Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/265

 POLYCARPUS

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POLYCARPUS

his track he went to another farm-house. Finding him gone they put two slave boys to the torture, and one of them betrayed his place of concealment. Herod, head of the police, sent a body of men to arrest him on Fri- day evening. Escape was still possible, but the old man refused to fly, saying, "the will of God be done". He came down to meet his pursuers, conversed affably with them, and ordered food to be set before them. While they were eating he prayed, "remembering all, high and low, who at any time had come in his way, and the Catholic Church throughout the world". Then he was led away.

Herod and Herod's father, Xicetas, met him and took him into their carriage, where they tried to pre- vail upon him to save his life. Finchng they could not persuade him, they pushed him out of the carriage with such haste that he bruised his shin. He followed on foot till they came to the Stadium, where a great crowd had assembled, having heard the news of his apprehension. "As Polycarp entered into the Sta- dium a voice came to him from heaven: 'Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man'. And no one saw the speaker, but those of our people who were present heard the voice. " It was to the proconsul, when he urged him to curse Christ, that Polycarp made his cele- brated reply: "Fourscore and six jears have I served Him, and He has done me no harm. How then can I curse my King that saved me." When the proconsul had done with the prisoner it was too late to throw him to the beasts, for the sports were closed. It was decided, therefore, to burn him alive. The crowd took it upon itself to collect fuel, "the Jews more es- pecially assisting in this with zeal, as is their wont" (cf. the Martyrdom of Pionius). The fire, "like the sail of a vessel filled by the wind, made a wall round the body" of the martyr, leaving it unscathed. The executioner was ordered to stab him, thereupon, "there came forth a quantity of blood so that it ex- tinguished the fire". (The storj- of the dove issuing from the body probably arose out of a textual corrup- tion. See Lightfoot, Funk, Zahn. It may also have been an interpolation by the pseudo-Pionius.)

The officials, urged thereto by the Jews, burned the body lest the Christians "should abandon the wor- ship of the Crucified One, and begin to worship this man". The bones of the martyr were collected by the Christians, and interred in a suitable place. " Xow the blessed Polycarp was martyred on the second day of the first part of the month of Xanthicus, on the seventh daj' before the ]\alends of March, on a great Sabbath at the eighth hour. He was apprehended by Herodes ... in the proconsulship of Statins Quad- ratus etc." This subscription gives the following facts: the martyrdom took place on a Saturday which fell on 23 February. Xow there are two possible years for this, 155 and 166. The choice depends upon which of the two Quadrat us was proconsul of Asia. By means of the chronological data supphed by the rhetorician jElius Aristides in certain autobiographical details which he furnishes, Waddington, who is followed by Lightfoot ("St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp", I, 646 sq.), arrived at the conclusion that Quadratus was pro- consul in 154-00 (the proconsul's year of office began in May). Schmid, a full account of whose system will be found in Harnack's "Chronologic", arguing from the same data, came to the conclusion that Quadra- tus's proconsulship fell in 165-66.

For some time it seemed as if Schmid's system was likely to prevail, but it has failed on two points: (1) Aristides tells us that he was bom when Jupiter was in Leo. This happened both in 117 and 129. Schmid's system requires the later of these two dates, but the date has been found to be impossible. Aristides was fifty-three years and six months old when a certain Macrinus was governor of Asia. "Xow Egger (in the Austrian 'Jahreshefte', Xov., 1906) has published an inscription recording the career of Macrinus, which

was erected to him while he was governing Asia, and he pointed out that as the birth of Aristides was either in 117 or 129, the government of Macrinus must have been either in 170-71, or 1S2-8.3, and he has shown that the later date is impossible". (Ramsay in "The Ex- pository Times", Jan., 1907.)

