Now one might have much to say, were he to attempt at leisure to hand down in writing the man's life, and the account concerning him would require a treatise of its own. Nevertheless for the present, abridging most things as briefly as may be, we shall pass over a few of the matters concerning him, drawing what we set forth from certain letters and from the report of those of his acquaintances whose lives have been preserved even to our own day.
Of Origen, then, it seems to me that even the things from his very swaddling-clothes, so to speak, are worthy of mention. For Severus was holding the tenth year of his reign, and Laetus was governor of Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, while Demetrius had but recently then received the episcopate of the communities there, in succession to Julian.
When, therefore, the fire of the persecution had been kindled to a mighty blaze, and countless multitudes were being wreathed with the crowns of martyrdom, such a passion for martyrdom possessed Origen's soul, while he was still quite a boy, that he was eager to come to close quarters with the dangers, and to leap forward and rush eagerly to the contest.
Indeed, the end of his life from this world was already but a very little way off, had not the divine and heavenly providence, acting for the benefit of very many through his mother, stood in the way of his zeal.
She at all events at first by words besought him, entreating him to take pity on her motherly affection toward him; but when she saw that, on learning that his father had been seized and was kept in prison, he was wholly given over to the impulse toward martyrdom, and that he was straining all the more vehemently, she hid away all his clothing and laid upon him the necessity of staying at home.
But since nothing else was left for him to do, and his zeal, intensified beyond his years, would not suffer him to keep still, he sent to his father a letter most strongly urging him on concerning martyrdom, in which he exhorts him in these very words: 「Take heed not to change thy mind on our account.」 Let this be recorded as the first token of Origen's boyhood shrewdness and of his most genuine disposition toward the fear of God.
For indeed he had already laid no small foundation in the words of the faith, having been trained in the divine Scriptures from the time he was still a boy. At any rate he had laboured over these in no ordinary measure, his father, besides the customary general education, having made the care of these too no mere secondary matter for him.
In every way, accordingly, before the study of Greek learning, he urged him to train himself in the sacred lessons, exacting from him each day learning by heart and recitation.
And these things were not done by the boy against his inclination, but rather he laboured at them with exceedingly great eagerness, so that the plain and ready readings of the sacred words did not suffice him, but he sought something further and busied himself, even from that age, with deeper contemplations, so that he caused his father trouble by inquiring what then the meaning of the inspired Scripture might intend to signify.
His father, for his part, would in appearance rebuke him to his face, counselling him to seek nothing beyond his years nor anything further than the manifest sense; but privately within himself, rejoicing greatly, he gave the greatest thanks to God, the Author of all good things, that He had counted him worthy to become the father of such a son.
And they say that often, standing over the boy as he slept, he would lay bare his breast, and as though a divine spirit were enshrined within it, would kiss it reverently and count himself blessed in his goodly offspring. These things, and others akin to them, they record as having happened concerning Origen while he was a boy.
But when his father had been perfected by martyrdom, he was left bereft, together with his mother and six younger brothers, being not yet quite seventeen years of age.
When his father's property had been confiscated to the imperial treasury, he was reduced, along with his kinsfolk, to a lack of the necessities of life; yet he was counted worthy of a provision from God, and met with both welcome and rest in the house of a certain woman, very wealthy in life and otherwise most distinguished, who nevertheless was cherishing a notorious man, one of the heretics at Alexandria at that time. This man was an Antiochene by race, and the woman we have mentioned kept him with her as an adopted son and treated him with especial honour.
But Origen, though of necessity associating with him, gave clear proofs of his orthodoxy in the faith from that very age; for although a countless multitude—not only of heretics but also of our own people—was gathered around the man (Paul, for that was his name) because of his seeming competence in discourse, Origen never once was induced to join with him in prayer, keeping from boyhood the rule of the Church, and abhorring, as he himself somewhere says in his very words, the teachings of the heresies.
Having been advanced by his father in the studies of the Greeks, and after his father's death applying himself even more ardently and wholly to the discipline of letters, so that he had no ordinary preparation for grammatical studies, not long after his father's perfecting he devoted himself to these and was abundantly supplied with the necessities, as far as could be expected at that age.