Polycarp of Smyrna

Life and Ministry

Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and one of the last living links to the apostolic generation. Irenaeus of Lyon — who heard Polycarp preach as a boy — testifies that Polycarp had been instructed by the apostles themselves, including John, and that he carried their teaching faithfully. He wrote to the church at Philippi (his sole surviving letter), traveled to Rome to confer with Bishop Anicetus over the dating of Easter, and led the church at Smyrna for decades. Ignatius had addressed one of his last letters to him on the way to martyrdom; Polycarp was thus the recipient of one martyr's testimony before becoming one himself.

Circumstances of Death

A festival crowd in Smyrna, stirred against the Christians, demanded Polycarp's arrest. He was found at a country house and brought to the stadium. The proconsul urged him to swear by Caesar's fortune, revile Christ, and be released. Polycarp answered with the line that has echoed through every persecution since: Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He has done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my King who saved me? Threatened with beasts, then with fire, he refused to recant. He was tied to the stake — the executioners did not bother to nail him, on his word that he would not flinch — and a fire was lit. The eyewitness Martyrdom of Polycarp, written within months by his own church, reports that the flames billowed around him without consuming him; a soldier was finally ordered to stab him with a dagger.

Legacy

The Martyrdom of Polycarp is the earliest extant Christian martyr-narrative outside the New Testament, and the template for the genre — calm courage, refusal of empire's small oath, public confession of the King above Caesar. Polycarp's death stands at the hinge between the apostolic witnesses and the second-century church that had to learn to be the church without them. His "eighty and six years" answer is the most quoted line in early Christian martyrology, and the most imitated.