St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202 AD)
Born: c. 115 AD, Smyrna
Died: 202 AD, Lyons, Gaul (France)
Feast day: June 28
St. Irenaeus was bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, which is now Lyons,
France. He was a disciple of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of
John the Evangelist.
He is recognized as a saint by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and
the Catholic Church, and his writings were formative in the early
development of Christian theology. His most famous work is Against
Heresies, a lengthy description and refutation of Gnosticism.
Biography of Irenaeus
Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, is the most important witness to
ecclesiastical tradition before Eusebius. He came originally from Asia
Minor, which was connected in many ways with the Church of Gaul, and
died after 190.
We know little about his life until 177, when the imprisoned
Christians of Lyons chose him as the bearer of a letter to Eleutherus
of Rome concerning the Montanist controversy. If the fact that the
confessors call him not only their brother, but their "companion," is
partly a reminiscense of Rev. 1:9, it still seems probable that he did
not wholly escape the persecution; and it may have been a design to
save his valuable life that inspired the choice of him to go to Rome.
Irenaeus had probably then been a presbyter of the church at Lyons for
several years, since immediately after his return he was chosen
bishop, to succeed Pothinus, who had perished in the persecution. In
this capacity he wrote his principal work, Against Heresies, about
185, and sent a letter about 190 to Victor of Rome, who had broken off
communion with the churches of Asia Minor over the Quartodeciman
controversy, as well as to other bishops.
There is no further definite knowledge of his later years. Jerome is
the first to mention him as a martyr, and then only incidentally, and
not improbably on the basis of the expression quoted above from the
letter of the confessors. Hippolytus, Tertullian, Eusebius, and other
writers who would have been likely to mention the fact of his
martyrdom, say nothing about it.
There has been a prolonged controversy, which is still unsettled, as
to the date of his birth and the length of Irenaeus' life. The
principal data may be briefly summarized as follows: If Irenaeus
became bishop in 177, he must have been at least forty, and was
therefore probably born before 137 rather than after. His implication
(5.30.3) that the Apocalypse was written "almost in his own lifetime"
is, all things considered, irreconcilable with the theory that he was
born 40 or 50 years after the probable date of its composition (before
the death of Domitian in 96).
In his letter to Florinus (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 5.20.5), Irenaeus
speaks of having seen Polycarp at Smyrna in the emperor's train when
he himself was still but a boy. The date of the death of Polycarp is
now practically settled for 155. For various reasons, this emperor
must have been Hadrian, who visited Asia Minor in 123 and 129, in the
latter of which years the meeting must have taken place. All that
Irenaeus tells of his recollections of Polycarp at this period shows
that he must have been at least 12 or 15, and thus was probably born
about 115. He implies distinctly that his intercourse with and
instruction by Polycarp lasted for a number of years, very likely from
about 129 to 150; and the same conclusion follows from what he tells
of the teaching received in Asia Minor from certain disciples of the
apostles.
There are two further passages (4.27.1-32 and 5.33.3-4) which can be
understood only as asserting that he had this oral instruction from
more than one of such disciples and when he was of an age to take it
in and be deeply impressed by it. Neither he nor any tradition
mentions the reaching of an unusually great age by any member of this
group except Polycarp; if the others died considerably earlier, say
before 145, he must before that date have been of an age to profit by
their teaching.
Finally, in an appendix to the Martyrium Polycarpi (found in a
manuscript at Moscow), which is almost certainly written by the
Pionius who was the author of a Vita Polycarpi before 400, the
statement is found, based upon Irenaeus's own works, that he was
teaching in Rome at the time of the death of Polycarp, and that a
voice like a trumpet told him, at the very hour, of the death of his
master in Smyrna. Whatever may be thought of this last assertion,
there is no reason to doubt the general statement; and the account
which he himself gives of Polycarp's visit to Rome in 154 evidently
comes from one who was there himself at the time. The chronological
results indicated above may thus be taken as fairly established.
As mentioned above, Irenaeus is remembered as a martyr although there
is no evidence for how he died. He was buried under the church of
Saint John's in Lyons, which was later renamed St. Irenaeus. His tomb
and his remains were destroyed in 1562 by the Calvinist Huguenots. The
remains of Leonardo da Vinci and Kepler, among others, also were lost
in the religious wars of those times.
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