apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

470 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
century later (a.d. 250) was such another opportunity'. Here again
we read of the Jews taking an active interest in the proceedings. As
on the occasion of Polycarp's martyrdom, so now again
it was a Jewish
hohday, a high sabbath. Jewish women more especially are mentioned
as gathering in large numbers to witness the proceedings (§ 3).
The
address of Pionius in the forum is directed largely to the Jews (§ 4).
He speaks of their 'bursting with laughter' (risu se cachinnante dissolvunt),
when they see any one sacrificing from compulsion or voluntarily.
He represents them as declaring derisively in loud and insolent tones
that the Christians 'had long had their time of licence' (diu nos
Hcentiae tempus habuisse). 'Be it
granted,' he adds, 'we are their
enemies; yet we are men.' Within the prison again,
he warns the
persons assembled to beware of the wiles of the Jews: 'I hear,' he says,
'that the Jews invite some of you to the synagogue'; and he denounces
a response to this invitation as a crime verging on blasphemy against
the Holy Ghost (§§ 12, 13). But, if the Jews were bold and strong
enough in Smyrna to attempt proselytizing, they themselves were not
always proof against the seductions of paganism. An inscription belonging
to the reign of Hadrian" records how certain renegade Jews (01
TTore 'lotiSatot) contributed to the erection and adornment of public buildings,
not unconnected (it would seem) with heathen rites, at Smyrna—
a striking illustration of the ferment of religious opinion in this city in
the age of Polycarp.
The Smyrnsean brethren, as we saw, gathered up from the stadium
the calcined bones of the martyr which the fire had spared, and deposited
them in a safe place. Ultimately, we may conjecture, they
rested in the same cemetery, outside the Ephesian gate, where in after
ages he himself was believed to have laid the body of his predecessor
Bucolus, and where the myrtle tree springing up, as it were by a miracle,
marked the deposition of the bones of a later martyr, Thraseas bishop
of Eumenia, who suffered not many years after him ^. For the present
however they may have chosen some less conspicuous place. It was
their intention, as we saw, to celebrate from time to time the day of his
earthly death, the day of his heavenly nativity. The letter to the
have been written
Philomelians, in which this intention is declared, may
a year or two, but cannot have been written much longer, after the
martyrdom. Whether they did so year by year continuously, we are
^
The Passio Sanctorwii Pionii etc. in
-
C. I. 6^. 3148.
Ruinart's Acta Martyriim Sincera p. 188 ^
See Vit. Polyc.
20 with the note,
sq (Ratisbonae 1859).