Saint Irenaeus of Lyon

The holy bishop of Smyrna did not wait for Irenaeus, in whom wisdom and piety anticipated his years, to reach the ordinary age to admit him into the ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He conferred upon him successively all the orders up to the diaconate. The dignity of deacon then imposed numerous and difficult obligations. Irenaeus understood them and fulfilled them all with that spirit of faith and piety which must always preside over the evangelical ministry. He assisted the ministers of the altars at the holy sacrifice, oversaw the work of the ceremonies, exhorted the people to prayer, preached to them the word of salvation, distributed to them the body and blood of Jesus Christ, called upon them the peace and blessings of the Lord, and sent them away edified and consoled; he collected the alms of the faithful and then went to distribute them, in the name of Jesus Christ, to the indigent, the widows, the orphans, the infirm, and especially to the holy confessors held in chains for the cause of the faith; along with bodily relief, he always gave them the consolations of religion, revived their courage, raised their hopes, and preached to them and inspired in them the love of the divine Master. He inquired about the needs of the Church, informed the bishop of them, from whom he received with joy the mission to provide for them. Then, traveling through Christendom, he carried everywhere the advice or exhortations of Polycarp, brought all the children into contact with the father; maintained among all the spirit of peace, union, and charity; he raised some from their fall, prevented others from falling, and revived or maintained fervor everywhere. His zeal responded to the solicitude of Polycarp; this respectable prelate relied on the young and holy levite for his paternal cares, admitted him to the most thorny affairs of his Church, and entrusted him with very important ones.

In all these circumstances, Irenaeus displayed virtues and talents that promised an apostle to religion. Obliged to instruct the faithful and to protect them against the traps of error, he had to make shine then the profound knowledge he had acquired of the Holy Scriptures and of profane sciences. He had studied the former by taste and with love; the latter, by necessity. Saint Ignatius and Saint Polycarp exhorted Christians to close their ears to the perfidious insinuations of heretics and the impious, who sought to steal from them the treasure of the faith. These doctors of lies were then multiplying in a frightening manner, spreading throughout all of Asia, and striving to sow error in the most flourishing Christian communities. A colony of these heretics, observing the course of the conquests of religion, pursued it as far as the Gauls, where it had just been introduced. The frequent commerce between the maritime cities of the West and those of Asia Minor, the Greek letters taught in the numerous schools of southern Gaul, and entire tribes of Asian merchants established in these same regions were all circumstances that favored the pernicious projects of these seducers; they understood this only too well; they therefore left in great numbers from Asia, landed in the Phocaean ports of the Mediterranean, and going up the Rhône to Lyon, the Garonne to its mouth, and the Saône to the Vosges, spread the plague of their errors in the countries watered by these rivers and in the neighboring cities.

While waiting for it to be given to Irenaeus to come and fight heresy in the West, he repelled it in the East and preserved the Church of Smyrna from it. The meditation of Holy Scripture, the assiduous reading of the epistles of the Apostles, of Saint Ignatius, and of other apostolic men of the same time, the lessons and the example of Saint Polycarp, had inspired in him an ardent love for the faith and the glory of Jesus Christ, and a sovereign horror for heresy, which sought to corrupt and alter the doctrine of the Gospel. In the desire and intention to defend the latter and to fight the former, Saint Irenaeus had made a particular study of the numerous systems of Gnosticism: he had penetrated with disgust, but with devoti on, into th gnosticisme The principal heretical movement opposed by the saint. e chaos of the fables of paganism and into the maze of the errors of heresy. The study of paganism and heresies seemed necessary to him; from then on, he did not hesitate to make to the Gospel the sacrifice of his repugnances and his disgusts in order to make to it more surely that of error. Like a general who examines the strength and weakness of a place he intends to besiege, he explored attentively the enemy camps he had to attack; he acquired such an extensive and exact knowledge of the systems of the heretics, of the theogonies of the pagans, of the works of their poets, their orators, their philosophers, and their supposedly sacred books, that he could indicate to the sectarians the shameful sources from which they had drawn their lies and their reveries; he proved, in fact, to the Valentinians that they had borrowed their maxims and their principles from Antiphanes, Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Empedocles, Epicurus, Hesiod, the Stoics, the Cynics, the Peripatetics, and the Pythagoreans; he showed them the passages of these authors that they had truncated or forced to accommodate them to their imaginations, that such a part of their system was modeled on such a place of an ancient author that he cited to them. Thus, the vast knowledge that Irenaeus had acquired for the glory of Jesus Christ did not excite less the admiration of the holy Fathers than his virtues, his talents, and his genius: Tertullian, who drew from the works of our Saint the foundation of his book against the Valentinians, calls him a man versed in all the sciences. Saint Epiphanius represents him to us advancing nobly to the combat, surrounded by the lights of the faith and all the aids of science. Saint Ephrem finds magnificence in his doctrine; it appears as a luminous torch to Theodoret, who often relies on the authority of this admirable doctor; in a word, all sacred antiquity has spoken of Irenaeus as a saint equally versed in divine and human sciences, and has praised the noble use he made of his talents in all the circumstances of his life. He was barely admitted into the hierarchy of the Church when he already promised religion a glorious defender and heresy an indomitable adversary. While waiting for the time to arrive to oppose him to the enemies of the Church, Providence had placed him in the school of zeal and virtue, and Irenaeus, always faithful to the will of his God, worked for the glory of Jesus Christ within the circle of his duties.

