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Ignatius of Antioch

Epistle to the Smyrnaeans

c. AD 107 · 12 chapters

Against those who denied Christ's real flesh. He affirms that the Eucharist is "the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ" (chapter 7), and in chapter 8 uses the phrase "the catholic church", the earliest surviving use of it.

The 1870 volume prints two versions of each letter, a shorter and a longer. The shorter is the one scholars accept as Ignatius's own, and it is the only one given here; the longer was expanded by a later writer. This translation prints chapters 12 and 13 of modern editions together as chapter 12; chapter 13 begins at its second paragraph.

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1. Salutation
2. 1
3. 2
4. 3
5. 4
6. 5
7. 6
8. 7
9. 8
10. 9
11. 10
12. 11
13. 12

Translation by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and Frederick Crombie: The Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 1: The Apostolic Fathers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870).
Text from Project Gutenberg eBook #77576, proofread by Distributed Proofreaders from Internet Archive scans.