Skip to content

The Encyclical Epistle of the Church at Smyrna Concerning the Martyrdom of the Holy Polycarp · Chapter XXI

The Date of the Martyrdom

Page 114 of 830

Now, the blessed Polycarp suffered martyrdom on the second day of the month Xanthicus just begun,476 the seventh day before the Kalends of May, on the great Sabbath, at the eighth hour.477 He was taken by Herod, Philip the Trallian being high priest,478 Statius Quadratus being proconsul, but Jesus Christ being King for ever, to whom be glory, honour, majesty, and an everlasting throne, from generation to generation. Amen.

Notes

  1. 476

    The translation is here very doubtful. Wake renders the words menos histamenou, "of the present month."

  2. 477

    Great obscurity hangs over the chronology here indicated. According to Usher, the Smyrnæans began the month Xanthicus on the 25th of March. But the seventh day before the Kalends of May is the 25th of April. Some, therefore, read 'Aprillion instead of Maion. The great Sabbath is that before the passover. The "eighth hour" may correspond either to our 8 a.m. or 2 p.m.

  3. 478

    Called before (chap. xii.) Asiarch.

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (1885–96). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.