Polycarp of Smyrna

Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna, a port city on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and one of the seven churches addressed in Revelation. He was born around AD 69 and burned at the stake around 155.

The link that matters most runs through Irenaeus of Lyons, who as a boy sat and listened to him. Irenaeus wrote that Polycarp "was instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ" and was appointed to Smyrna by apostles. He remembered the old man telling how he had talked with John and with others who had seen the Lord, and repeating what they said about his miracles and his teaching. Polycarp is the bridge, a man alive well into the second century who had heard eyewitnesses speak.

One letter of his survives, written to the Philippians, probably not long after Ignatius of Antioch passed through Smyrna on his way to die in Rome. It is short, humble, and stitched together out of Scripture; he quotes or echoes the New Testament dozens of times in a few pages. He does not speculate. He tells them to hold to what was handed down, to care for widows, to keep the elders honest with money, and to pray for kings.

Around 154 he traveled to Rome as an old man to talk with Bishop Anicetus about the date of Easter. They could not agree, the churches of Asia kept it on Nisan 14, Rome on the following Sunday, so Anicetus invited Polycarp to lead the Lord's Supper in his own church, and they parted in peace. The disagreement stood; the fellowship held.

His death is the earliest detailed account of a Christian martyrdom outside the New Testament, written by the church at Smyrna within a year or so of the event. A mob at the games demanded him. He was found at a farmhouse, ordered a meal for the soldiers sent to arrest him, and asked for an hour to pray; he prayed for two. In the stadium the proconsul urged him to save himself, swear by the fortune of Caesar, curse Christ, and go free.

His answer: "Eighty and six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"

They threatened him with beasts, then with fire. He told them the fire they lit would burn an hour and go out, and that they knew nothing of the fire of the judgment to come. He asked not to be nailed to the stake, only tied, saying the One who gave him strength to endure the fire would give him strength to stay in it. The account says the flames arched around him like a sail, and a soldier finally killed him with a dagger.

The Christians of Smyrna gathered his bones"more precious than costly stones" and kept the anniversary. That is where the practice of honoring a martyr's day begins.

Sources: The Martyrdom of Polycarp; Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians; Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.3 and his letter to Florinus (preserved in Eusebius, Church History V.20); Eusebius, Church History IV.15.