apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

DATE OF THE MARTYRDOM. 647
over Polycarp's martyrdom
is associated with the persecutions at Vienne
and Lyons, which we know to have happened a.d. 177. The bearing
of these facts seems to be obvious. Eusebius here connects together
all the incidents relating to the persecution of the Christians, which he
supposed to have taken place about this time. He had no knowledge
of the precise year or years
in which they occurred. As a matter of fact,
the Gallican persecution took place some ten years later ;
and therefore,
so far as this notice goes, the martyrdom of Polycarp might have taken
place as many We years earlier. can only infer with safety that Eusebius
supposed Polycarp's martyrdom to have happened during the reign of
M. Aurelius. But there is no reason for assuming that this supposition
rested on any definite historical grounds.
(2) This solution, suggested by the position and character of the
notice itself, is confirmed by a comparison with other similar notices in
this part of the Chronicon. Thus the persecutions in Trajan's reign are
treated in precisely the same way, being collected together and placed
in an unattached paragraph after the loth year of this emperor. There,
as here, the arrangement has been misunderstood and the
;
martyrdom
of Ignatius, of which Eusebius left the date indefinite, has been assigned
to that precise year (see below, 11. p. 448 sq). Intermediate between
these two paragraphs, he has a similar unattached notice (after the
8th year of Hadrian) in which he gathers up the incidents relating to
Hadrian's treatment of the Christians— the presentation of the x^pologies
of Quadratus and Aristides, the letter of Serenius Granianus, the
emperor's rescript to Minucius Fundanus.
Nor is this treatment confined to incidents affecting the relation
between the Church and the Empire. Again and again, events of which
the exact date was unknown, or which spread over several years, are thus
grouped together into an isolated paragraph. Thus after Hadrian 7
and after Commodus 9 respectively he gives lists of six and of nine
successive bishops of Jerusalem, evidently because he did not know the
years of their respective accessions, though possessing a continuous list
of the occupants of this see. So again after Trajan
i he mentions that
S. John survived to the times of Trajan, and states that after him his
scholars Papias and Polycarp were famous ;
after Hadrian 2 1 he gives
an account of the heresiarchs who taught in Rome about that time ;
who flourished at
after Antoninus 1 1 he mentions certain philosophers
that epoch. All these notices are in the immediate neighbourhood ot
that with which we are concerned.
(3)
A comparison of the Chronicon with the History
still further
confirms this view. After recording the visit of Polycarp to Rome in