Welcome to the opening matchup of Lent Madness 2023! If you’re a veteran Lent Madness participant, welcome back! If you're joining us for the first time, we’re delighted you’re along for this wild, saintly ride! And if you're just penitential-curious, check out the About Lent Madness tab on the website to find out what all the fuss is about.
To experience the fullness of Lent Madness, the Supreme Executive Committee (the somewhat benevolent dictatorship that runs this whole enterprise) encourages you
to do a couple things. First, like Lent Madness on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter. Second, subscribe to the Lent Madness e-mails so you never miss a vote — you’ll get each matchup hand-delivered to your inbox on the weekdays of Lent. You can do this by going to the home page of our website and entering your e-mail address. We highly recommend doing this. Finally, you can fill out a bracket online and daily see how you stack up against those who take their Lenten bracketology seriously.
But mostly, we encourage you to read about the 32 saints participating in this year’s edition of Lent Madness, faithfully cast your (single!) vote on the weekdays of Lent, and add your comments to the great cloud of participating witnesses that gathers as the online Lent Madness community each year. It's true that this is the only place on the internet where reading the comments is actually edifying.
If you’re wondering when your favorite saint will be competing – in order to rally your friends and neighbors (creative campaigning is encouraged, voter fraud is not) – you can check out the 2023 Matchup Calendar. And if you'd like to see all 32 saints in this year's bracket represented in peg doll form, check out this AMAZING video from our friends at St. James Cathedral in South Bend, Indiana.
Things kick off with a matchup featuring two hippos - kind of - as Augustine of Hippo takes on Hippolytus of Rome.
Friends, it's time to cast your very first vote of Lent Madness 2023! We’re glad you’re all here. Now get to it!
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine, the fourth-century bishop of Hippo in North Africa, is perhaps the single most influential theologian of the Western church after Paul. For Augustine, in the life of a Christian, all is grace. Augustine himself experienced and embraced grace and went to pour much of himself, his spiritual journey, and his experiences into his work, as is memorably seen in his Confessions.
At first, Augustine did not appear to be on a path to sainthood. At a young age, he abandoned Christianity and studied rhetoric with hopes of becoming a lawyer. Augustine was soon taken with the study of philosophy and later, with a religion that was a chief rival to Christianity in North Africa, all while living a “free and unconstrained life.” For 15 years, he lived with a mistress who would give birth to his child; in moving from one teaching post to another, he would eventually abandon her to move to Rome and to Milan. It was there that Augustine met Ambrose, Milan’s bishop, and reached his own epiphany, which he describes at length in his Confessions: “You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.” In 387, Augustine was baptized on Easter Eve by Ambrose and found the rest in God for which his heart had so longed.
Augustine returned to North Africa, where he lived a quasi-monastic life until he was seized by the community around him and ordained as a priest against his will. Within four years, he was ordained to the episcopate, and he served as bishop until his death.
Augustine’s breadth of life experience, his profound intellect, and his prayerful demeanor are evident in his writing. Often seen as a scold by some, Augustine and his writings nevertheless counter some of the most strident tendencies in the church. He pushed against the insistence on the existence of a force in eternal opposition to God, instead affirming the goodness of the creation and understanding evil to ultimately be an absence of good. He defended the doctrine of the Trinity and asserted that the church is holy not because of the holiness of its individual members but because of the calling its members receive from God. Above all, Augustine’s theology has at its core a deep yearning and desire for God, the experience of grace for all people.
Collect for Augustine of Hippo
Lord God, the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the hearts that serve you: Help us, following the example of your servant, Augustine of Hippo, so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whose service is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Hippolytus of Rome
Hippolytus of Rome was one of the most learned and influential theologians of the second and third centuries. He is described as a disciple of Irenaeus, and it is reported that a young Origen heard him speak and was so inspired that he decided to pursue his own illustrious career as a theologian and biblical scholar. Hippolytus’s work was wide ranging, exploring topics of apostolic succession, heresy, and biblical interpretation.
Hippolytus wrote in an educated form of Greek just as the Western Church was shifting toward Latin for their theologizing. As such, although the broad contours of his life and work are known (often through fragments and reports), much of his original work is lost, and his biography is shrouded in legend. (It does not help that there are several Hippolytuses in the church tradition, one of which was a notable martyr. The two are often conflated.)
