Strictly speaking, our account of Ignatius should have preceded that of Polycarp. We have dwelt first upon the life story of the Bishop of Smyrna mainly because through the references of contemporaries we have been enabled to trace the whole prolonged career of one who was in his early days directly connected with John.
Very different, however, are our materials for any picture of the career of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch. Here we have scarcely anything from the very scanty references of contemporaries to help us. The few traditions belong to a later age and are untrustworthy. Ignatius, like others who lived in the age immediately following the times when the Apostles taught, would have been to us but the shadow of a great name, had it not been for a little collection of epistles of his which have come down the stream of time; a little packet, so to speak, of letters, which, in the form we now use, the most trustworthy scholars dare to pronounce absolutely genuine.
These letters, seven in number, but by no means long, are of intense interest. They give us considerable insight into the constitution of the Christian Church a very few years after the death of John. Their date is clear, circa A. D. 107-10. They also give us the opinions of a great and responsible teacher, who learned his lessons from the lips of Apostles, on some of the more important of the fundamental Christian doctrines; telling us exactly what the disciples of Jesus thought of the Master, and said of the Master, in the first years of the second century.
Written under the shadow of death, the burning yet carefully weighed words of the writer show us also what an earnest Christian of that early age thought of death. To one like Ignatius, death seemed a friend which would bring him at once into the company of his adored Lord. These epistles, apart from their inestimable value as a very early piece of doctrinal teaching, lay bare to us the thoughts of a martyr before his passion. His words, the true expression of his heart, have brought to thousands of devoted followers of the Master comfort, encouragement, confidence; not only in the awful scenes so common in the centuries of persecution, but also in countless instances to harassed souls in the ages of comparative quiet which followed the first two hundred and eighty years of storm and stress for the Christian communities.
His martyrdom we can place with some certainty between A. D. 107 and A. D. 110. From expressions in his letters, it would seem that he was an old, or at least an elderly man, when he was condemned. This would give circa A. D. 40 as the date of his birth. He represents himself apparently as not born of Christian parentage, but as having been converted to Christianity in mature life. The earliest traditions unite in representing Ignatius as the second of the Antiochene Bishops. That he was a disciple of one of the great Apostles all early traditions tell us, one mentioning Peter, another John, a third Paul as his master. That he was an "Apostolic" man, or in other words a pupil of the Apostles, seems almost indisputable. That for a lengthened period he presided over the influential and numerous congregation of the great Syrian capital Antioch is equally certain.
By Syrian writers, to the name Ignatius is added the appellation Nurono, which some have supposed referred to the town Nora or Nura in Sardinia, "Ignatius Nuraniensis," but there is nothing anywhere related which would give color to the supposition that he was a native of Sardinia. The appellation probably comes from the Syrian word "Nuro," or flame, and he would have received the name from his passionate devotion to the Redeemer, his heart being all aflame for God.
The term, however, by which Ignatius is best known, and which he uses himself in his letters, is "Theophorus," the God-borne; or, if the Greek word be differently accented, the God-bearer. This name or appellation has given rise to the favorite and beautiful story that Ignatius was the very child whom our Lord took in His arms (Mark ix. 36-37). But the striking legend was utterly unknown in early times. Eusebius, for instance, who has much to say of the Martyr-Bishop and his famous letters, is silent here. Chrysostom besides definitely tells us that, unlike the Apostles, Ignatius had not seen the Lord. Another interesting explanation, but little known, was current. This curiously relates how, when his heart was cut into small pieces, the name of Christ was inscribed in golden letters on each single piece. This fanciful legend strangely enough reminds us of Queen Mary's words—that when she was dead, the name of Calais would be read engraven on her heart. The most probable explanation of the name is that the saint himself adopted it, as expressive of the ideal he ever proposed to himself—one who would bear God always in his thoughts. This assumption of a special designation in addition to the original name, was a common practice, of which there are many instances.