The zeal of Irenaeus was inflamed with a new ardor when he saw the missionaries that Polycarp sent to the Gauls leave Smyrna; but the moment marked by Providence not yet having arrived, Irenaeus continued to edify the Christendom of Smyrna, to fulfill the functions that Saint Polycarp entrusted to him, to prepare himself for the designs of the Lord, and to desire in the practice of all virtues the day when He would be pleased to dispose of him.

The Church of Lyon, which had Saint Pothinus at its head, whose strength, weakened by age, labors, and infirmities, poorly served the ardor of his zeal, soon called for new help. Saint Pothinus made known to Saint Polycarp the state of his people and begged him to take an interest in the preservation of a Church that owed him such happy beginnings.

Saint Irenaeus, whom Providence had destined for this mission, had received from heaven signs of a vocation to which his holy master remained no stranger. He was then in the prime of life, nourished by the divine Scriptures, skilled in human letters, perfect in the practice of all virtues, and united in himself all the qualities that the needs of the Lyonnais Christendom required.

The Gnostics, having left Asia almost at the same time as Pothinus, were raising the most serious obstacles for the holy missionary; they were already infecting with their errors the regions watered by the Rhône; their prestige and the corruption of their morals gained them a great number of followers, especially among women. The pagans, incapable of distinguishing the true Church from a sect that also gave itself the title of Christian, could confuse, as they did in fact confuse, one with the other, and accuse the Catholics of the turpitudes and errors of the Gnostics. The advantages of heresy were so many losses for the truth, and if the former managed to establish its reign in Lyon, the latter was perhaps going to be excluded from it forever. It was therefore important for the preachers of the Gospel to triumph, from the earliest times, over an enemy that was working to supplant them in their new conquest.

Saint Polycarp measured the greatness of the need of his cherished mission and was frightened by the danger it was running. He understood that he needed a man capable of stopping error and propagating the truth; a man who, by his knowledge, could reduce the sectarians to silence, win new disciples to Jesus Christ, and edify the faithful by his virtues. The mission was great and difficult, but it was not beyond Irenaeus; it was on him that the choice of Saint Polycarp fell. This venerable old man preferred to separate himself from such a dear disciple and deprive his Church of such a firm support, rather than let the torch of faith be extinguished in the Gauls at the breath of error. He would have feared, moreover, to oppose a vocation that God had manifested to him by so many striking signs. He therefore sent him where the spirit of God called him, and added to him collaborators capable of seconding his zeal and sharing his labors. The love of Saint Irenaeus for Jesus Christ and for religion will give us the measure of the joy and happiness he must have felt when Saint Polycarp imposed this important mission upon him. He received it with as much respect as if the Lord in person had given it to him, and he thought only of fulfilling it.

