Canons of Hippolytus

An early sixth-century collection of canons, originally written in Greek, and relating to liturgical and disciplinary matters. The Greek text is lost, and they survive in Ethiopic and Arabic MSS of the thirteenth century. These were made from a Coptic translation. They are wrongly attributed to Hippolytus,* whose Apostolic Tradition was one of the sources for them. Until this century the canons were regarded as a genuine production of Hippolytus and thus thought very valuable as a source for the early history of the church. Louis Duchesne made much use of them in his influential Origines du culte chrétien (1889). Scholars now regard them as having only minor importance.