Ignatius, one of the so-called Apostolic Fathers, about whom information is but scanty down to the time of Eusebius, except in so far as may be gained from the much-disputed epistles associated with his name. His birth and education are wrapped in obscurity, but from the letters it may be inferred that he was not born of Christian parents, but was converted in mature life, and that his earlier life had been such as to fill his later years with remorse and give an unusual intensity to his religious convictions. The name is Roman; the second name, Theophoros, is merely a second name and not a title of honour ascribed to the saint. It was often interpreted as 'the God-borne,' as Ignatius was said to be the child our Lord took in his arms (Mark, ix. 36, 37), but this story was unknown in the early centuries. Eusebius is silent about it, and Chrysostom says distinctly that Ignatius had not seen the Lord. Origen makes him the second of the Antiochene bishops, and in Jerome's revision of the Chronicon of Eusebius he is stated to have been, with Papias and Polycarp, a disciple of St John. The usual date for his accession is 69 A.D., and of his martyrdom 107, but all that can be said with certainty is that his martyrdom fell about 110. The letters show that he was condemned to the wild beasts at Antioch, and that he was carried to Rome by a maniple of soldiers merely for the execution of his sentence. On the journey he was joined at Smyrna by representatives from the churches of Tralles, Magnesia, and Ephesus. Here he wrote four letters which are extant; three to the churches whose delegates had met him—the Ephesians, the Magnesians, and the Trallians; the fourth, to the church of the Romans, whither he was journeying. The first three are mainly concerned in enforcing lessons of doctrinal truth and ecclesiastical order; the fourth is occupied almost entirely with the thought of his approaching martyrdom. Next from Troas he wrote three letters: the first and second to the churches of Philadelphia and Smyrna, which he had just visited; the third to Polycarp, bishop of the latter. The general topics treated are the same as in the first three, but special charges are laid upon Polycarp to exhort the brethren at Antioch. We next hear of him at Philippi, as we learn from Polycarp's extant reply to the Philippians, who had evidently asked Polycarp for copies of the letters of Ignatius—not improbably the very cause of their preservation. Beyond this point we know nothing more of Ignatius save that at Rome he earned his martyr's crown. The tragic interest of his journey to face his doom in the arena, and the noble and exalted heroism of his enthusiasm as the vision of martyrdom for his Lord opened up before his eyes, left his dying letters a precious heritage to the church and gave an added sanctity to his teaching.
About the close of the 4th century we meet the persistent statement that the relics of Ignatius had been carried from Rome to Antioch, and we find October 17 fixed as the day of his martyrdom. The bones were finally deposited in the Tychæum or Temple of Fortune, which henceforward became known as the Church of Ignatius. His reputation was great, as is evinced by the epistles forged or interpolated in his name; the legendary acts of martyrdom, which give the unhistorical but well-known interview with Trajan; the translation of his letters into Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian—honoured especially by the Monophysites, who fancied they found support in them for their distinctive tenets. And from the close of the 16th century the Jacobite patriarchs of Antioch have regularly assumed the name of Ignatius on their accession to the see.
The Ignatian epistles exist in three different forms or recensions. The first of these contains three epistles alone: to Polycarp, to the Ephesians, and to the Romans. It is extant only in a Syriac version. The second presents these three epistles in a fuller form, and adds to them four others: to the Smyrneans, Magnesians, Philadelphians, and Trallians. Besides the original Greek this form is found in Latin, Armenian, Syriac, and Coptic translations, although only fragmentarily in the last two. The third contains the seven epistles already mentioned in a still longer form, together with six others—a letter from Mary of Cassobola to Ignatius, and letters from Ignatius to Mary of Cassobola, to the Tarsians, the Antiochenes, to Hero, and to the Philippians. This recension is extant both in the Greek and in a Latin translation. These three it is now usual to call the Short, Middle, and Long recensions. As will be seen, of the twelve Ignatian epistles (excluding that of Mary to Ignatius) three occur in three different forms, four in two forms, and the remaining five in one form only. The Long recension is now universally condemned as spurious. More serious is the dispute between the remaining two, which are often spoken of, from their editors, as the Curetonian (Short) and the Vossian (Middle) versions. The Curetonian long held the field, but the genuineness of the Vossian letters is now the prevailing belief, and is every day gaining ground. Bishop Lightfoot began by believing in the Curetonian form, but gradually found that the position demanded too much ingenuity from the Ignatian forger, and at length, influenced greatly by Zahn, found himself compelled to believe in the seven Vossian epistles as representing the genuine Ignatius. Indeed the priority and substantial genuineness of the Vossian letters may be said to be proved, in so far as any question of the kind can be proved, by Lightfoot's work; and with this conclusion one of the main buttresses of Baur's scheme of the formation of the Christian canon and of early Christian history generally falls to the ground.
