Origen

Origen of Alexandria was the most prolific biblical scholar of the early Church. He led the catechetical school of his native city while still young, later teaching at Caesarea, and — supported by a patron who supplied him with stenographers — produced commentaries and homilies on almost every book of Scripture, the vast textual project of the Hexapla, and On First Principles, the first systematic Christian theology. Imprisoned and tortured in the persecution under the emperor Decius, he died about A.D. 254 from its effects. Some of his speculative opinions were later condemned, and he was never canonized; but his exegesis shaped nearly every commentator who came after him.