The arrival of Saint Irenaeus and his companions in Lyon was, for the Christendom of this city, the dawn of a happy future. Saint Pothinus welcomed with transports of joy, and blessed in the name of the Lord, the apostles that heaven was sending to his aid. His happiness exceeded his hopes when he had known all the merit of Irenaeus; for, barely arrived in the field where the father of the family had sent him, this new worker began to cultivate it with an ardor that gave it a new fertility; his zeal, his science, his love for peace, and the gift he had of maintaining it everywhere, were the edification of his brothers and the happiness of this nascent Church. It was then that Saint Pothinus raised the young apostle to the priesthood. Irenaeus honored his august character with a more ardent piety, a more active zeal; all the more confounded by this dignity, as he knew its greatness and obligations better, he redoubled his efforts to fulfill the views and correspond to the kindnesses of the Lord. His virtues then shone with such a bright luster that they attracted public veneration to him, and he was commonly given the title of zealot of the New Testament: and when the Christendom of Lyon deputed him to Rome for the affairs of the Church, it alleged no other title for him to the protection of the sovereign Pontiff than his zeal and his holiness, without making use of the right that the priestly dignity gave him.

The instructions and examples of Irenaeus produced happy and abundant fruits; through his care, a people of Saints grew under the satisfied gaze of Pothinus; this venerable old man, already bent under twenty years of apostolate, could no longer suffice for the ardors of his zeal; he was, however, still the soul of his Church: he directed everything by his wisdom; his people were his family, all the Christians were his children; all cherished and venerated him as their father. One would have said the Christendom of Smyrna was transported to the Gauls. Our Saint, whose modesty equaled his merits, also looked upon his bishop as his oracle; he spoke and acted only by his orders and according to his advice; heaven smiled upon this angelic peace and blessed a society so worthy of it. Saint Irenaeus has left us a touching picture of the virtues of which the Church of his time offered the world a ravishing spectacle, and of the miracles that God was then working in its midst. He does not name any Church in particular, but because he speaks of them as things he had seen with his own eyes, we do not doubt that everything he says can be applied to the Christendom he was edifying and whose name his humility must have made him keep silent. "To some," says this great Saint, "the Lord unveils the future and charges them to announce events that human perspicacity cannot foresee; he gives to others the power to drive out demons, to heal the most inveterate diseases, and to recall to life inanimate bodies; resurrected dead have lived for a long time in our midst. To these, he grants the gift of tongues; he discovers to those the secrets of hearts; nothing seems impossible to the vivacity of their faith, to the ardor of their prayers; Jesus Christ never refuses anything to vows that are formed for his glory."

At the same time, the Church of Asia, which that of Lyon recognized as its mother, was attacked by the errors of the Montanists. The faithful, in this double affliction, believed they should inform the Pope of what was happening among them, both to receive some consolation and to consult him on the new heresies of Montanus, for fear that they might slip into their Church as they were beginning to do in that of Asia. They also judged it their duty to write to their brothers in Asia, to exhort them to persevere generously in the Catholic faith against the detestable inventions of the heretics who were trying to corrupt them. The priest Irenaeus was chosen to be the bearer of these two important epistles: Pothinus, to whom some other prelates of Gaul had joined, and the holy confessors in prison, being persuaded that no one was more capable than he for this legation. He therefore went to Rome, to the Sovereign Pontiff Eleutherius, who had just taken over the government of the Church aft er the de Éleuthère Predecessor of Victor I on the Roman see. ath of Saint Soter, who was taken during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius; he proposed to him his doubts about the new doctrine of the Montanists, and, after having received a response that confirmed the judgment that the bishops of Gaul had made on these errors, he took the road to Asia. It is easy to judge with what joy he was received by the faithful of this Church, where he had already made himself so illustrious by his erudition. He reassured their minds against the false dogmas of Montanus, showed them the sentiment of the Westerners, confirmed by the authority of the Holy See, regarding his errors, and exhorted them to remain firm and unshakable in the faith of Jesus Christ. Nauclerus, Vincent of Beauvais, and Hugh, a monk of Fleury, say that he was present at a council assembled in the city of Caesarea, in Palestine, where ecclesiastical discipline was strongly established against the maxims of this heretic; nevertheless, Cardinal Baronius believes that he did not make this great journey and that he did not go to Rome. Be that as it may, it is certain that while in the latter city, he saw the heresiarch Valentinus brok en by ol Valentin Gnostic heresiarch refuted by Irenaeus. d age, and two of his disciples, Florinus and Blastus, deposed from the priesthood by Eleutherius; he confounded them in the discussions he had with them and withdrew a great number of people from their impieties.

