Polycarp the Bishop

Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John and ordained by him bishop of Smyrna, was the chief man of all Asia, where he saw some of the apostles and of those who had seen the Lord, and had them as his teachers. Because of certain questions about the day of the Passover, he went to Rome in the time of the emperor Antoninus Pius, while Anicetus governed the church in that city. There he brought back to the faith many of the believers who had been deceived by the persuasion of Marcion and Valentinus. When Marcion happened to meet him and said, “Do you know us?” he replied, “I know the firstborn of the devil.” Afterward, in the reign of Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, in the fourth persecution after Nero, he was burned at Smyrna, in the presence of the proconsul holding court there and of all the people crying out against him in the amphitheater. He wrote a very valuable letter to the Philippians, which is read to this day in the assemblies of Asia. [a]