The Life of Our Sacred Father, Hypatius of the Rufinianae

Better known by its short title, the Life of Hypatius was written in the mid-fifth century by Callinicus, the second abbot of the monastery that Hypatius (ca. 366–446) founded across the Bosporus Strait from Constantinople. Saint Hypatius was known for his ascetic regimen, unflagging rigor, and spiritual wisdom, and he challenged his disciples to resist careless Christianity and eliminate the influence of paganism. In this monastic hagiography, readers encounter a stark vision where monks are spiritual enforcers working with zeal and vigilance to promote Christian orthodoxy, worship, and moral conduct. The Life of Our Sacred Father, Hypatius of the Rufinianae offers:

• a precious witness to the perspectives, values, and attitudes of the early generation of monks in and around Constantinople.
• enthusiasm for imperial Christianity juxtaposed with a distrust for the worldliness of clergy members and an aggravated hostility toward traditional, local, and non-Christian worship practices.
• a look at Hypatius’s long paraenetic discourse that focuses on the timeless and indisputable virtues that monks strove to cultivate, including: humility, possessionlessness, care for the poor, self-control, and zealous commitment.

Bradley K. Storin is the associate professor of the history of Christianity in the department of philosophy and religious studies at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Self-Portrait in Three Colors: The Epistolary Autobiography of Gregory of Nazianzus (University of California Press, 2019). He published the first English translation of Gregory’s entire letter collection (Gregory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection: The Complete Translation [University of California Press, 2019]), and he has published translations of many Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts in The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings.