St. Origen

Origen was born around 185 at Alexandria, Egypt, into a Christian family, and died around 253 at Tyre. His father was martyred when Origen was a youth, and he himself burned with zeal for the faith his whole life. A scholar of astonishing energy and output, he led the catechetical school of Alexandria and produced an immense body of work, including the Hexapla (a monumental parallel edition of the Old Testament), profound biblical commentaries, the treatise On First Principles, and the great apologetic Against Celsus.

He was among the most influential thinkers of the early Church, and much of later theology and biblical interpretation is indebted to him; imprisoned and tortured in the Decian persecution, he died of its effects, a confessor of the faith. Yet some speculative opinions later associated with his name were judged erroneous and censured in subsequent centuries, and for this reason the Catholic Church has never formally counted him among the canonized saints, even as it honors his towering learning and his service to Christian thought.