The Refutation of All Heresies, also called the Elenchus or Philosophumena, is a compendious Christian polemical work of the early third century, attributed to Hippolytus of. It catalogues both pagan beliefs and 33 gnostic Christian systems deemed heretical by Hippolytus, making it a major source of information on contemporary opponents of Christian orthodoxy as understood today. Hippolytus’s work is divided into ten books, eight of which have survived more or less intact. Books II and III, however, have not been unearthed, and their contents remain the subject of conjecture.
Circa l’autore
Hippolytus of Rome (c.170-c.235) was one of the most important second-third century Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. His principal work is the Refutation of all Heresies.