The best historians of literature in the ancient church, including Eusebius and Jerome, openly confess they cannot name where Hippolytus the biblical commentator and theologian served in leadership.

[2] One older theory asserts he came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have headed a schismatic group as a rival to the bishop of Rome, thus becoming an antipope.

In this view, he opposed the Roman Popes who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts.

[2] Starting in the fourth century, various legends arose about him, identifying him as a priest of the Novatianist schism or as a soldier converted by Saint Lawrence.

One Victorian theory suggested that as a presbyter of the church at Rome under Pope Zephyrinus (199–217 AD), Hippolytus was distinguished for his learning and eloquence.

An ethical conservative, he was scandalized when Pope Callixtus I (217–222 AD) extended absolution to Christians who had committed grave sins, such as adultery.

[7] Allen Brent sees the development of Roman house-churches into something akin to Greek philosophical schools gathered around a compelling teacher.

[8] Also under this view: during the persecution at the time of Emperor Maximinus Thrax, Hippolytus and Pontian were exiled together in 235 to Sardinia,[9] likely dying in the mines.

The so-called Chronography of 354 (more precisely, the Liberian Catalogue) reports that on 13 August, probably in 236, the two bodies were interred in Rome, that of Hippolytus in a cemetery on the Via Tiburtina (now known as the Catacomb of Sant'Ippolito),[9] his funeral being conducted by Justin the Confessor.

He also confirms 13 August as the date on which a Hippolytus was celebrated but this again refers to the convert of Lawrence, as preserved in the Menaion of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In 1551 a marble statue of a seated figure (originally female,[12] perhaps personifying one of the sciences) was purportedly found in the cemetery of the Via Tiburtina and was heavily restored.

Hippolytus' voluminous writings, which for variety of subject can be compared with those of Origen, embrace the spheres of exegesis, homiletics, apologetics and polemic, chronography, and ecclesiastical law.

The Apostolic Tradition, if it is the work of Hippolytus, recorded the first liturgical reference to the Virgin Mary, as part of the ordination rite of a bishop.

[14] Hippolytus supplied his commentary with a fully developed introduction known as the schema isagogicum, indicating his knowledge of the rhetorical conventions for teachers discussing classical works.

[15] He employs a common rhetorical trope, ekphrasis, using images on the walls or floors of Greco-Roman homes, and in the catacombs as paintings or mosaics.

[18][1] It is from the Apostolic Tradition that the current words of episcopal ordination in the Catholic Church come from, as updated by Pope Paul VI.

How much of this material is genuinely his, how much of it worked over, and how much of it wrongly attributed to him, can no longer be determined beyond dispute,[1] however a great deal was incorporated into the Fetha Negest, which once served as the constitutional basis of law in Ethiopia – where he is still remembered as Abulides.

Hippolytus gave an explanation of Daniel's paralleling prophecies of chapters 2 and 7, which he, as with the other fathers, specifically relates to the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans.

The Catholic Encyclopedia sees this as "connected with the confusion regarding the Roman presbyter resulting from the Acts of the Martyrs of Porto.