c. Great as was the reputation of Clement, he was far outstripped by his pupil and successor =Origen=, acknowledged by pagan and Christian contemporaries to be a miracle of scholarship. On account of his indomitable diligence, he was named Ἀδαμάντιος. Celebrated as a philosopher, philologist, critic, exegete, dogmatist, apologist, polemist, etc., posterity has with equal right honoured him as the actual founder of an ecclesiastical and scientific theology, and reproached him as the originator of many heretical opinions (§§ 51; 52, 6). He was born of Christian parents at Alexandria about A.D. 185, was educated under his father Leonidas, Pantænus and Clement, while still a boy encouraged his father when he suffered as a martyr under Septimius Severus in A.D. 202, became the support of his helpless mother and his six orphaned sisters, and was called in A.D. 203 by bishop Demetrius to be teacher of the catechetical school. In order to qualify himself for the duties of his new calling, he engaged eagerly in the study of philosophy under the Neo-Platonist Ammonius Saccas. His mode of life was extremely simple and from his youth he was a strict ascetic. In his eager striving after Christian perfection he had himself emasculated, from a misunderstanding of Matt. xix. 12, but afterwards he admitted that that was a wrong step. His fame advanced from day to day. About A.D. 211 he visited Rome. Accepting an honourable invitation in A.D. 215 he wrought for a long time as a missionary in Arabia, he was then appointed by the celebrated Julia Mammæa (§ 22, 4) to Antioch in A.D. 218; and in A.D. 230 undertook in the interest of the church a journey to Greece through Palestine, where the bishops of Cæsarea and Jerusalem admitted him to the rank of a presbyter. His own bishop, Demetrius, jealous of the daily increasing fame of Origen and feeling that his episcopal rights had been infringed upon, recalled him, and had him at two Alexandrian Synods, in A.D. 231 and 232, arraigned and excommunicated for heresy, self-mutilation and contempt of the ecclesiastical laws of his office. Origen now went to Cæsarea, and there, honoured and protected by the Emperor, Philip the Arabian, opened a theological school. His literary activity here reached its climax. But under Decius he was cast into prison at Tyre, in A.D. 254, and died in consequence of terrible tortures which he endured heroically.--Of his numerous writings[74] only a comparatively small number, but those of great value, are preserved; some in the original, others only in a Latin translation.