Ignatius of Antioch

Antiochene bishop

• Born: c. 30
• Birthplace: Antioch, Syria (now Antakya, Turkey)
• Died: December 20, 0107
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

Ignatius served as bishop of Antioch from the early 60’s to the early 100’s and was an important theologian and the exemplary martyr of the early Christian church. By his writings and example, Ignatius strengthened the office of bishop in the church hierarchy, clarified many central Christian doctrines, such as the Real Presence and the Virgin Birth, and formulated the strategy and tactics of voluntary martyrdom.

Early Life

Ignatius (ihg-NAY-shee-uhs) was born to pagan parents at Antioch, the capital of Syria, during the second quarter of the first century, about 30 c.e. One of the largest cities of the Roman Empire, the terminus of both Eastern caravan routes and Mediterranean sea-lanes, Antioch was the center of commerce and Greek culture in the eastern Mediterranean region. It contained a large Jewish refugee population but was also the site of the first gentile Christian community, which became the mother church of Christian churches throughout the Roman Empire.

According to the earliest traditions, Ignatius was converted to Christianity by the Apostle John, whose theology certainly profoundly influenced him, and in the early 60’s was consecrated bishop of Antioch by Peter and Paul on their way to Rome and martyrdom under the emperor Nero. A charming but improbable story identifies Ignatius with the small child whom Jesus Christ presented to his disciples at Capernaum as a lesson in humility. It would appear that this story is a wordplay on the surname Theophorus (or “God-bearer”), which Ignatius took later in life; the tradition shows that Ignatius was believed to have been born before the death of Christ. Ignatius, the eager young Christian convert, was blessed with strong faith and great abilities; these qualities brought him quickly to prominence in the Christian community at Antioch and to the attention of Saint Evodius, bishop of Antioch, and Peter and Paul.

Life’s Work

As bishop of Antioch in the first century, Ignatius presided in dignity over the early gentile church, leading the greatest Christian community in the Roman Empire. Here he furthered Paul’s work in transforming Christianity from a Jewish sect into a world religion. Ignatius was an exemplary bishop who maintained Christian order in the community and orthodoxy in doctrine; like a good shepherd, he protected his flock from the wolves during the persecution under the emperor Domitian (81-96 c.e.).

Bishop Ignatius of Antioch suffered martyrdom not then but later under the humane, progressive, and just emperor Trajan. Though a pagan, the emperor was a good man and an enlightened ruler who regarded himself as the servant and protector of his people. So admirable was Trajan that there would arise a popular legend in the Middle Ages that Pope Gregory the Great had interceded with God and secured Trajan’s salvation. In La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802), Dante, following this legend, placed Trajan, though a pagan, in Heaven alongside certain eminently just Christian rulers.

Trajan’s policy toward Christianity was both moderate and legalistic. He strongly discouraged active persecution of Christians, though he allowed the legal prosecution of those who had been publicly denounced to the Roman authorities. Trajan laid down this policy explicitly in 112 in his correspondence with Pliny the Younger, the governor of Bithynia. Roman officials were forbidden to search out Christians. Those denounced to the state were to be prosecuted by their denouncers before Roman magistrates, but these Christians were given procedural guarantees and the opportunity and encouragement to recant Christianity and conform to the state religion. Thus, under Trajan, Christians could be punished if legally proved guilty and then only if obdurate in their belief.

Allegations against Christians included treason, sedition, unspecified crimes, impiety, depravity, and membership in illegal secret societies, but ultimately their real offense was their primary allegiance to the kingdom of God instead of to the Roman Empire. Ignatius could not, in good conscience, pay reverence to the Imperial cult and the divinities in the Roman pantheon because he believed them to be idols and demons. To the emperor Trajan, however, respect for the state religion was an important aspect of civic duty and a mark of patriotism; thus, to him, a gesture of respect was a very reasonable demand.

Ironically, Trajan’s policy was probably more destructive than Domitian’s and Nero’s persecutions had been. It was neither sporadic nor localized but was spread throughout the Empire. It seemed reasonable, legal, and just. Nevertheless, Trajan’s policy threatened to divide and demoralize Christian communities by encouraging apostasy and discrediting Christian martyrs. The prosecution that Ignatius of Antioch faced was much more insidious than other persecutions because it appeared humane and just.