The Short Form, represented only by a Syriac version, was first published by the Rev. W. Cureton in 1845, from MSS. recently brought to the British Museum from the Nitrian desert. Not only are the epistles fewer in number, but shorter and more abrupt. Their upholders believe the Greek form an expansion and corruption of the lost Greek originals of these Syriac letters; while their opponents think the Syriac an abridgment of the Greek.
The Middle Form was first published in the Latin version (made perhaps by Robert Grosseteste), by Ussher (Oxford, 1644), from two MSS. discovered in England; the original Greek, by Isaac Voss (Amsterdam, 1646), from a Medicean MS., the epistle to the Romans alone excepted, which was first published by Ruinart (Paris, 1689). The Armenian version appeared at Constantinople in 1783. These may now be accepted with some confidence as the seven epistles of Ignatius mentioned by Eusebius, which were translated into Syriac soon after his time, and of which the Curetonian epistles are merely an extract.
The Long form in its Latin version was printed by J. Faber Stapulensis (Paris, 1498); in the Greek version by Valentinus Paceus (Dillingæ, 1557). These epistles are supposed to have been interpolated and extended by the pseudo-Ignatius in the later half of the 4th century.
The chief differences in substance of these three forms of the Ignatian epistles are these: the Curetonian text contains no quotation from the Old Testament, and very few from the New, while the Vossian contains a considerable number of quotations, and the Long a large number. Again, the last also contains many allusions to religious institutions not in existence in a mature state before the 4th century, as well as plagiarisms from preceding writers and perceptible differences in doctrinal teaching. There is a tendency to maintain the supremacy of the Father and to make the Son's agency dependent. Indeed, many passages savour distinctly of Apollinarianism, yet the general bearing of the language leans faintly to the Arian side. The whole might well be an eireicon palmed off by a pious fraud upon the name of a venerated primitive father of the church. The style and expression throughout drive us to the conviction that the six additional letters come from the same hand which interpolated the seven.
Again, the Vossian letters are found to be distinctly antagonistic to Docetism. Indeed, a characteristic note of Ignatian theology throughout is the accentuation of the twofold nature of Christ—his deity and his humanity. The advocacy of the episcopal office appears definitely in the Short no less than the Middle form; and the abridgment must have been made rather for purposes of edification or practical convenience rather than for Monophysite reasons, as C. Wordsworth maintained, or for any other doctrinal purpose. In short the abridgment theory is much more rational and easy than the expansion theory, and if we are to accept the latter we must maintain, says Lightfoot, that the pseudo-Ignatius was a prodigy of minute observation, of subtle insight, of imitative skill, of laborious care, which is probably without a parallel in the history of literary forgeries, and which assuredly was an utter impossibility among the Christians of the 2d and 3d centuries.
The prominence and authority of the episcopal office in the Ignatian epistles has proved a grave stumbling-block to many scholars. It is certainly sufficiently clear throughout, yet it is merely as the embodiment of the idea of order and the guarantee of unity within the church. It is not upheld exclusively as against other forms, while all tinge of sacerdotalism is absent, as well as such an argument as that in Irenæus, who lays stress on the apostolic succession as a security for its faithful transmission. Nor is it autocratic by any means, while its spread is not yet uniform throughout Christendom, as at Philippi, for example. Evidence of a localised episcopate within the Gentile churches is absent, and nowhere is there any trace of the notion of a distinct diocese, while there is no reference to any developed ritual of public service. Six of the epistles are full of the necessity of obedience to bishops, which is alone wanting in the seventh, that addressed to the Romans, who it may legitimately be inferred had not yet adopted the form of government which Ignatius elsewhere commended with such warmth.
See Cureton, Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of S. Ignatius, &c. (1845), and his Corpus Ignatianum (1849); the works in his support by Bunsen, A. Ritschl, R. A. Lipsius, and those against his theory by Baur and Hilgenfeld, who denied the authenticity of any recension. A fatal blow to Cureton's theory was dealt by the able and learned work of Zahn, Ignatius von Antiochien (1873), which won over Lipsius, and now holds the field, its most formidable champion being the late Bishop Lightfoot, whose work, The Apostolic Fathers, Part II., S. Ignatius and S. Polycarp (2d ed. 3 vols. 1889), contains all materials necessary for a complete study of the question, and is a masterpiece of profound erudition and conclusive argument hardly to be equalled in the whole range of English or German scholarship.