St. Polycarp

Their story

Polycarp was born around the year 69 and became bishop of Smyrna, a city on the coast of what is now Turkey. According to St. Irenaeus, who knew him as a young man, Polycarp had been taught by St. John the Apostle and by others who had seen the Lord. He was a living link to the first generation of Christians. Around the year 107, St. Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom in Rome, wrote a letter to Polycarp encouraging him as a shepherd. Polycarp's own letter to the Christians of Philippi still survives. Polycarp was a peacemaker. In his old age he traveled to Rome to meet Pope Anicetus about the different dates on which East and West celebrated Easter. They could not agree, but they parted in friendship, and Anicetus invited Polycarp to celebrate the Eucharist in Rome. Around the year 155, when Polycarp was 86, a persecution broke out in Smyrna. He was arrested and brought into the stadium, where the governor urged him to curse Christ and save his life. Polycarp answered that he had served Christ for eighty-six years and Christ had never done him any wrong, so how could he blaspheme his King who had saved him? He was condemned to be burned. According to the account written by his church, the flames formed an arch around him without consuming him, and he was finally killed with a dagger. That account is the oldest surviving story of a Christian martyr outside the New Testament, and it shows that from the beginning Christians gathered each year to celebrate the anniversary of a martyr's death.