemporary with Hippolytus himself; and he teaches from the testimonies of the ancients that he wrote concerning the times, and that as a neophyte he fulfilled his martyrdom. I accede therefore to that opinion which the same praised author subjoined in the second place in the preface, saying that either to Hippolytus the bishop, or "to a contemporary author, who lived under Alexander Augustus," the book is to be adjudged. It is better to transcribe his words from no. 18 of the preface:

"Moreover, to the Chronicle of Hippolytus, of which we treat, there is almost a twin, unless it was that very Chronicle itself which Henry Canisius published in vol. III of the Antiq. lection., and Philip Labbe in vol. I of the Nova Bibliotheca from a manuscript codex of the Paris college of the Society of Jesus under this title: Concerning the divisions and generations of the nations. Which Chronicle indeed is brought down to the thirteenth year of Alexander Severus, and that the last of his reign, under whose rule the author more than once hints that he lived. And he in the preface says that he will describe: 'The division of the nations, and the numbered generation of the fathers, the times also of habitation, and the engagements of wars, and the times of the judges, who and under what kings they were born, and what captivities of the people befell and under what judges, and what priests there were and in what times they had been, and what division and what destruction took place, in what manner the generation of the seed of Israel from the Fathers was fulfilled in Christ, and how many and how great through how great times the years are numbered from the creation of the world even unto this day.' To the preface an index is subjoined, the 6th chapter whereof is read couched in these words: 'The declaration of the Passover, and who kept it and when from the times of Moses unto this day.' Which things indeed are referred to those that are contained in that section where it treats of the Passover kept from time to time by the Jews. Then is added: 'And from the birth of Christ, after 30 years when the Lord suffered, the Passover is celebrated.

For He Himself was the true Passover. And from the Passion of the Lord even unto the thirteenth year of the reign of Alexander Caesar, 206 years, the Passover has been kept, which in commemoration of our Lord Jesus Christ is kept by us. All the years therefore from Adam even unto this day make 5738 years.' Which things indeed here adduced by us, if anyone should wish to compare exactly with those which we have touched upon concerning the Chronicle of Hippolytus, he will perhaps grant without difficulty that that very work is the Chronicle of the same man, to which he prefixed or subjoined a table as a canon or rule for finding the Paschal feast, whereof he treated in that section which we mentioned; according to which he wished the reader to reckon the past and following years."

Rightly indeed does he argue from these two numbers of years from the Passion of the Lord to the thirteenth year of Severus Alexander, and also from that which, according to the opinion of the ancients, he assigned to the Lord's Incarnation, thirty-one years before the Passion. Moreover, to add the remaining epochs recounted in the marble Canon, I will grant that most of them agree with the numbers of the Labbean and Canisian codex. But since the rest differ from the same, and especially that which defines the interval between the two Passovers, of the Exodus and of Hezekiah, it is evidently shown that the marble Chronicle of Hippolytus is different from the writing contemporary with it, which disagrees in its computations. And since it is established that the numbers of Hippolytus approach so closely to the opinions of more skilled chronologers, as was shown from the comparison above, whereas on the contrary the computation of the anonymous writer is manifestly faulty, especially in defining the interval from the Passover of Joshua to the Passover of Hezekiah, I deem it worthwhile to set forth the calculations of Hippolytus surviving on this monument; so that this most ancient of all Paschal chronologies, a witness to the very great skill of Hippolytus, may redound to the commendation of the wisdom of the Fathers, who, nearest to the apostles and apostolic men, illustrated the first ages of the Church, as by their blood shed for Christ, so also by their most illustrious writings.

(See the Paschal Canon of Saint Hippolytus below.) Editors of the Patrologia.