Of the circumstances of his arrest, trial, and condemnation at Antioch circa A. D. 107-10, we possess no definite information beyond what the saint tells us himself in his letters. The details contained in the "Acts of Martyrdom" cannot be received as authentic contemporary history. A persecution, which does not appear to have been general, a fierce onslaught on the Christian community of Antioch, had broken out, probably through some special accusations of informers; Ignatius, the chief pastor of the Church, was charged with professing and teaching Christianity; and on confessing at once that he was a Christian was condemned by the provincial magistrate to the wild beasts, and with other criminals was reserved for the Imperial games at Rome. These bloody sports in the reign of the Emperor Trajan were on a vast scale, and included mimic battles with real bloodshed, by sea and land, combats of men with wild beasts, and other horrible diversions in which the Roman populace evidently delighted, such as those mentioned in the account above given of Nero's games in the Vatican Gardens. A considerable supply of victims was required for these inhuman exhibitions. To meet this need the provincial governors were required to send up to Rome from time to time criminals who had been convicted of a capital offense; to play, fight, and suffer in one of the enormous amphitheatres, and to be included in the great crowd of guilty and innocent men and women who on high festival occasions were "called for to make sport for the people."
Ignatius was one of these victims. No successful general ever journeyed Rome wards—looking forward to being the principal figure in one of those proud triumphs with which the Empire was wont to honor her successful captains—more joyfully than did Ignatius in that painful journey of his from Antioch to Rome—looking forward to being, in the eyes of his brother Christians, the chief sufferer in the bloodstained Imperial games. His only fear was lest some ill-advised powerful friend of the Christians should use his influence at the last moment, and rescue him from the martyr's death for which he so passionately longed.
It was a long journey from Syrian Antioch to Rome. Under the custody of a little company of ten soldiers, he most probably embarked at Seleucia for some Cilician or Pamphylian harbor, and from there travelled across the districts of Asia Minor to the Western Coast.
At Philadelphia his escort made a halt, to which he especially refers in his letters to the Church. From this city he was taken to Smyrna, where again a stay was made of some considerable duration. There the prisoner was warmly and affectionately welcomed by the Bishop, Polycarp. Thither also there came to visit him delegates from Ephesus and its Church, headed by the Bishop Onesimus, and from the Christian communities of the cities of Tralles and Magnesia.
From Smyrna the martyr wrote four of the famous epistles which we still possess; to the Churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles, and one, which as we shall see was especially prized by the early Church, to the Roman community.
After Smyrna, the next lengthy halt was at Alexandria Troas. At Troas the condemned Bishop wrote three more letters. Of these letters, two were addressed to the communities he had visited in his painful journey—the Christians of Philadelphia and Smyrna; and the third, from which we have already quoted, was specially written to Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna. When this letter was written he was about to sail to Neapolis, on the European coast. From Neapolis he was taken another stage of his long journey, to Philippi. But after the letters written by Ignatius at Troas we have nothing from his pen; what little more we learn of the saint comes from another source.
While at Philippi he had directed the brethren there to write a letter to his own Church of Antioch, with news of their captive Bishop. The Philippian Church wrote to Polycarp of Smyrna requesting that their letter, written according to the martyr's direction, should be conveyed to Antioch. Polycarp's reply to the Philippians, already referred to, is the solitary letter which we possess of the great Bishop of Smyrna. In it he asks for any further information they might possess respecting the fate of Ignatius; but we have no record of their reply.
So far for the celebrated journey of Ignatius from Antioch to Rome we have authoritative evidence. The genuineness of the seven letters of the martyr and of the subsequent letter of Polycarp to the Philippians is now placed beyond dispute. That Ignatius was taken from Philippi to Rome, that he suffered death, exposed to wild beasts in that enormous amphitheatre, whose vast ruins are so well known under the name of the Colosseum, erected by the Imperial Flavian House I expressly for the bloody games in which the Romans delighted, there is no doubt. Tradition is unanimous, here.
It will, however, be specially interesting to see what the Antiochene "Acts of Martyrdom" relate concerning the last hours of the martyr.
