Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/868

 The Christians were about to remove the body; but Nicetes here further described as the brother of Alce, interfered and said, "If you give the body, the Christians will leave the Crucified One and worship him," an idea deeply shocking to the narrator of the story, who declares it was impossible for them to leave, for any other, Christ the Holy One Who died for the salvation of the world. Him, as the Son of God, they worshipped; martyrs they loved on account of the abundance of their zeal and love for Him. The Jews eagerly backing up Nicetes, the centurion had the body placed on the pyre and saw it completely consumed, so that it was only the bones, "more precious than jewels, more tried than gold," which the disciples could carry off to the place where they meant on the anniversary to commemorate the martyr's "birthday." The epistle closes with a doxology. Euarestus is named as the writer; Marcion [or Marcianus] as the bearer of the letter.

Then follows by way of appendix a note, stating that the martyrdom took place on the 2nd of the month Xanthicus, the 7th before the calends of March [there is a various reading May], on a great sabbath at the 8th hour; the arrest having been made by Herod; Philip of Tralles being chief priest, Statius Quadratus proconsul, and Jesus Christ King for ever. A second note states that these Acts were transcribed by Socrates (or Isocrates) of Corinth, from a copy made by Caius, a companion of Polycarp's disciple Irenaeus. A third note states that this again had been transcribed by Pionius from a copy much decayed by time, the success of his search for which was due to a revelation made by Polycarp himself, "as will be shewn in what follows," from which we infer that the martyrdom was followed by a Life of Polycarp.

The first chronological note may be accepted as, if not part of the original document, at least added by one of its first transcribers, and therefore deserving of high confidence. The name of the proconsul Statius Quadratus indicates best the date of the martyrdom. Eusebius in his chronicle had put it in the 6th year of Marcus Aurelius, i.e. 166. M. Waddington (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, 1867, xxvi. 235) shewed that Eusebius's date was doubtful. Eusebius seems to have had no real knowledge of the date, and to have put it down somewhat at random, for he places Polycarp's martyrdom and the Lyons persecution under the same year, though the Lyons martyrdoms were as late as 177. At this time the ordinary interval between the consulship and proconsulate ranged between 12 and 16 years. Quadratus we know to have been consul 142. We are at once led to reject Eusebius's date as placing the inadmissible interval of 24 or 25 years between the consulship and proconsulate. Waddington made out a probable case for 155, and an additional argument appears decisive. The martyrdom is stated to have taken place on Sat. Feb. 23, and among the possible years 155 is the only one in which Feb. 23 so fell. The reading of this chronological date is not free from variations. The "great sabbath" would in Christian times be thought to mean the Sat. in Easter week, and as Easter could not occur in Feb. there was an obvious temptation to alter Mar. into May, but none to make the opposite change, and we have independent knowledge that Feb. 23 was the day on which the Eastern church celebrated the martyrdom. But we do not know why Feb. 23 should be a "great" Sabbath. We believe the true explanation to be that the Latin date in this note is not of the same antiquity as the date by the Macedonian month. Probably Pionius, when he recovered the very ancient copy of the martyrdom, translated the date 2nd Xanthicus into one more widely intelligible and thus determined the date of subsequent commemorations. We accept, then, the 2nd Xanthicus as an original note of time faithfully preserved by a scribe who did not understand its meaning, because he interpreted according to the usage of his own day.

When we have abandoned the date Sat. Feb. 23 we lose one clue to fixing the exact date of the martyrdom, but we gain another. Since Nisan 2nd was Sat. the year must be one in which that lunar month commenced on a Friday. The only such years within the necessary limits were 155 and 159, and 155 again agrees best with the usual interval between consulship and proconsulate. The date Apr. 8, which 159 would require, is likely, moreover, to be too late. The chief difficulty raised by the date 155 is that if we adopt it the chronology of the Roman bishops obliges us to put Polycarp's visit in the last year of his life and the first of the episcopate of Anicetus.

For the literature connected with Polycarp see bp. Lightfoot's ed. of Ignatius and Polycarp. An ed. of Polycarp's remains by G. Jacobson is in ''Patr. Apost.'' (Clar. Press, 2 vols.). A small popular treatise on St. Polycarp by B. Jackson is pub. by S. P.C. K. Cf. also 7.ahn, Forschungen, iv. 249; Harnack, ''Gesch. der Alt.-Chr. Lat.'' 1897 (ii. 1, 334).

[G.S.]

Polycarpus (5). Moyses of Aghel (c. 550), in a Letter to Paphnutius prefatory to his Syriac version of the Glaphyra of Cyril of Alexandria, prepares his readers to find variations from the Peshitto in Cyril's citations of Scripture after the Greek, by referring them to "the translation of the N.T. and of David into Syriac" from the Greek, which "the Chorepiscopus Polycarpus made for Xenaias [Philoxenus] of Mabug" (Assem. ii. p. 82; see also Dr. Ign. Guidi in Rendiconti della R. Academia dei Lincei, 1886, p. 397). Now we know from Gregory Bar-hebraeus (Prooem. in Horr. Mystt.) that, "after the Peshitto, the N.T. was more accurately translated again from the Greek at Mabug in the days of Philoxenus." The same facts are stated in a note purporting to be written by   in 616, appended in slightly varying forms to many MSS. of the version of the N.T. known as the Harklensian, one of which (Assem. xi., now Cod. Vat. 268) is probably (Bernstein, Das Heil. Evang. des Joh. p. 2) of the 8th cent. In this MS., and others, the note gives also the date of this Philoxenian version, 508. In all of them it proceeds to describe the Harklensian version as based on this—in fact a revision of it; and the same description in more direct terms is given by Bar-hebraeus in two places in his Chronicon