Origen as a Boy

Anyone who tried to set down in writing, at leisure, the life of this man would have a great deal to say, and an account of him would need a work of its own. For the present, however, we will cut most of it short and go through a few things about him as briefly as we can, drawing what we report from certain letters and from the account of those of his acquaintances who have lived on into our own time. [a] Even the things told about Origen from his swaddling clothes, so to speak, seem to me worth recording. Severus was in the tenth year of his reign. Laetus was governor of Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, and Demetrius had lately taken up the office of bishop of the churches there, succeeding Julian. [b]

The flame of persecution had blazed up high, and countless people were being crowned with martyrdom. Such a passion for martyrdom took hold of Origen’s soul, though he was still quite a boy, that he went out to meet the dangers, leaping forward and eager to rush into the contest. In fact the end of his life would have been very near, if divine and heavenly providence, for the benefit of very many, had not stood in the way of his eagerness through his mother. At first she pleaded with him in words, begging him to spare her motherly feelings for him. But she saw him pressing on more fiercely still: when he learned that his father had been arrested and was held in prison, he was wholly carried away by the urge toward martyrdom. So she hid all his clothes, and in that way forced him to stay at home. Since there was nothing else he could do, and his eagerness, beyond his years, would not let him rest, he sent his father a letter strongly urging him on to martyrdom, in which he advises him in these very words: “Take care not to change your mind because of us.” Let this be recorded as the first proof of Origen’s quick wit as a boy and of his wholly genuine love of godliness. [c]

For even then he had laid no small foundations in the words of the faith, having been trained in the divine Scriptures from childhood. He had worked at them with no ordinary effort, since his father, besides giving him the usual general education, had made them no side concern. [d] Before Greek learning, then, he set him above all to train in the sacred studies, requiring him every day to learn passages by heart and recite them. This was not against the boy’s will; on the contrary, he worked at it with great eagerness. The simple, obvious reading of the sacred words was not enough for him. He looked for something more, and even at that age busied himself with deeper contemplations, so that he gave his father trouble by asking what the intended meaning of the inspired Scripture could be. His father, to all appearances, rebuked him to his face, telling him not to look for anything beyond his age or beyond the plain sense. But privately he rejoiced greatly within himself, and gave the deepest thanks to God, the cause of all good things, for counting him worthy to be the father of such a child. They say that many times he stood over the boy as he slept, bared his chest as though the divine Spirit were enshrined within it, kissed it reverently, and counted himself blessed in his child. These and other things like them are remembered of Origen as a boy.

When his father had been perfected by martyrdom, he was left bereft, with his mother and six younger brothers, not yet quite seventeen years old. [e] His father’s property was taken into the imperial treasury, and he and his family were in want of the necessities of life. But he was counted worthy of God’s provision. He found a welcome and a place to rest with a certain woman who was very rich and very distinguished in other ways too. She was, however, fostering a notorious man among the heretics then in Alexandria. He was an Antiochene by birth, and she kept him in her house as an adopted son and treated him with the greatest care. [f] Though Origen of necessity lived with him, he gave clear proofs from that time of his soundness in the faith. A huge crowd gathered around Paul — that was the man’s name — because of his apparent skill in speaking, not only heretics but also our own people. Yet Origen could never be induced to join him in prayer; even as a boy he kept the rule of the Church, and he loathed, as he himself puts it somewhere in so many words, the teachings of the heresies. His father had brought him on in Greek learning, and after his father’s death he gave himself wholly, and with more ardor, to the study of letters. So he gained a fair preparation in grammar, and not long after his father’s perfecting, by devoting himself to it, he earned an ample living for one of his age. [g]