In the Appendix C the genuineness of the existing form of the "Acts" is discussed. Bishop Lightfoot, while rejecting (contrary to the opinions of some scholars) these "Acts" as a genuine contemporary piece, considers that a residuum of a true tradition is possibly preserved in them, some earlier document being embodied in the recital, especially in those parts which profess to be related by eye-witnesses. These eye-witnesses tell us how a favorable wind carried the ship in which Ignatius was sailing past Puteoli to the harbor of the Romans (Ostia) too quickly for these eye-witnesses, who, to use their own words, were "mourning over the separation which must soon come between ourselves and this righteous man, while he had his wish fulfilled; for he was eager to depart from the world quickly, that he might hasten to join the Lord whom he loved. Wherefore as he landed at the port of the Romans just when the unholy sports were nearing a close, the soldiers were vexed at the slow pace, while the Bishop gladly obeyed them as they hurried him forward."
The witnesses of the end set out from the port at break of day and, as the doings of the holy martyr had already been rumored abroad, we were met by the brethren, who were filled at once with fear and joy—with joy, because they were vouchsafed the meeting with the "God-bearer" with fear because so good a man was on the way to execution.
And some of them he, Ignatius, also charged to hold their peace, when in the fervor of their zeal they said that they would stay the people from seeking the death of the righteous man. Having recognized these at once by the Spirit, and having saluted all of them, he asked them to show their genuine love, and discoursed at greater length than in his epistle, and persuaded them not to grudge one who was hastening to meet his Lord; and then, all the brethren falling on their knees, he made entreaty to the Son of God for the Churches, for the staying of the persecutions, and for the love of the brethren one to another, and was led away promptly into the amphitheatre. Then forthwith he was put into the arena in obedience to the previous order of Caesar (the Emperor Trajan) just as the sports were drawing to a close . . . whereupon he was thrown by these godless men to savage beasts, and so the desire of the holy martyr Ignatius was fulfilled forthwith . . . that he might not be burdensome to any of the brethren by the collection of his relics, according as he had already in his epistle expressed his desire that his own martyrdom might be, for only the tougher part of his holy relics were left, and only these were carried back to Antioch and laid in a sarcophagus. . . . Now these things happened on the 13th before the Kalends of January, when Sura and Senecio for the second time were consuls among the Romans.
"Having with tears beheld these things with our own eyes, and having watched all night long in the house, and having often and again entreated the Lord with supplication on our knees to confirm the faith of us weak men after what had passed, when we had fallen asleep for a while, some of us suddenly beheld the blessed Ignatius standing by and embracing us, while by others again he was seen praying over us, and by others dropping with sweat, as if he were come from a hard struggle, and were standing by the Lord's side with much boldness and unutterable glory. And being filled with joy at the sight and comparing the visions of our dreams, after singing hymns to God, the Giver of good things, and lauding the holy man, we have signified unto you both the day and the time, that we may gather ourselves together at the season of the martyrdom and hold communion with the athlete and valiant martyr of Christ, who trampled the devil under foot, and accomplished the race of his Christian devotion in Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom, and with Whom, is the glory and power with the Father, with the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen!"
But we must dwell for a brief space upon those "seven authentic letters" which come to us as a breath from the very heart of the early Christian Church, telling us something of the hopes which inspired, of the fears which perplexed, of the faith which strengthened and encouraged the little communities of Christians, in the years which immediately succeeded the "passing" of John, the last, and perhaps the greatest, of the Apostolic band. Those seven letters, which have come down to us in so wonderful a manner through the eighteen hundred years of storm and stress, through the age of persecution, through the yet longer ages of war and confusion—what were they?
The whole seven taken together, as we have said, are barely as long as the two Epistles to the Corinthians of Paul. They are, each of them, with the exception of that written to the Ephesians, which is of some length, but little things after all. They cannot be termed treatises on any definite subject; they are not reasoned out, they bear evidently the marks of haste and hurry. But their passionate expressions, full of love, anxious care, burning faith, spring evidently from the heart of the writer, and that writer no ordinary man. He was, we see clearly, one long accustomed to rule, to organize, and to teach. His theological system, to use a later term, was a definite one. His mind was fully made up on the questions of the great fundamental doctrines of Christianity, as we should expect in one who had been the pupil of Apostles, trained by Peter or Paul or John, not improbably a hearer of each of these disciples of the Lord.
