Ignatius of Antioch


Ignatius of Antioch, also known as Ignatius Theophorus, was an early Christian writer and Patriarch of Antioch. While en route to Rome, where he met his martyrdom, Ignatius wrote a series of letters. This correspondence forms a central part of a later collection of works by the Apostolic Fathers. He is considered one of the three most important of these, together with Clement of Rome and Polycarp. Although the authenticity of his letters has been questioned, they continue to serve as an example of early Christian theology, and address important topics including ecclesiology, the sacraments, and the role of bishops.

Life

Nothing is known of Ignatius' life apart from the words of his letters and later traditions. It is said Ignatius converted to Christianity at a young age. Tradition identifies him and his friend Polycarp as disciples of John the Apostle. Later, Ignatius was chosen to serve as Bishop of Antioch; the fourth-century Church historian Eusebius writes that Ignatius succeeded Evodius. Theodoret of Cyrrhus claimed that St. Peter himself left directions that Ignatius be appointed to this episcopal see. Ignatius was called Theophorus. A tradition exists that he was one of the children whom Jesus Christ took in his arms and blessed.

Veneration

Ignatius' feast day was kept in his own Antioch on 17 October, the day on which he is now celebrated in the Catholic Church and generally in western Christianity, although from the 12th century until 1969 it was put at 1 February in the General Roman Calendar.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church it is observed on 20 December. The Synaxarium of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria places it on the 24th of the Coptic Month of Koiak, corresponding in three years out of every four to 20 December in the Julian Calendar, which currently falls on 2 January of the Gregorian Calendar.
Ignatius is honored in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church on 17 October. Likewise, Lutheran Churches honor Ignatius on 17 October.

Martyrdom

Circumstances of martyrdom

Ignatius was condemned to death for his faith, but instead of being executed in his home town of Antioch, the bishop was taken to Rome by a company of ten soldiers:
Scholars consider Ignatius' transport to Rome unusual since those persecuted as Christians would be expected to be punished locally. Stevan Davies has pointed out that "no other examples exist from the Flavian age of any prisoners except citizens or prisoners of war being brought to Rome for execution".
If Ignatius had been a Roman citizen, he could have appealed to the emperor, with the common result of execution by beheading rather than torture. However, Ignatius's letters state that he was put in chains during the journey, but it was against Roman law for a citizen to be put in bonds during an appeal to the emperor.
Allen Brent suggests that Ignatius was transferred to Rome for the emperor to provide a spectacle as a victim in the Colosseum. Brent also asserts, contrary to some, that "it was normal practice to transport condemned criminals from the provinces in order to offer spectator sport in the Colosseum at Rome."
Stevan Davies rejects this idea, reasoning that: "If Ignatius was in some way a donation by the Imperial Governor of Syria to the games at Rome, a single prisoner seems a rather miserly gift." Instead, Davies proposes that Ignatius may have been indicted by a legate, or representative, of the governor of Syria while the governor was away temporarily, and sent to Rome for trial and execution. Under Roman law, only the governor of a province or the emperor himself could impose capital punishment, so the legate would have faced the choice of imprisoning Ignatius in Antioch or sending him to Rome. Transporting the bishop might have avoided further agitation by the Antiochian Christians.
Christine Trevett calls Davies' suggestion "entirely hypothetical" and concludes that no fully satisfactory solution to the problem can be found: "I tend to take the bishop at his word when he says he is a condemned man. But the question remains, why is he going to Rome? The truth is that we do not know."

Route of travel to Rome

During the journey to Rome, Ignatius and his entourage of soldiers made a number of lengthy stops in Asia Minor, deviating from the most direct land route from Antioch to Rome. Ignatius' route of travel has been reconstructed as follows:
  1. Ignatius first was taken from Antioch, in the province of Syria, to Asia Minor. It is uncertain whether this happened by sea or by land;
  2. He was then taken to Smyrna, via a route that bypassed the cities of Magnesia, Tralles, and Ephesus, but likely passed through Philadelphia;
  3. Ignatius then was brought to Troas, where he boarded a ship bound for Neapolis in Macedonia;
  4. He then passed through the city of Philippi;
  5. After this, he was taken by some land or sea route to Rome.
During the journey, the soldiers seem to have allowed the chained Ignatius to meet with entire congregations of Christians, at least at Philadelphia, and numerous Christian visitors and messengers were allowed to meet with him individually. Via these messengers, Ignatius sent six letters to nearby churches, and one to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna.
These aspects of Ignatius' martyrdom are also unusual, in that a prisoner would normally be transported on the most direct route to his destination. Travel by land in the Roman Empire was far more expensive than by sea, especially since Antioch was a major sea port. Davies argues that Ignatius' circuitous route can only be explained by positing that he was not the main purpose of the soldiers' trip and that the various stops in Asia Minor were for other state business. He suggests that such a scenario would also explain the relative freedom that Ignatius was given to meet with other Christians during the journey.

Date of martyrdom

Tradition places Ignatius's martyrdom in the reign of Trajan. The earliest source for this is the 4th-century church historian Eusebius of Caesarea. Richard Pervo argues that Eusebius may have had an ideological interest in dating church leaders as early as possible, and asserting a continuous succession between the original apostles of Jesus and the leaders of the church in his day. However, Jonathon Lookadoo argues that John Malalas and the Acts of Martyrdom's accounts of Ignatius are independent from Eusebius and they still place his death under Trajan.
While many scholars accept this traditional dating, others have argued for a somewhat later date. Richard Pervo dated Ignatius' death to 135–140. British classicist Timothy Barnes has argued for a date in the 140s, on the grounds that Ignatius seems to have quoted a work of the Gnostic Ptolemy, who became active only in the 130s. Étienne Decrept has argued from the testimony of John Malalas and the Acts of Drosis that Ignatius was martyred under the reign of Trajan during Apollo's festival in July 116, and in response to the earthquake at Antioch in late 115.

