The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus: Translated into English with Introduction and NotesHippolytus, Antipope
Religion
The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus: Translated into English with Introduction and Notes
Hippolytus, Antipope
Canon law -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Church orders, Ancient
1. The conception of consecration by thanksgiving is stated so baldly
that the Latin (“gratias agat panem quidem in exemplum”) is wholly
unidiomatic, but in all probability the prayer normally included an
invocation like that in 4. 12. Here, in place of the “spiritual food”
language in 4. 12, the result of the consecration is expressed in the
terms of the institution. Yet Hippolytus appears to shrink a little
from calling the species absolutely the body and blood of Christ: the
bread is the “image” (ἀντίτυπον) of the body and the cup the
“likeness” (ὁµοίεµα) of the blood. The former word is used in the same
way by Cyril of Jerusalem (23, 20; as an adjective) and the latter by
Sarapion in his first oblation before the words of institution;
compare “figura” in Tertullian, _Against Marcion_ III, 19 and IV, 40,
and the prayer in the Constitutions (VIII, 12, 39) that the species
may be made to “appear” (ἀποφάναι) as the body and blood. None of this
language, however, is “symbolic” in the modern sense; whatever
unlikeness theologians[208] might feel existed between the symbols and
the things signified was overshadowed by the realistic connection that
existed between them. But in the earlier Patristic period the deeper
nature of this connection was left unexplored.
2. Tertullian (_chaplet_ 3, _Against Marcion_ I, 14) and Clement of
Alexandria (_Pedagogue_ I, vi (45, 1)) bear contemporary testimony to
the custom of giving new Christians milk and honey, so the rite must
have been widespread. It is not in the Constitutions or the Testament,
but the other sources have it. And the 24th canon of the Third Council
of Carthage (397) reads: “The first-fruits, namely milk and honey,
which are offered on a most solemn day for the mystery of
infants,[209] although offered on the altar should have a blessing of
their own, that they may be distinguished from the sacrament of the
Lord’s body and blood”.
Clement of Alexandria, like Hippolytus, cites the Old Testament
prophecies of the promised land,[210] so the meaning of the rite was
to assure the participants of a share in salvation. But Hippolytus
adds a further explanation of his own; the milk represents Christ’s
flesh and the honey his gentleness. The Canons—possibly with a
misrecollection of Isaiah 7. 15—interpret the food as proper for the
newly born.
3. The purpose of the water is to extend the baptismal washing into
the inner man; a somewhat pedantic ceremony that reappears only in the
Ethiopic, although the Testament applies the theory to the water in
the mixed eucharistic chalice.
5. This is the earliest known formula for eucharistic administration.
7-11. What is most curious about these directions is that the
sacramental wine is not distinguished in administration from the other
two cups; the other versions correct this.[211] Perhaps in this
ceremony there has survived something of the tradition in the earliest
text of Luke 22. 19-20, where the whole emphasis is laid on the bread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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