Later Christian hagiographers imagined a dramatic personal confrontation between Ignatius and Trajan. Ignatius was prosecuted at a time when Trajan’s recent victory in Dacia had occasioned enthusiastic displays of loyalty to the Roman gods throughout the Empire. Ignatius’s trial, as described by his biographers, probably never occurred, but the fictitious confrontation did capture the global conflict between the city of God and the earthly city. In fact, not Trajan himself but one of his governors condemned Ignatius; Ignatius was sent to Rome rather than executed in Antioch simply because the many celebrations of Trajan’s Dacian victory had caused a scarcity of gladiators and victims for the Roman games. Moreover, the Roman mob found it especially entertaining to watch the death of an old man such as Ignatius. Although mistaken in imagining the personal confrontation between Ignatius and Trajan, the hagiographers were perceptive in personifying the conflict between two cities, two systems of belief, and two ways of life. It was not so much good versus evil as the best of the temporal—Emperor Trajan—versus the best of the spiritual—Bishop Ignatius.

The most significant historical source for the life’s work of Ignatius is the collection of his seven epistles, which he wrote around 107, during his journey under guard to Rome and his martyrdom. Ignatius’s journey was triumphant and even ecstatic: Along the way, his Roman guards permitted him to visit important Christian communities in Asia Minor and the Balkans, where he preached, blessed, ordained, and was received enthusiastically. Pausing at Smyrna, Ignatius wrote four epistles, to the Christians of Ephesus, Magnesia, Rome, and Tralles. Traveling on to Lystra, he paused there and wrote three more epistles, to the Christians at Philadelphia and Smyrna, and in farewell to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, who was Ignatius’s protégé and later would himself suffer martyrdom. The contents of the seven epistles cover Christian beliefs and practices and stress Christian unity in doctrine and hierarchical organization. The most poignant of the letters is the epistle written to the Romans, in which Ignatius begged the Christian community at Rome not to try to have him reprieved.

Ignatius’s eagerness and joy to be a martyr, that is, publicly to witness his Christian faith even unto death, appears to some modern psychoanalytical commentators “disturbed” and “self-destructive.” Ignatius welcomed not self-destruction but union with Jesus Christ, humbly and faithfully identifying his own martyrdom with Christ’s sacrifice.

Ignatius anticipated his martyrdom, which he perceived in almost Eucharistic imagery. He would become as “God’s wheat, ground fine by the teeth of the wild beasts, that he may be found pure bread, a sacrifice to God.” Across the millennia ring his triumphant words:

Come fire and cross, and grapplings with wild beasts, cuttings and manglings, wrenchings of bones, breaking of limbs, crushing of my whole body, come cruel tortures of the Devil to assail me. Only be it mine to attain unto Jesus Christ.

On December 20, 107, according to Greek tradition, on the last day of the public games, Ignatius of Antioch was brought into the Flavian Amphitheater, the infamous Colosseum, and thrown to the lions. He welcomed the two ravenous lions, which immediately devoured him, leaving in the bloody sand only a few of his larger bones. Reverent Antiochenes gathered up the relics and took them to Antioch, where they were enshrined.

Significance

Ignatius of Antioch was among the greatest of the early fathers of the Church. Admirable as the bishop of Antioch and brilliantly imaginative as a Christian theologian, his greatest contribution was doubtless his exemplary martyrdom. His fortitude, commitment, authenticity, love, joy, and ecstasy illustrate the maxim that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Ignatius was an Apostolic Father, having met and been associated with the Apostles Peter and John and with Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles. Ignatius proved the continuity and catholicity of the early Christian Church by bridging the distance between Jew and Gentile and between the Age of the Apostles and the Age of the Martyrs.

Bibliography

Butler, Alban. Butler’s Lives of the Saints. Edited by David Hugh Farmer. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995-2000. The standard hagiography in English, Alban Butler’s eighteenth century collection is arranged according to feast days (Ignatius’s day is February 1).

Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius Pamphilus. Translated by Christian Frederick Cruse. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1955. The standard narrative primary source for the first three centuries of Christianity, Eusebius’s account includes some information on Ignatius of Antioch.

Frend, W. H. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981. A penetrating examination of the social and psychological dynamics of martyrdom. Includes an insightful discussion of Ignatius of Antioch.

Ignatius of Antioch, Saint. The Epistles of St. Ignatius. In The Apostolic Fathers, translated and edited by Kirsopp Lake. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976-1977. These epistles are the principal primary source for the life of Ignatius and also are important for the history of early Christianity.

Lane Fox, Robin. Pagans and Christians. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995. An ambitious synthesis of scholarship about the cultural and social context of early Christianity, Lane Fox’s work is important for background information.