There is a certain sameness in five of the seven epistles, viz. those written to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Philadelphians, and Smyrnaeans. That addressed to Polycarp is, as might be expected, more personal in its character. The letter to the Romans is quite different from the other six. It is almost wholly taken up with thoughts connected with his martyrdom. In many respects it is the most remarkable and interesting of the seven, and has enjoyed by far the widest popularity.
To go a little farther into detail, in the five above alluded to as being cast somewhat in the same mold the Churches addressed are solemnly warned to beware of heresy, of false doctrine. And the special error, which evidently gave the great teacher uneasiness lest the pure faith of the communities should be endangered, was a strange wandering from the original Evangelic teaching respecting the Person of Christ. In theological language the heresy against which Ignatius warns his readers is termed "Docetism," a heresy which questioned the reality of Christ's humanity, of His actual birth and life and death in the flesh, maintaining that "the body with which Christ seemed to be clothed was a phantom, and that all his actions were only in appearances."
"Docetism" is a danger which has long passed away; to us it is but "the shadow of smoke, is the dream of a dream," yet all the writings which have come to us from the teachers of the second century show us that in those early days this curious error constituted a very real peril to Christianity. Strong anti-Docetic statements are repeated in similar language in five of the epistles, such as "Jesus Christ . . . who was truly born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died in the sight of those in heaven, and those on earth, and those under the earth, moreover, was truly raised from the death. . . . But if it were, as certain persons, who are godless, that is unbelievers, say, that He suffered only in semblance . . . why am I in bonds? and why also do I desire to fight with wild beasts? So I die in vain! Truly then I lie against the Lord. . . . Shun ye, therefore, those vile offshoots that gender a deadly fruit, whereof if a man taste forthwith he dieth. For these men are not the Father's planting." (Ep. to the Trallians, 9, 10, 11.)
And again, "I know and believe that He was in the flesh even after the Resurrection; and when He came to Peter and his company He said unto them, 'Lay hold and handle me, and see that I am not a demon without a body,' and straightaway they touched him and they believed." (Ep. to the Smyrnaeans, 3.)
But besides the reality of the Passion of the Lord, on which, in view of the heretical suggestions of the Docetic teachers, Ignatius laid so much stress, the great Bishop, in five of his seven letters, was peculiarly urgent in pressing home the supreme necessity for ecclesiastical order, which he considered as the great bulwark against doctrinal errors.
None of the eminent Church teachers in any age has so persistently advocated the authority of the threefold ministry as has Ignatius. In the eyes of the Martyr - Bishop of Antioch, who was the first authoritative mouthpiece of the Church after the passing away of John, the threefold ministry of bishops priests, and deacons was, to use the words of his latest scholarly biographer, the husk, the shell, which protects the precious kernel of the truth. So repeated and so urgent were his charges here, that it is difficult in a brief summary to select from the letters even the more telling. "It becometh you," he writes to the Ephesians, "to run in harmony with the mind of the bishop ... for your honorable presbytery, which is worthy of God, is attuned to the bishop, even as its strings to a lyre."
To the Magnesians: "As the Lord did nothing without the Father (being united with Him), either by Himself or by the Apostles, so neither do you anything without the bishop and the presbyters."
To the Philadelphians: "I cried out, when I was among you, I spake with a loud voice, with God's own voice—Give you heed to the bishop, and the presbytery and the deacons."
To the Smyrnaeans: "Let that be held a valid Eucharist, which is under the bishop, or one to whom he shall have committed it. It is not lawful, apart from the bishop, either to baptize, or to hold a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve, this is well pleasing also to God, that everything which you shall do may be safe and valid."
And these, we must remember, are only a few quotations from a number of like sayings in the letters. Well might reformers like Calvin, who, no doubt largely owing to the force of circumstances, had adopted Presbyterianism, and, later, our English Milton, impugn the authenticity of the Ignatian letters. This they did, as is well known, in language of reckless invective; for if the seven famous Ignatian epistles were accepted as genuine, it would follow that the form of Church government adopted by the advocates of Presbyterianism was absolutely at variance with the Church order generally recognized circa A. D. 100-10, and so strongly commended by one of the most honored and revered of the Church teachers and leaders of that age.