What can be known somewhat confidently is that Hippolytus’s intellectual rigor was matched by his moral rigor. Early in his career, both of these led to conflict with the bishop of Rome. Hippolytus accused Bishop Callixtus of the heresy of modalism (an idea that emphasized the unity of God at the expense of denying the three persons of the Trinity). Hippolytus also wrote against the leniency of the bishop in welcoming back heretics and Christians with moral failings who had repented. In the wake of this conflict, Hippolytus was elected as a competing bishop of Rome, making him the first anti-pope. (It should be noted that this designation is anachronistic as there did not exist a papacy as we know it this early in the Christian tradition.)
When Emperor Maximus Thrax began persecuting the church, Hippolytus and one of Callixtus’s successors were exiled to Sardinia where Hippolytus died as a martyr in 235. Some report that he was killed by drowning in a deep well. Later legends say that he, like his Greek mythological counterpart, was dragged to death by horses (thus making him the patron saint of horses). His body was returned to Rome and interred in a Christian cemetery. This and his later treatment as a martyr of the church suggests that he had been reconciled before his death and was no longer considered a schismatic. His feast day is celebrated on August 13.
Collect for Hippolytus of Rome
Almighty God, you gave to your servant Hippolytus special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth as it is in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Augustine of Hippo: Sandro Botticelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Hippolytus: Ancient Roman sculpture, found in 1551 at Via Tiburtina, Rome, and now at the Vatican Library. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
219 comments on “Augustine of Hippo v. Hippolytus of Rome”
Both of these gentlemen are annoying. Augustine had a child with a woman then abandoned her to go off to be a Christian (that was not very nice) and Hippolytus sounds like a critical, self-righteous dude. I didn't want to vote for either of them, but recognize that not voting is a cop out. Thus Augustine gets my vote, reluctantly.
Augustine's eventual laying the foundation for the doctrine of predestination is problematic for me; nevertheless, let's start out with someone whose life is well documented, and contributed so much to theology, and also struggled with God at a time when the dominant culture was changing, including by violence, leaving the question "Where is God? What is the Kingdom?" - so relevant today.
Why do some of you get to have pictures and the rest of us do not? Are you holier than us?
No, we just decided to load up an avatar with our signature. Google how to do it.
Have a blessed day!
It has been a few years since I connected a picture to my identity, but it is through a website or blog hosting platform. I'm sure the Supreme Exec Committee could give you a url, or the info may be somewhere on lentmadness.org
I don’t think it’s right to call a man of God “the lesser of 2 evils,” but one was as bad as the other.
Augustine turned me off when he abandoned his mistress and innocent child. He also looked pretty miserable in his picture.
The idea that Hippolytus didn’t want the bishop to welcome back those who sinned and repented is horrendous. That was the deciding factor for me. I voted for Augustine.
I'm not a fan of either one. Not only did Augustin throw double supra lapsarian predestination into the conversation, he also abandoned a common law wife and his child in the name of holiness. He did say "he who sings prays twice," but i'm not convinced that's enough to out weight his failings. And Hippolytus' complete abandonment of forgiveness as an essential Christian virtue? So i shall bypass voting today and let fate and/or others who aren't as prejudiced as i determine their fat in the draw.
Love the limerick. Thank you!
Is it true that Augustine was jealous of Pelagius's looks (and especially his lush head of hair?) so he did his best to make Pelagius's life miserable? Asking for a friend...
Hard not to vote for a saint whom Bob Dylan wrote a song about!
I cannot bring myself to vote for for Augustine.
This was difficult. Perhaps if we had some sense of when they changed their minds, or didn't, after all they are human. After much disagreement with Augustine, and maybe it's his followers for generations where my real disagreement lies, had to vote for him after all. I hope I won't have to do that again in this wonderful Lent Madness.
Sorry but abandonment of a partner and your son doesn’t sit well with me.
Can’t vote for Augustine
Linda, I was thinking the same thing. Thanks for writing it.
Best,
Mary
I found the biography of Hippolytus very interesting, as I was unfamiliar with him prior to Lent Madness. However, when he is facing the towering presence of Augustine of Hippo, there is really no contest. The bad boy turned Doctor of the Church gets my vote today.
I did not receive Lent Madness this morning either so I have signed up again.
Lent Madness makes a great start to my day.
I submitted a comment and got a message that said it looked like I'd already submitted it before but it has not been posted. Glitch??
