Polycarp of Smyrna, the bishop who linked Christians to the apostles' generation
Second-century Christians prized Polycarp because he had reportedly known John the Apostle and others who met Jesus. His pupil Irenaeus remembered him vividly decades later. He once travelled to Rome and disagreed with its bishop over the date of Easter, and the two simply agreed to differ while staying in communion.
Polycarp served as bishop of Smyrna, and Irenaeus, Tertullian and Jerome all describe him as a disciple of John. He counts, with Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, among the three chief Apostolic Fathers. Ignatius wrote to him directly, and Irenaeus, who had known him as a youth when Polycarp was very old, treated his memory as a living thread back to the apostolic age. In a letter to a fellow student, Irenaeus recalled the very spot where Polycarp used to sit and preach.
Only one of his writings survives, the Epistle to the Philippians, which is dense with echoes of the Septuagint and shows familiarity with the First Epistle of John. Some scholars, notably Hans von Campenhausen, have even proposed that he wrote the letters to Timothy and Titus under Paul's name. His letter rejects docetism, the idea that Christ only seemed human, and he was fiercely hostile to Marcion.
When Anicetus was bishop of Rome, Polycarp visited to settle differences between Anatolian and Roman practice. They agreed quickly on some matters, but not on Easter. Polycarp kept the feast on the 14th of Nisan, the date of Passover, whatever the weekday; Anicetus kept the Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. Anicetus nonetheless invited him to celebrate the Eucharist in his own church, a mark of honour.
The account of his martyrdom, for refusing to offer incense to the emperor, is among the earliest genuine martyr narratives and one of the first records of honouring a saint's relics on an annual date. Its dating is disputed: an addition to the text points to about 155 or 156, while Eusebius placed it around 166 to 167. Relic history has its own twist. A right arm kept for over 500 years at a monastery near Nafpaktos in Greece was stolen in 2013, though a fragment removed earlier was returned in 2019. His feast falls on 23 February in many churches.
Source: Polycarp