(2) Aristides mentions a Julianus who was procon- sul of Asia nine years before Quadratus. X'ow there was a Claudius Julianus, who is proved by epigraphic and numismatic evidence to have been Proconsul of Asia in 145. Schmid produced a Sah-ius Julianus who was consul in 14S and might, therefore, have been the Proconsul of .\sia named by Aristides. But an in- scription discovered in Africa giving the whole career of Salvius Julianus disposes of Schmid's hypothesis. The result of the new evidence is that Salvius Juli- anus never governed Asia, for he was Proconsul of Africa, and it was not permitted that the same person should hold both of these high offices. The rule is well known; and the objection is final and insurmountable (Ramsay, "Expos. Times", Feb., 1904. Ramsay re- fers to an article by Mommsen, "Savigny Zeitschrift fUr Rechtsgeschichte", xxiii, 54). Schmid's system, therefore, disappears, and Waddington's, in spite of some very real difficulties (Quadratus's proconsulship shows a tendency to slip a year out of place), is in pos- session. The possibility of course remains that the subscription was tampered with by a later hand. But 155 must be approximately correct if St. Polycarp was appointed bishop by St. John.

There is a life of St. Polycarp by a pseudo-Pionius, compiled probabh' in the middle of the fourth cen- tury. It is "altogether valueless as a contribution to our knowledge of Polycarp. It does not, so far as we know, rest on any tradition, early or late, and may probably be regarded as a fiction of the author's own brain" (Lightfoot, op. cit., iii, 431). The postscript to the letter to the Smyrnaeans: "This account Gains copied from the papers of Irenseus . . . and I, So- crates, wrote it down in Corinth . . . and I, Pionius again wrote it down", etc., probably came from the pseudo-Pionius. The very copious extracts from the Letter of the Smyrnaeans given by Eusebius are a guarantee of the fidelity of the text in the MSS. that have come down.

The Letter to the Philippians was first published in the Latin version by F-\ber Stapulensis in his edition of the Ignatian Epistles (Paris. 1498). The Greek text first appeared in Hal- Loix, Iltust. Ecdes. Orient, Script. (Douai. 1633): Bollandus in the Acta SS.. 26 Jan., published in 1643 a Latin translation of the Greek text of the Letter of the Smyrnicans. together with the old Latin version of the same epistle. Both Greek and Latin were published by Ussher in 1641. The substance of the pseudo- Pionius Life was given by Halloix in the work referred to above, and a Latin translation of it was published by Boll^ndus. Acta SS.. Jan. 26. The Greek text was first published by Duchesne, Vita S. Poll/carpi. . . auctore Pionio (Paris, 1881).

The best modern editions and commentaries are Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers, part IL Ignatius ami Polycarp (3 vols., 2nd ed.. London, 1889): Gebhardt. Harnack. axd Zahx, Patrum Apos- toticorum opera, fasc. Ill (Leipzig, 1876) : Funk, Patres Apostolici. A good account of St. Polycarp will be found in Lightfoot, Supernatural Religion (London, 1889). For the date of the mar- tyrdom the discussions found in Lightfoot and Harnack, Chronologic, I, 324 sq. should be supplemented by Corssen, Das Todcsjahr Polykarps in Zeitschrift f. d. A'. T. Wissenscha/t, III, 62, and the articles of Ramsay referred to above.

F. J. B.4CCHUS.

Polycarpus, title of a canonical collection in eight books com])OS(Ml in Italy by Cardinal Gregorius. It is borrowed chielly from the collections of Anselm and from the " .\nselmo Dedicata". Writers generally date it about 1124, because it includes a decretal of CaUist us II (d. 1124), but some place it prior to 1120 or 1118, date of the death of Bishop Didacus, to whom the collection is dedicated, and regard the Callistus de- cretal as an addition. The dedicatory epistle and the titles were published by the Ballerini ("De antiquis collectionibus et coUectoribus canonum", part IV, c. xvii in "P. L.", LVI, 346, Paris, 1865), and the rubrics by Theiner ("Disquisitiones criticae in praecipuas can-