My husband subscribed to received lent madness via email in order to vote. He does not have Facebook or a twitter account. How long should it be till he gets enrolled to vote via email?
Thank you
Edie bruckart
Well I voted for Hippolytus because Hippolytus is a form of my birth name, Ippolito. Another thing, I did not know St. Augustine had a son. Do we know what happened to him?
Yeah, Augustine is running away with it on the first match-up.
Happy Lent Madness, everybody!
I am not getting my Lent Madness
If I am reading correctly, you sure started this off with a tough one...a deadbeat dad vs. an unwelcomer of repentants!
I cannot post my vote here. What gives?
I am happy to be back for another year of this cheery Lenten adventure. There are terrific outliers on this list that could go all the way to the Golden Halo!!!
Looking forward to getting to know these 32 saints better and enjoying this practice.
A difficult decision, but I went with Augustine. Perhaps it was because I have read a fair amount about him in various places.
I found myself wishing for some info re whether Augustine's conversion and new life in grace included making amends to the woman and son he had abandoned. But he got my vote, because of Hippolytis's unforgiveness toward repenters and schismatic actions.
I'm with the late Jaroslav Pelikan on Augustine: “Perhaps not the greatest of Latin writers, but almost certainly the greatest man who ever wrote Latin.”
Thank you Lent Madness! Thanks for the limerick John Cabot! 🙂 Augustine was a man with a heart and love. He won my vote.
It's complicated: "...concubinage involved a monogamous sexual relationship when the man and woman were not, or could not be, married for reasons of social class or rank. This was almost always due to a man of higher social status falling in love with a woman of low social status." -- from an interview with Suzanne Morse, who wrote a novel about Augustine's unnamed partner of 15 years. It looks to me like this teen pregnancy resulted in deep, abiding, monogamous love. Some scholars say they tried to marry, but the powers that be did not approve of the union.(Including, perhaps, an unwilling mother-in-law -- Monica is starting to look less saintly to me and more like a hovering tiger mom.) Sources vary as to whether Augustine sent her away, or she went willingly so as mot to be a hindrance to his career, leaving their child with the breadwinner. (Sadly, the boy died about a year later.) Both of them chose celibacy after parting ways -- Augustine first having a brief rebound affair and then ultimately deciding not to marry the child bride his mother arranged for him. Was it purely out of religious fervor, or in part after having each lost the love of their lives?
So I'm less inclined to fault Augustine for being fickle or a deadbeat dad -- times were different then. But I wonder if the greatest damage he did to the Church and the world was to downgrade marriage and romantic love and portray it as a hindrance to "higher" callings in Christian faith? To elevate lust as the #1 sin, rather than a part of human nature that brings us great joy as well as occasional bad decisions? To reinforce the idea of marriage as a social contract for the purpose of procreating, rather than deep soul friendship and mutual love and support? To pave the way for celibacy becoming, still for some Christian bodies, the rule for ordained persons rather than an option that works for some but not others?
I thought I'd still vote for him for his more lofty theological passages, but now I'm leaning toward Hippolytus, who despite being meanspiritedly unforgiving, did less damage. Actually I'd rather cast a write-in vote for the dancing hippos in Fantasia.
*Simple Village Priest, retired
Thank you for the information about Augustine and his family. The split up bothered me. I see, scanning the comments, that it bothered others, too.
Learning about everyone in the bracket, by the write-ups or comments, that is the greatest thing about Lent Madness, I think. This first match up is quickly reminding me!
Hello, ppp! Glad to "see" you again! I hope you are enjoying retirement. Love to read your reflections! Have a great Lent!
I've had a soft spot in my heart for Augustine since college. I was a medieval history major, and the semester I needed my senior seminar, the only upper-level course available that I was interested in and hadn't already taken was a course on Augustine's Confessions. I was the only student who signed up, so normally the class would have been canceled, but they couldn't because it was my senior seminar. So I had an emeritus professor to myself for three hours a week to talk about Augustine. It was a wonderful experience.
Gotta vote for Augustine. He is the reason my husband became an Episcopalian (Christian), saying, "If it's good enough for Augustine, it's good enough for me"
It was always going to be Augustine for me, though Hippolytus' story is compelling.
Grace is so foundational to my own experience. I had to stick with Gus.
Dare I hope for a son v. mother match-up on 3/16?