The demon, jealous of the ever-increasing prosperity of the Christianity of Lyon, stirred up a violent persecution against it. All those interested in maintaining the reign of superstition awakened the attention of the magistrates, began to breathe into every heart the hatred with which they were animated, and incited the pagan populace against the Christians; their religion was more than ever turned into ridicule; their morals accused of infamy, their conduct treated as insubordination or disobedience to the laws of the empire, and as contempt for the gods and the national religion. In order to make their persons odious, new calumnies were invented and spread against them every day. The leaders and principals of Christianity were those sought by the most venomous darts of hatred. But Saint Pothinus especially attracted the gaze and attention of the ministers of the false gods. Christians saw themselves insulted everywhere: they were pushed away from assemblies; they were ignominiously expelled from public squares; they were jeered at in the streets; often even, men from the dregs of the people, preluding the ferocity of executioners and beasts, struck them and pursued them with stones; threatening murmurs arose from all sides; terrible anathemas broke out in the city; cries of death echoed in the ears of the Christians as soon as they ventured out of their homes. These signs portended sinister events to Saint Pothinus and Saint Irenaeus: they understood that the time of trials had arrived. Pothinus saw with happiness the approach of the desired moment when, following the example of the Apostles and his master Saint Polycarp, he was to give his life to Jesus Christ and cement with his blood the foundations of his Church. He reproached himself in a way for the infirmities and weakness of his age, which prevented him from going to show himself to his people and sustain their constancy in the midst of the evils that threatened them. But he knew the zeal and courage of Irenaeus; he rested his pastoral solicitude upon him. Irenaeus, whose soul seemed to grow as dangers increased, exposed his life a hundred times to revive the constancy of the faithful and prepare them for the final sacrifice that the Lord imposed upon their faith and their love. Indeed, the pagan populace, pushed and directed by leaders thirsty for the blood of the innocents, tore the leaders of the Christians from their retreats, massacred some, and dragged others into prisons, from which they only emerged to perish with greater brilliance and to amuse, through their sufferings, the barbaric leisure of the idolatrous people.

The pagan magistrates, no longer needing human victims to amuse the people, put an end to the massacre of the Christians of Lyon. They believed they had annihilated Christianity, or at least had spread such terror among the rest of the faithful that they would no longer dare to practice their religion outwardly.

Indeed, the columns of the Christianity of Lyon were broken: the pastors had been struck and their flocks scattered or slaughtered with them. The faithful who survived them, wandering here and there, hid themselves as best they could from the gaze of the ravenous wolves. The Lord protected them; just as He had permitted religion to be cemented in the world by the blood of the martyrs, so too He had willed that martyrs should be the foundations in Lyon of a Church that was to bring so much glory to His name in the centuries to follow.

The pagans had believed they could drown this nascent Church in the blood of its children; but Irenaeus still remained: it was he whom the Lord had charged with cultivating a soil fertilized by the blood of the martyrs. This great man understood all the importance and difficulties of his mission; but nothing frightened his magnanimous heart. His courage, always superior to obstacles, grew with them; however, before setting his hand to the work, he felt he must religiously obey the last wishes of the martyrs who had charged him to go to Rome, to lay at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff the sorrows that the ravages of the new heresies had caused his most faithful children, and the prayers they had formed for the peace of the Church and the union of all its members.

When the Martyrs entrusted this mission to Irenaeus, circumstances seemed to force them to keep him with them; "but the charity of Jesus Christ pressed them." Moreover, the persecution had just immolated their father, and the Church of Lyon was without a pastor; it was urgent to give it one, and no one could occupy the chair of Saint Pothinus more worthily than Irenaeus. They had therefore deputed him to Rome with a special letter of recommendation, in which they paid the holy Pope Eleutherius the highest praise for the virtues and qualities of the one they had chosen as their first pastor. "We have charged," they said, "Irenaeus, our brother and colleague, to bring you these letters. He is an ardent zealot for the Testament of Jesus Christ whom we recommend to your paternity. He is also raised to the priestly dignity, and we would further emphasize this title, if rank gave merit." There remains to us of this letter only a fragment preserved by Eusebius; the rest undoubtedly contained the prayer that the holy Martyrs made to the Vicar of Jesus Christ to honor so many virtues with his approval, and to confirm their choice by conferring upon Saint Irenaeus the anointing and the episcopal dignity.

