A Rescue in Corinth

Now Hippolytus, a martyr for his devotion to God, who was overseer of the place called Portus near Rome, wrote as follows in his book Against All Heresies: [a]

I see, then, that this is a matter people are fighting over. For he argues like this: “Christ kept the supper on that day, and then he suffered. So I too must keep it in the same way the Lord did.” But he has gone wrong, because he has not seen that at the time when Christ suffered he did not eat the Passover of the law. He was himself the Passover that had been announced long before, and that was fulfilled on the day appointed for it.

And the same writer, in the first book of his work on the Holy Supper, says this: It is clear that there was nothing false either in the first statement or in the last. The one who said long before, “I will not eat the Passover again,” most likely shared a supper before the Passover. But the Passover itself he did not eat; he suffered instead, for it was not the time for him to eat.

Hippolytus, overseer and martyr, in a letter to a certain queen.

So he calls him “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,” and “the firstborn from the dead.” For after he had risen, wanting to show that the very body which had died was the one that had been raised, he called Thomas over to him while his disciples were still in doubt, and said, “Come here; touch me and see. A spirit does not have bone and flesh, as you see that I have.”

In calling him the firstfruits, he bore witness to what we have said: that the Savior took his flesh out of the same lump as ours, raised that same flesh, and made it the firstfruits of the flesh of the righteous — so that all of us who have trusted in the hope of the risen one may have the resurrection ahead of us to look for.

The account given by Hippolytus, the friend of the apostles. In another small book carrying the name of Hippolytus, the friend of the apostles, I found a story of this kind.

In the city of Corinth there lived a young woman, most noble and most beautiful, who took careful pains to live a good life. At that time certain people laid a false charge against her before the judge there, who was a Greek: that she had cursed the times, and the rulers, and the images. The men who made a trade of such cases saw to it that her beauty came to the notice of that godless judge, who had an appetite for women, and he was glad to take the accusation in, with a stallion’s ears and a lecher’s mind.

When she was brought before that bloodstained man, he was driven wilder still by his filthy desire. But when that profane man had tried every device on her and still could not win this woman of God over, he put the noble young woman through one abuse after another. When those failed as well, and he could not shake her from her confession of Christ, the cruel judge turned furious and handed her over to a punishment of this kind. He placed the chaste young woman in a brothel and gave orders to the man who ran it: “Take this woman, and bring me three nummi a day out of her.” And the man, wringing the money out of her by her shame, handed her over to anyone who came asking for her in the brothel.

When the women-hunters heard of it, they came to the brothel, paid the price set on their wickedness, and tried to have her. But this thoroughly honorable young woman decided to trick them. She called them over and pleaded with them earnestly, saying, “I have a sore in my private parts, and the smell of it is horrible. I am afraid you will come to loathe me because of that disgusting wound. Give me a few days, then, and after that you can have me for nothing.” With these words the blessed young woman won the debauched men over and sent them away for a time. Then she pressed God hard with the prayers that suited her case, and with a broken heart she begged him for pity. So God, who knew her thoughts and understood how the chaste young woman was in anguish over her purity, listened to her; and the Guardian of everyone’s safety stepped in, in those days, and arranged matters as follows.

There was a young man named Magistrianus, handsome to look at and devout in mind, whom God had filled with such a burning zeal of spirit that he thought nothing even of death. Coming in the guise of a man out for pleasure, he went in late in the evening to the fellow who kept the women, paid him five nummi, and said to him, “Let me spend tonight with this girl.” Then he went with her into the back room and said to her, “Get up. Save yourself.” He took off her clothes and dressed her in his own — his undertunic, his cloak, and the whole outfit of a man — and said to her, “Wrap the top of the cloak around you, and walk out.” She did so, and after signing herself all over with the mystery of the cross she walked out of that place untouched. She was kept perfectly unstained, by the grace of Christ and by the hand of the young man, who with his own blood saved her from disgrace.

The next day the thing came out, and Magistrianus was brought before the raging judge. When the cruel tyrant had questioned this noble champion of Christ and had learned it all, he ordered him thrown to the wild beasts — so that in this too the honor-hating demon would be put to shame. For while he meant to entangle the noble young man in an unholy punishment, what he did was display him as a double martyr for Christ: he had fought nobly for his own undying soul, and he had also held out like a man in hard labor on behalf of that noble and blessed young woman.