Hyginus

Hyginus was bishop of Rome from 138 to 142, at the beginning of the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius. He shepherded the Church in the years when Gnostic teachers began to spread at Rome. The sources preserve few facts about him. He is counted a saint of the undivided Church and is commemorated on 11 January.

Ministry

According to the Liber Pontificalis he was a Greek from Athens and had been occupied with philosophy before serving the Church; the Greek synaxaria also call him an Athenian and a philosopher. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons places him ninth in the list of the bishops of Rome and says that in his time the Gnostics Valentinus and Cerdo came to Rome. Eusebius gives him four years in office, while an older catalogue speaks of twelve, a figure historians think less likely.

Tradition attributes to him the arrangement of the grades of the clergy, the custom that a newly baptized person have a godparent to guide him, and the rule that churches be consecrated. These reports come from the Liber Pontificalis, written much later, and cannot be proved.

Commemoration

Some sources say he died a martyr under Antoninus Pius, as the Greek synaxarion also states, but the early sources do not confirm it. He is said to have been buried on the Vatican hill, near Saint Peter. His memory is kept on 11 January in both the Greek and the Roman calendars.