A prayer that martyrs made to a holy Pope, in favor of a holy priest, could not be rejected. Eleutherius was happy to have to entrust to the care of a portion of the flock committed to his charge a pastor so zealous, so vigilant, and so skillful. Irenaeus, whose modesty equaled his merit, had only to complain of a rank that was going to make him a spectacle to the whole Church; but it was an honor that imposed upon him frightening sacrifices, and, to undergo them, he resigned himself to the episcopal dignity.

The occupation of our Saint, as soon as he saw himself in the episcopal chair, was to gather, so to speak, the sad debris of this shipwreck, to collect his scattered sheep, and to fortify those whom the rage of the tyrants had terrified, in order to make faith and piety flourish again with even more brilliance than before. He spared nothing to succeed in such a holy enterprise: his words, his examples, his counsels, his science, were the means he used to make it succeed. Indeed, he did so much by his prayers, by his preaching, by his exhortations, by his remonstrances and by his reprimands, employing first gentleness and persuasion, as the Apostle speaks, that he encouraged the timid, brought back the wayward, fortified the weak, and finally made the faithful of the Church of Lyon models of virtue; so that we can say that their candor, their restraint in their speech, their gentleness, the severity and innocence of their lives, their charity for their enemies and their greatest persecutors, their patience in insults, their fidelity in commerce, their distance from all ambition, their poverty, their chastity, their temperance, and, in a word, the visible, constant, and uniform holiness of their lives, contributed not a little to confound the adversaries of the Christian religion and to establish the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

The same warning signs that had preceded the first storm soon heralded a second. The Christians of Lyon were once again subjected to harassing surveillance, exposed to slander, to the denunciations of their enemies, and finally hunted down in their peaceful retreats. The fire of the last persecution, which had never been entirely extinguished, was rekindled, and the violence began anew. Irenaeus had foreseen it; he knew that his work was not that of man, and that God still wanted victims who would be like a pledge of the future greatness of His Church.

The blood of the Martyrs flowed again in torrents; but God, who laughs at the plans and efforts of princes and peoples conspiring against Him and His Christ, brought the storm to an end, which He had only permitted for His glory and that of His Church. Moreover, He destined Irenaeus for labors that required calm and peace: he was to be opposed to troops of adversaries who could not be triumphed over by dying. The persecution therefore ended with the reign and life of Marcus Aurelius. This prince, guilty of all the excesses that his officers exercised against the Christians, although he had not commanded them all, had once again been forced to take up arms against the indomitable Marcomanni: he had already arrived in their country when, feeling himself attacked by a serious illness, he refused all food and let himself die of hunger. Marcus Aurelius left behind him the reputation of a Stoic, vain to the point of ridicule and baseness, selfish to the point of cruelty, austere and fatalistic in his maxims, inconsistent in his conduct. A bad husband, a negligent father, a bizarre monarch, he reigned only for himself, and all his ambition was to obtain the esteem or the flattery of philosophism.

Commodus having succeeded Marcus Aurelius, who died on March 17 of the year 181, the Church began to enjoy the sweetness of peace. This prince, whom Rome regarded as a second Nero, had, it is true, neither piety for his gods, nor respect for the most inviolable laws of nature, nor fidelity to his friends, nor regard for the innocence and merit of men; he nevertheless spared the blood of the Christians, God wishing to use his tyranny to punish those who, under the reign of his father, had so cruelly treated them.

