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Polycarp of Smyrna

The Martyrdom of Polycarp

Chapter 21

The date of the martyrdom.

Now, the blessed Polycarp suffered martyrdom on the second day of the month Xanthicus just begun,1 the seventh day before the Calends of May, on the great Sabbath, at the eighth hour.2 He was taken by Herod, Philip the Trallian being high priest,3 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. The translation is here very doubtful. Wake renders the words μηνὸς ἱσταμένου, “of the present month.”↩
  2. 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 Calends of May is the 25th of April. Some, therefore, read Ἀπριλλίων instead of Μαΐων. The great Sabbath is that before the passover. The “eighth hour” may correspond either to our 8 A.M. or 2 P.M.↩
  3. Called before (chap. xii.) Asiarch.↩

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. Public domain.