Polycarp at Rome

In the times we are describing, while Anicetus was leading the church of the Romans, Irenaeus relates that Polycarp, who was still alive, was at Rome and came to talk with Anicetus about a question concerning the day of the Pascha. [a] The same writer hands down another account of Polycarp, which I must add to what has been told about him. It runs as follows, from the third book of Irenaeus’s work Against Heresies: [b] “Polycarp, too, was not only taught by apostles and lived among many who had seen the Lord, but was also appointed by apostles for Asia, as bishop in the church at Smyrna. We too saw him in our early youth, for he lived on a long time, and when he was very old he departed this life after bearing a glorious and most splendid martyr’s witness. He always taught what he had learned from the apostles, what the Church also hands down, and what alone is true. [c] All the churches throughout Asia bear witness to this, and so do those who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present. He was a far more trustworthy and sure witness of the truth than Valentinus and Marcion and the rest of those evil-minded men. When he stayed at Rome under Anicetus, he turned many away from the heretics just named back to the Church of God, proclaiming that this one and only truth, the truth handed down by the Church, was what he had received from the apostles.

And there are those who heard him tell how John, the Lord’s disciple, went to bathe at Ephesus, and seeing Cerinthus inside, rushed out of the bathhouse without bathing, saying, ‘Let us flee, or even the bathhouse may fall in, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside.’ [d] And Polycarp himself, when Marcion once came face to face with him and said, ‘Recognize us!’ answered, ‘I do recognize you. I recognize the firstborn of Satan.’ Such care did the apostles and their disciples take not even to share a word with any of those who counterfeit the truth, as Paul too said: ‘Have nothing to do with a heretical man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and sins, being self-condemned.’ [e] There is also a most sufficient letter of Polycarp written to the Philippians, from which those who wish to, and who care for their own salvation, can learn both the character of his faith and the preaching of the truth.” So Irenaeus. [g]

Polycarp, in his letter to the Philippians mentioned above, which is still extant, uses certain testimonies from the first letter of Peter. When Antoninus, called the Pious, had completed the twenty-second year of his reign, Marcus Aurelius Verus, also called Antoninus, his son, succeeded him together with his brother Lucius. [i]