Of the genuineness and authenticity of the seven letters, from which the above quotations are taken, and in which many similar passages to those quoted above occur, there is no longer any room for doubt.
But among the seven there is one letter in which neither is heresy combated, nor the necessity of ecclesiastical order enjoined. In the epistle to the Romans the writer had in mind another object—his coming martyrdom. It is colored with his hopes, his fears, his outlook. His hopes are all centered in the glorious agony which lay before him; his fears are summed up in a strange, nervous dread that he might never, owing to some mistaken kindness of friends, or through the pity of his enemies, attain to that goal of martyrdom he so passionately longed to reach; his gaze was directed alone to the other world, where he would meet his loved Lord face to face.
It was, indeed, a strange, wonderful letter. He looked forward to the supreme hour of the arena, feeling that the great example he hoped to set would be a help to the cause he loved with his whole soul. If only they would keep silence and leave him alone to die, he would be "a word of God, instead of a mere cry." He shrank from no suffering, fully realizing what lay before him in that dread arena. "Let me," was his passionate utterance, "be given to the wild beasts; for through them can I attain unto God. I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may bo found the pure bread (of Christ); rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my Sepulcher, and may leave no part of my body behind. ... It is good for me to die for Jesus Christ rather than to reign over the farthest bounds of the earth. Him I seek Who died on our behalf, Him I desire Who rose again (for our sake)." Curious, indeed, was his fear lest his Roman friends, through a mistaken kindness, a too officious zeal, should obtain a reversal of his awful sentence. To Ignatius death was life, and life, as we commonly understand it, was death. "Do not hinder me," he pleaded, "from living" (as he understood living), "do not desire my death, . . . suffer me to receive the pure light; when I am come thither, then I shall be a man: let me be an imitator of the Passion of my God. . . . Never shall I find an opportunity such as this to attain unto God. . . . I dread your very love, lest it do me an injury. . . . Come fire and cross and grappling with wild beasts, cutting and mangling, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of my whole body, come cruel tortures of the devils to assail me—only be it mine to attain unto Jesus Christ." Much more like this is to be found in this strange letter. It is all one passionate longing cry for martyrdom.
Very striking was the effect of this epistle of Ignatius to the Romans. It crystallized in words, so to speak, the spirit of the early Church in the face of death, that spirit which so dismayed, disturbed, made anxious great Pagan statesmen like the Emperor Marcus. Men realized that the feeling which despised death, the feeling so strikingly and so early voiced by Ignatius, was thoroughly earnest, was very real and genuine. This intense conviction that death was life, that death would unite them for ever to their Lord, was the victory which overcame the world, which eventually swept away the old Pagan cult, and which, after two centuries and a half of combat, enthroned Christianity as the world's religion.
Although it is clear that the seven letters of Ignatius enjoyed from early times a wide popularity, this epistle to the Romans, which preached martyrdom for the faith as the true life, as the pure light, as the perfect discipleship, which exalted the martyr's crown as a better prize than even the kingdoms of the world, in this respect excelled them all. It appears to have been even circulated as a separate tractate. It has been happily termed a sort of "Martyr's Manual," a vade mecum of martyrs in subsequent ages. In the earliest authentic contemporary records of martyrdom that we possess, as for instance in the letter to the Philomelians, written from Smyrna immediately after the death of its great Bishop Polycarp, circa A. D. 157, in the pathetic story, evidently compiled by a contemporary, of the persecutions at Lyons and Vienne, in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas at Carthage, in the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, its reflection is clearly seen. It was one of those pieces of early Christian literature which impressed itself with strange power on the thought of the Church of the age of persecution; and the secret of its widespread influence must be largely sought and found in its language, true as it was passionate, the faithful echo of the spirit which lived in that early Church, and was ever whispering that for the Christian "to live was Christ, but to die was gain," that while for a Christian teacher to abide in the flesh was perhaps needful for the brethren, yet "to depart and be with Christ was far better."