Hegesippus

Who was Hegesippus?

Saint Hegesippus, was a Christian chronicler of the early Church who may have been a Jewish convert and certainly wrote against heresies of the Gnostics and of Marcion. The date of Hegesippus is insecurely fixed by the statement of Eusebius that the death and apotheosis of Antinous occurred in Hegesippus' lifetime, and that he came to Rome under Pope St. Anicetus and wrote in the time of Pope St. Eleuterus.

Hegesippus' works are now entirely lost, save eight passages concerning Church history quoted by Eusebius, who tells us that he wrote Hypomnemata in five books, in the simplest style concerning the tradition of the Apostolic preaching. Through Eusebius Hegesippus was also known to Jerome, who is responsible for the idea that Hegesippus "wrote a history of all ecclesiastical events from the passion of our Lord down to his own period... in five volumes", which has established the Hypomnemata as a Church history. St. Hegesippus appealed principally to tradition as embodied in the teaching which had been handed down through the succession of bishops, thus providing for Eusebius information about the earliest bishops that otherwise would have been lost.