A Martyr's Son
Origen was born around 185 in Alexandria, the great Greek city of Egypt, to Christian parents. His father, Leonides, taught him the Scriptures as a boy and had him learn passages by heart. In 202, during a persecution under Emperor Septimius Severus, Leonides was imprisoned and beheaded. Origen, not yet seventeen, wanted to join him in martyrdom, and his mother kept him home, we are told, only by hiding his clothes.
Our main source for his life is the sixth book of the Church History of Eusebius of Caesarea, written in the early fourth century by an admirer who drew on Origen's letters and on memories kept at Caesarea. Some of it may be colored by devotion.
With his father dead and the family's property seized, Origen supported his mother and six younger brothers by teaching. In his eighteenth year he was given charge of instructing those preparing for baptism under Bishop Demetrius. He sold his library of Greek classics for a small daily income and lived with fierce severity: fasting, sleeping on the floor, going barefoot, owning a single cloak. Eusebius also reports a story that cannot be confirmed: that the young Origen, taking Matthew 19:12 literally, castrated himself. Some modern scholars doubt it, and Origen himself, in his commentary on that verse written years later, condemned such a literal reading. If it happened, it was a grievous misreading of Scripture.
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