Polycarp, one of the 'Apostolic Fathers,' was bishop at Smyrna in proconsular Asia during the earlier half of the 2d century. His is an important name, for he bridges the little known and much controverted period lying between the age of his master the Apostle John and that of his own disciple Irenæus, and his testimony is only the larger, clearer, and more valuable because of his rigid conservatism and lack of intellectual individuality. The 'Life' by 'Pionius' is utterly untrustworthy. All that is really known of Polycarp's origin is gathered from his dying declaration, which shows that he was born about 69 A.D., and probably of Christian parents. By the migration of apostles and others from doomed Jerusalem, Ephesus and the neighbouring districts became the new home of the faith, and there Polycarp was 'taught by Apostles,' John above all, and 'lived in familiar intercourse with many that had seen Christ' (Irenæus, Heresies, iii. 3, 4). The further statement that he was appointed bishop in Smyrna 'by Apostles' ('by John'—Tertullian) is probably coloured by the later conception of the episcopate, but he certainly appears to have been head of the church from early manhood.
Among contemporaries he was intimate with Papias. More interesting is his brief intercourse with Ignatius, who, on his way from Antioch to martyrdom at Rome, made a short stay at Smyrna, where Polycarp and the church ministered to him. The tone of his Epistle to Polycarp, written shortly after from Troas, is that of a letter to one less experienced, if not younger, and less energetic than the writer, but high respect is paid to Polycarp's steadfastness, piety, and position. In consequence of a request which Ignatius was making to the churches to send messages to Antioch, the Philippians wrote to Polycarp asking that their letter to Antioch might be forwarded by the Smyrnæan messenger, at the same time inviting exhortation, and further asking for any of the epistles of Ignatius that he might have. Hence Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians, in which he accedes to their various requests, and solicits further news of Ignatius. His influence on a younger generation, and his importance as a faithful preserver of the apostolic tradition, are vividly delineated by his greatest disciple Irenæus in his Epistle to Florinus, quoted in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 20: 'I can tell the very place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse. . . . Whatso- ever things he had heard from them (John and others) about the Lord . . . Polycarp, as having received them from eye-witnesses of the life of the Word, would relate altogether in accordance with the Scriptures.' These valuable reminiscences relate to a period somewhere between 135 and 150 A.D.
At the very close of his life Polycarp visited Rome, where he conferred with the bishop Anicetus, chiefly on the vexed question of the time for commemorating the Passion. On this point neither yielded to the other, yet their relations remained so cordial that Anicetus allowed Polycarp to take his place in celebrating the eucharist (see Irenæus quoted in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 24). After turning many Valentinians and Marcionites from their heresies by his preaching, the aged bishop returned to Smyrna, only to win the martyr's crown in a persecution which broke out during a great festival. Unsatiated with meaner victims, the mob called for Polycarp, 'the father of the Christians.' With truest dignity and modesty does Polycarp play the man. Betrayed by his servant-boy, but offered his life by the proconsul if he will revile Christ, he answers: 'Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King, who hath saved me?' As the games were over, death by fire was substituted for death by wild beasts, and Jews vied with heathens in providing fuel. But the fire arched itself about the martyr, and he had to be despatched with a dagger. The graphic Letter of the Smyrnæans tells the story of the martyrdom to the Philomelian church. A chronological appendix to this letter has been elucidated by Waddington's skilful dating of the 'proconsul,' and his conclusions have been confirmed by the discovery of inscriptions relating to the 'high-priest,' also mentioned therein, so that the martyrdom may, with strong probability, be dated 23d February 155 A.D.
The only writing of Polycarp extant is the Epistle to the Philippians, incomplete in the original Greek, but complete in a Latin translation. Its genuineness has been assailed, but unsuccessfully. Somewhat commonplace in itself, it is of great value for questions of the canon, the origin of the church, and the Ignatian Epistles. More New Testament phrases are here inwoven than are found in any other work of the time. Their wider range, and especially the prominence given to Paul and his epistles by this disciple of John, tell heavily against Tübingen theories of the origin of the church and the canon. The letter bears so closely on the Ignatian Epistles that, while apart from it the external evidence for their genuineness is weak, with it that evidence is very strong. The grounds, however, for assigning the epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp to the reign of Trajan are not beyond question, while among other things a certain reference to heresy in Polycarp's epistle would better accord with a time about 130 A.D., or even later.
For one of the best editions of the Epistle (first edited by Hallowith in 1633 and frequently since), see Patrum Apostol. Opera (ed. Gebhardt, &c., vol. ii. 1876); for the date of the martyrdom, Waddington's Fastes des Provinces Asiatiques (Paris, 1872), and the Oxford Studia Biblica (1885 and 1890). But the best and most exhaustive work on all the parts of the subject is Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers, part ii. (2d ed. 1889). An ingenious, scholarly, and able attempt is made by the Rev. J. M. Cotterill in the Cambridge Journal of Philology (1891) to attribute the extant epistle to Antiochus, a monk of St Saba, who flourished under Heraclius, and from whose pen is still extant, 'if,' in Gibbon's phrase, 'what no one reads may be said to be extant,' a dull and feeble work entitled Πανδέκτης τῆς ἁγίας γραφῆς, divided into 130 homilies.