Death and aftermath

Ignatius wrote that he would be thrown to the beasts; in the fourth century, Eusebius reports a tradition that this did happen, while Jerome is the first to explicitly mention lions. John Chrysostom is the first to place Ignatius' martyrdom at the Colosseum. Modern scholars are uncertain whether any of these authors had sources other than Ignatius' own writings.
According to a medieval Christian text titled Martyrium Ignatii, Ignatius' remains were carried back to Antioch by his companions after his martyrdom. The sixth-century writings of Evagrius Scholasticus state that the reputed remains of Ignatius were moved by the Emperor Theodosius II to the Tychaeum, or Temple of Tyche, and converted it into a church dedicated to Ignatius. In 637, when Antioch was captured by the Rashidun Caliphate, the relics were transferred to the Basilica di San Clemente in Rome.

The ''Martyrium Ignatii''

The Martyrium Ignatii is an account of the saint's martyrdom. It is presented as an eye-witness account for the church of Antioch, attributed to Ignatius' companions, Philō of Cilicia, deacon at Tarsus, and Rheus Agathopus, a Syrian.
Its most reliable manuscript is the 10th-century collection Codex Colbertinus, in which it is the final item. The Martyrium presents the confrontation of Bishop Ignatius with Emperor Trajan at Antioch, a familiar trope of Acta of the martyrs, and many details of the long journey to Rome. The Synaxarium of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria says that he was thrown to the wild beasts that devoured him.

Epistles

The following seven epistles preserved under the name of Ignatius are generally considered authentic since they were mentioned by the historian Eusebius in the first half of the fourth century.
Seven original epistles:
Ignatius's letters bear signs of being written in great haste, such as run-on sentences and an unsystematic succession of thought. Ignatius modelled them after the biblical epistles of Paul, Peter, and John, quoting or paraphrasing these apostles' works freely. For example, in his letter to the Ephesians he quoted 1 Corinthians 1:18:

Recensions

The text of these epistles is known in three different recensions : the Short Recension, found in three pre-AD 900 Syriac manuscripts; the Middle Recension, attested as of 2024 by about three dozen manuscripts, manuscript fragments and manuscript compilations in Greek, Latin, Armenian, Slavonic, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic and Syriac, usually containing at least the Epistle to the Romans, often 3-16 others, and post-dating the Short Recension manuscripts; and the Long Recension, found in numerous Late Medieval manuscripts in Greek, Latin and Georgian which typically contain expanded collections of around 13 letters. The original letters were written in Ancient Greek with some Latinisms, but the Middle Recension manuscripts in other languages seem to be based on more than one Greek source, as some variant readings found in them seem too divergent to be merely caused by the ambiguities of translation. In this regard, it was also noted that the Middle Recension's Epistle to the Romans was apparently transmitted on two different routes - together with the Martyrium Ignatii but none of the other epistles, as well as part of a collection of Ignatian epistles and occasionally also the Martyrium Ignatii. Unfortunately, the famous Laurentian Library manuscript has lost one or more leaves at the end; it does not contain the Epistle to the Romans in its present state, but other Ignatian letter collections of comparable age generally feature this epistle as the very last; thus, it is quite likely that the Laurentian manuscript also ended with the Epistle to the Romans before it got damaged.
For some time, it was believed that the Long Recension was the only extant version of the Ignatian epistles, but around 1628 a Latin translation of the Middle Recension was discovered by Archbishop James Ussher, who published it in 1646. For around a quarter of a century after this, it was debated which recension represented the original text of the epistles. But John Pearson's strong defense of the authenticity of the Middle Recension in the late 17th century established a scholarly consensus that the Middle Recension is the original version of the text. The Long Recension is the product of a fourth-century Arian Christian, who interpolated the Middle Recension epistles in order posthumously to enlist Ignatius as an unwitting witness in theological disputes of that age. This individual also forged the six spurious epistles attributed to Ignatius.
The manuscripts representing the Short Recension of the Ignatian epistles were discovered and published by William Cureton in the mid-19th century. For a brief period, there was a scholarly debate on the question of whether the Short Recension was earlier and more original than the Middle Recension. But by the end of the 19th century, Theodor Zahn and J. B. Lightfoot had established a scholarly consensus that it is far easier to arrive at the Short Recension text by summarizing the Middle Recension, than expanding the Short Recension to gain the Middle Recension text; thus, the Short Recension post-dates the Middle Recension, even though the former is, as of 2024, attested by older manuscripts. This consensus has been questioned again in the early 21st century by such experts as Markus Vinzent, but so far not very successfully. Other recent studies have claimed that the Short Recension parallels the long Recension in intent but is opposite in method: instead of adding, it seems to selectively excise material relevant to post-3rd century questions of dogma within mainstream Christianity. While this results in a more theologically neutral text - also observed by Vinzent, but interpreted as indication of the Short Recension being older -, the Short Recension's missing passages often interrupt the flow of the stylistically elaborate arguments and exhortations which are characteristic for the Ignatian corpus : the Short Recension appears not only as theologically less developed, but also as stylistically less "typically Ignatian".