Polycarp, Saint

POLYCARP, Saint. - A disciple of the apostle St. John (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 20, 5 ff.) and ordained by him bishop of Smyrna (Tertullian, De praescr., 32, 2), he came to Rome around 155 to discuss the Quartodeciman question with Pope Anicetus, without however reaching an agreement. During his stay in Rome he converted adherents of the sects of Marcion and of Valentinus. It is not known whether his meeting with Marcion, whom he called the "firstborn of Satan" (Irenaeus, Haer., 3, 3, 4), took place in Rome or in Ephesus. He died a martyr the following year (156).

According to Irenaeus (in Eusebius, op. cit., V, 20, 8) he wrote several letters to individual communities and persons. The Churches that received letters are located in the vicinity of Smyrna. P. enjoyed great authority there (the Martyrdom of P. [16, 8] calls him: "an apostolic and prophetic man"), which explains such activity in Asia Minor. From this point of view, however, it is surprising that his only surviving letter is addressed to a Church outside Asia and that this epistle has been poorly preserved, inasmuch as the Greek text of this letter to the Philippians survives in the Greek codices only in part (cc. 1-9, 2), while the Latin translation has preserved it entirely (v. Alb. Siegmund, Die Überlieferung der griechischen christlichen Literatur in der lateinischen Kirche, Munich 1909, p. 130). The authenticity of this epistle cannot be doubted, since it was already mentioned by Irenaeus, Haer., 30, 3, 4, and since Eusebius, op. cit., III, 36, 14-16, gives quotations from it. If, however, Jerome, De vir. illustr., 17, says that the letter to the Philippians was read "usque hodie in conventu Asiae", his statement is surprising, because one would rather expect in an Asian setting the public reading of letters addressed to Churches of Asia Minor. It seems that the letter to the Philippians was part of a collection of the Ignatian epistles, and such a connection is also suggested by the fact that the epistle to the Philippians presents itself in c. 13 as a covering letter accompanying the sending of a collection of St. Ignatius's letters to the Philippians. But while in c. 13, 2 Ignatius is still alive, in 9, 1 his death is presupposed. This contradiction suggested to Harrison the hypothesis that the present epistle is the fusion of two distinct letters of P. The fusion, however, must be ancient, because Eusebius knows both c. 9 and c. 13. It is generally said that in P.'s letter a knowledge of the I epistle of Clement is revealed, but this claim is not certain, because the coincidence between P. and I Clem. could also be explained by the hypothesis that the two writers depend on common earlier traditions, especially in the moral part. Such a hypothesis would also make understandable the use of Jewish phrases (firstborn of Satan: 7, 1; debtor of sin: 6, 1; cf. Enoch, 6, 3) in P. It is perhaps unjust to compare style and content in P. with Ignatius to the disadvantage of the former (e.g. ed. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa, II, Leipzig 1898, p. 512), because - granted the greater originality of Ignatius - literary style is also conditioned by the different literary genre.

THE MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP

One of the most famous and most ancient of the Passions of the martyrs. Written in the form of a catholic (encyclical) letter of the community of Smyrna, shortly after the death of P. (date imprecise, ca. 156; 177 instead according to H. Grégoire-P. Orgels, La véritable date du martyre de Polycarpe (23 février 177) et le « corpus Polycarpianum », in Anal. Bolland, 69 [1951], pp. 1-38). Characteristic of the Martyrdom of P. is the attempt to highlight the resemblance of the passion of P. to that of Jesus. Striking are the many stylistic coincidences with the IV book of Maccabees. Important is the prayer of P. with its liturgical allusions.

Si devono supporre diverse recensioni del testo. Un certo Pionio (non il martire dello stesso nome) aveva inserito il Martirio in un Corpus Polycarpianum, in cui al Martirio era aggiunta una vita di P., quest'ultima del testo senza valore storico. Inoltre Pionio aveva forse pubblicato una nuova recensione del Martirio. Eusebio aveva inserito il Martirio di P. nella sua collezione dei più antichi martiri. Nella sua Hist. eccl., IV, 15 dà un estratto dal Martirio di P. che rivela una recensione differente dal testo dei manoscritti.

Erik Peterson