Irenaeus the Bishop

Irenaeus was a presbyter under Pothinus, the bishop who ruled the church of Lyons in Gaul. The martyrs of that place sent him to Rome as their envoy on certain questions of the church, and he delivered to Bishop Eleutherius some letters under his own name that are worthy of honor. Afterward, when Pothinus, nearly ninety years old, received the crown of martyrdom for Christ, Irenaeus was put in his place. It is certain, too, that he was a disciple of Polycarp, the priest and martyr whom we mentioned above. He wrote five books Against Heresies; a short volume Against the Nations; another On Discipline; a letter to his brother Marcianus On the Apostolic Preaching; a book of Various Treatises; to Blastus, On Schism; to Florinus, On Monarchy, or That God Is Not the Author of Evil; and also an excellent Commentary on the Ogdoad. At the end of this commentary, showing that he lived close to the time of the apostles, he wrote: “I charge you, whoever you are who copy this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by his glorious coming, when he will judge the living and the dead: when you have copied it, compare it carefully and correct it by the copy from which you made it. And copy this charge as well, just as you find it in your original.” Other works of his are in circulation too: to Victor, the Roman bishop, On the Paschal Controversy, in which he warns him not to break the unity of the brotherhood lightly, if indeed Victor believed that the many bishops of Asia and the East, who kept the Passover with the Jews on the fourteenth day of the new moon, ought to be condemned. But even those who differed from them did not support Victor in his opinion. Irenaeus flourished chiefly in the reign of the emperor Commodus, who succeeded Marcus Antoninus Verus in power. [a]