Hyginus of Rome

When Hadrian had died after twenty-one years, Antoninus, called the Pious, succeeded to the rule of the Romans. In his first year Telesphorus departed this life in the eleventh year of his ministry, and Hyginus received the office of bishop of the Romans. Irenaeus records that Telesphorus made his end glorious by martyrdom. In the same place he shows that under Hyginus, the Roman bishop just named, Valentinus, who introduced a heresy of his own, and Cerdon, the founder of Marcion’s error, were both well known at Rome. He writes as follows: [a]