Sts. Pontian and Hippolytus

Sts. Pontian and Hippolytus are honored together as martyrs whose story is one of reconciliation. Pontian served as Bishop of Rome from 230 to 235, while Hippolytus was a learned and rigorous Roman priest and theologian — among the most prolific Christian writers of his age — who had fallen into schism, so opposed to what he judged the laxity of certain popes that a party had set him up as a rival, or antipope.

When the persecution of the Emperor Maximinus Thrax broke out in 235, both men were arrested and condemned together to the deadly labor of the mines on the island of Sardinia. There, in shared suffering, Hippolytus was reconciled to the Church, and Pontian, who had already resigned the papacy so that a successor could freely govern, encouraged his fellow prisoner; both died of their hardships and were venerated as martyrs. Their bodies were later brought back to Rome and buried with honor, and the Church keeps their common memory on 13 August.