The Martyrdom of Polycarp.

        Another account of martyrdom comes from about the same time. This is the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the famous bishop of Smyrna whose life spanned the years between Ignatius, early in the second century, and Irenaeus, toward its end. In 154 Polycarp had visited Rome to confer with the Roman bishop Anicetus about the day on which the institution of the Lord's Supper should be celebrated. Polycarp and the Christians of Asia observed it on the fourteenth of the month Nisan, no matter on what day of the week it fell; but the Roman church celebrated the death of Christ on Friday and his resurrection “on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.” This was the “quartodeciman controversy” that was soon to divide Christianity. Polycarp and Anicetus could not agree about it, but they partook of the communion together and parted amicably. After his return to Smyrna, however, Polycarp was arrested and condemned to death; he suffered martyrdom by being bound to the stake, stabbed, and burned. This occurred in A.D. 166-67.

        Polycarp was eighty-six years of age at the time of his martyrdom and had been bishop of Smyrna for at least fifty years. He was greatly respected and loved by Christians everywhere, and an account of his last days and death was very soon written in the form of a letter from the church at Smyrna to the one at Philomelium, two hundred miles to the east. It tells, for the most part with much restraint, of the arrest, examination, and execution of Polycarp. With it and the Martyrdom of Justin begins a new form of Christian literature that became immensely popular, the “acts of martyrdom”; the form was revived in more modern times with such effect in Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563). Such narratives played an important part in early Christian history in keeping Christians steadfast in persecutions, as members of “the noble army of martyrs.” The acts of martyrdom also played a very large part in such works as the Golden Legend, written in 1275 by Jacobus de Voragine, the archbishop of Genoa, translated into English and printed by Caxton in 1483, and in such great collections as the Acta Sanctorum, which contains sixty-nine volumes in both the Antwerp (1643-1910) and the Brussels (1845-1926) editions.

        Further light is thrown upon the life of Polycarp by the accounts of Irenaeus, who when he was a boy in Asia had seen Polycarp and heard him; this he relates in a letter to his friend Florinus, which fortunately was preserved in Eusebius' Church History (v. 20. 4-8). Irenaeus tells us more about Polycarp in his work Against Heresies (iii. 3. 4), where he records Polycarp's appointment by the apostles as bishop in Asia, his journey to Rome to seen Anicetus, and his famous encounter with Marcion. Marcion asked him, “Do you know me?” “I know you for the firstborn of Satan,” was Polycarp's sharp reply. Eusebius seems to have learned what he knew about Polycarp from Ignatius' Letter to Polycarp, Polycarp's Letter to the Philippians, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and what Irenaeus had to say about him.

        Eusebius copied most of the Martyrdom of Polycarp into the pages of his Church History (iv. 15). There are at least five Greek manuscripts of the Martyrdom. They end with a scribal note of unusual interest, for it states that the text was copied from the papers of Irenaeus by Gaius, who lived with him. Gaius' manuscript was copied by one Socrates, in Corinth, and his again by Piomus, possibly the martyr of that name who suffered in the Decian persecution (A.D. 250). This last scribe declares that Polycarp in a vision showed him where to find the outworn manuscript written by Socrates.

        It is by no means certain that this scribal note-or, for that matter, any of the materials appended to the Martyrdom in chapters 21 and 22-belong to the original form of the work, which clearly ends with chapter 20. H. von Campenhausen has forcefully argued that the Martyrdom has suffered a good deal of interpolation, especially at the hands of an editor after Eusebius' time; this editor, impressed by the resemblance of Polycarp's sufferings to those of Jesus, has added details which bring out the parallel. Be this as it may-and acts of martyrdom have usually undergone a good deal of expansion-the Martyrdom contains a moving and generally convincing account of a tragic and heroic story, too often repeated in the second and third centuries, and it marks the beginning of the great literature of martyrology.