IRENAEUS.
Life (§1). His Theology and Polity
His Principal Literary Work, (§ 4).
" Against Heresies " (§ 2). His Position as a Practical Other Writings (§ 3). Churchman (§ 5).
Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, is the most important witness to ecclesiastical tradition before Eusebius.
He came originally from Asia Minor, i. Life, which was connected in many ways
with the Church of Gaul, and died after 190. Little that is certain is known about him until 177, in which year the imprisoned confessors of Lyons chose him as the bearer of a letter to Eleutherus of Rome concerning the Montanist controversy. If the fact that the confessors call him not only their brother, but their " companion," is partly a reminiscense of Rev. i. 9, it still seems probable that he did not wholly escape the persecution; and it may have been a design to save his valuable life that inspired the choice of him to go to Rome. He had probably then been a presbyter of the church at Lyons for several years, sin«e
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Ireland Irenaena
immediately after his return he was chosen bishop, to succeed Pothinus, who had perished in the persecution. In this capacity he wrote his principal work about 185, and sent a letter about 190 to Victor of Rome, who had broken off communion with the churches of Asia Minor over the Quartodeciman controversy, as well as to other bishops. There is no further definite knowledge of his later years. Jerome is the first to mention him as a martyr, and then only incidentally, and not improbably on the basis of the expression quoted above from the letter of the confessors. Hippolytus, Tertullian, Eusebius, and other writers who would have been likely to mention the fact of his martyrdom, say nothing about it. There has been a prolonged controversy, which is still unsettled, as to the date of his birth and the length of his life. While Bodwell, Grabe, and more recently Zahn have put his birth near the beginning of the second century, Massuet, Lipsius, Ziegler, and Harnack have attempted to fix it near the middle. It must be remembered that the date of the death of Polycarp is now practically settled for 155. The principal data may be briefly summarized as follows: If Irenaeus became bishop in 177, he must have been at least forty, and was therefore probably born before 137 rather than after. His implication (V., xxx. 3) that the Apocalypse was written " almost in his own lifetime " is, all things considered, irreconcilable with the theory that he was born forty or fifty years after the probable date of its composition (before the death of Domitian in 96). Again, in his letter to Florinus (Eusebius, Hist, eccl., V., xx. 5), he speaks of having seen him at Smyrna in the emperor's train when he himself was still but a boy. Now, for various reasons, this emperor must have been Hadrian, who visited Asia Minor in 123 and 129, in the latter of which years the meeting must have taken place. All that Irenaeus tells of his recollections of Polycarp at this period shows that he must have been at least twelve or fifteen, and thus was probably born about 115. He implies distinctly that his intercourse with and instruction by Polycarp lasted for a number of years, very likely from about 129 to 150; and the same conclusion follows from what he tells of the teaching received in Asia Minor from certain disciples of the apostles. After all necessary sifting has been applied to the passages referring to this, there remain two (IV., xxvii. 1-32 and V., xxxiii. 3, 4) which can be understood only as asserting that he had this oral instruction from more than one of such disciples, and when he was of an age to take it in and be deeply impressed by it. Neither he nor any tradition mentions the reaching of an unusually great age by any member of this group except Polycarp; if the others died considerably earlier, say before 145, he must before that date have been of an age to profit by their teaching. Finally, in an appendix to the Martyrium Polycarpi (found in a manuscript at Moscow), which is almost certainly written by the Pionius (q.v.) who was the author of a Vita Polycarpi before 400, the statement is found, based upon Irenaeus's own works, that he was teaching in Rome at the time of the death of Polycarp, and that a voice like a trumpet told him,
at the very hour, of the decease of his master in Smyrna. Whatever may be thought of this last assertion, there is no reason to doubt the general statement; and the account which he himself gives of Polycarp's visit to Rome in 154 evidently comes from one who was there himself at the time. The chronological results indicated above may thus be taken as fairly established.
It is impossible to assign all of Irenaeus's multifarious literary activity to the different periods of his life as long as so much of his work 2. His is lost. His principal work is the
Principal " Refutation and Subversion of knowl-
Literary edge Falsely so Called," generally re- Work, f erred to as " Against Heresies." It
" Against consists of five books, and is preserved Heresies." in its entirety only in a Latin version, the date of which requires further investigation; there is sufficient evidence that the original was still extant in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are, however, long extracts in the original Greek in Epiphanius, numerous smaller quotations in other writers, and considerable portions incorporated without acknowledgment in the " Refutation " of Hippolytus. The occasion of the work was given by the official position of Irenaeus at Lyons. Some disciples of Marcus, who himself belonged to the school of Valentinus, had come into the Rhone country, and the Church of that region was troubled by the writings of Florinus, the Roman presbyter who had embraced the Valentinian teachings. The immediate cause of the work was the request of a friend and colleague at a distance for precise information about these same teachings and help in refuting them. The work was not originally intended to be so large; but it grew under his hand. Even in its present extent, it does not fully carry out the plan promised; and Grabe's hypothesis that the complete work is not extant is not without foundation, especially since the present conclusion of v. 32 is wanting in some Latin manuscripts. With great clearness of thought and expression, Irenaeus takes no trouble in the main outline to keep within the narrow bounds of a preconceived plan, but allows himself to be carried swiftly forward by the current of his thought. There is no attempt at literary art; the subject is everything to him. Although he is prepared to find a wide circle of readers, he writes in the first instance for his brother in the faith. The latter was chiefly concerned with the teaching of Valentinus, and it is this which accordingly occupies the leading place, both in the exposition and the refutation. Others, however, are touched on and traced back to their sources, as far as Simon Magus; and the doctrines of Valentinus can not be controverted without at least incidental discussion of the contemporary one of Marcion. For his facts he depends not only upon his personal intercourse with disciples of Valentinus, but also upon their writings, which he sometimes quotes verbally, but more often summarizes freely. He is acquainted with the older church treatises against heresy, but is dissatisfied with their insufficient knowledge of the Valentinian position; in his treatment of other heresies, he may have borrowed from these treatises to some extent,
Irenaeus