Irenaeus understood the duties and advantages that this calm gave to his zeal; to take advantage of it, he spared neither vigils nor sacrifices: his life was a daily devotion: no rest seemed legitimate to him. Full of admiration for the illustrious Polycarp, his master, he had his memory, or rather his heart, filled with his virtues, and he reproduced their admirable examples in his conduct. When the episcopal character had given him one more resemblance to his venerated master, he also strove to imitate, in the administration of his Church, a model himself formed in the school of the disciple who had rested on the heart of Jesus Christ. Thus, it is remarked,

In the character and conduct of Saint Irenaeus, the great qualities that the Apostle Saint John and Saint Polycarp his disciple had displayed; all those of his actions of which history has preserved the memory reveal an unalterable sweetness, an ardent charity for God and for his neighbor, the same love of peace, an unshakable firmness, a heroic courage. He knew that his new dignity placed him in a way at the disposal of all, and gave everyone rights to his zeal; he therefore chained himself to the good and the needs of all. Heaven poured out abundant blessings on works undertaken for His glory and pursued with such devotion. Irenaeus saw every day a great number of infidels coming to range themselves around him, in the shadow of the cross, who, unable to resist the influence of his virtues or the strength of his instructions, deserted the altars of false gods and swelled the ranks of the Christians. The conversions were so numerous that when, a little later, the Emperor Severus wanted to destroy the Christian religion in Lyon, he was forced to put to death almost the entire population of this great city.

Irenaeus's zeal was not limited to his Church. Paganism still reigned in the empire, and Gnosticism was trying everywhere to tear away the Gospel's new conquests. However, Providence and the love of his people kept our Saint fixed at this post, and he could not abandon it to fly wherever there were enemies to fight. He therefore strove to multiply himself in his disciples, and raised up formidable adversaries against paganism and heresy, who were going in his name to attack and fight them at all points.

This is why, without ceasing to devote himself to his people, Irenaeus gave particular attention to the clergy of his Church, in imitation of the great bishop of Smyrna, whose clergy had always been a seminary of apostles. The example of his virtues, the brilliance of his lights, the lessons of his experience, formed in the sanctuary ministers worthy of their high functions and in conformity with the idea he had formed of the holiness of their state.

Under the inspiration of the illustrious doctor, Lyon became in the West what Smyrna had been in the East, the hearth of tradition, the gymnasium where orthodoxy was strengthened by the discussion of doctrines, by the struggle against heresy. People came there from all parts of the Christian world, and famous doctors were formed there in their turn, who, relying on the teachings of Irenaeus, surrounded this name with the vivid and pious memory with which Irenaeus himself had surrounded the name of his masters.

The city of Valence, situated on the banks of the Rhône, below Lyon, first fixed the attention of Irenaeus; commerce had at tracted Valence Place of Ismidon's early studies. several families of Asian merchants there. The voice of the first preachers of the Gospel had only weakly resounded there until then, as in the other parts of Gaul. Paganism reigned there without a rival, and Gnosticism, having arrived from the East, far from causing it anxiety, helped it on the contrary to destroy in this country the traces that the passage of religion might have left. But their empire could neither be established nor subsist alongside, so to speak, Irenaeus. This holy bishop raised up three adversaries against them who were to destroy their work. Sent to Valence by Irenaeus, the saints Felix, priest, Fortunatus and Achilleus, deacons, therefore came to raise in this city the altar of Jesus Christ against the altars of false gods.

The preaching of these three disciples of Irenaeus, joined to the holiness of their life, and supported by the authority of miracles, won a great number of souls to Jesus Christ in a short time.

The saints Ferreolus and Ferrucius, intimate friends of the first three apostles of Valence, and, like them, formed in the school of the great Irenaeus, obtained the same successes by the same means, in the land of the Sequani that their holy master had assigned to their zeal. Both received, a few years later, under Caracalla, a reward worthy of their labors, the palm of martyrdom.

It was little for Irenaeus to establish the religion of Jesus Christ in Gaul. He also formed other disciples who, with the title of bishops of the nations, would go to preach and defend the Gospel in all parts of the universe. These admirable men, says Eusebius of Caesarea, imitating the zeal of their masters, raised the edifice of religion where the Apostles had laid the foundations: they worked with indefatigable application to the preaching of the faith, spread the seed of the divine word throughout the earth, made Jesus Christ known to those who were still ignorant of his name, and explained his holy law to them. When these apostolic men had solidly established religion in an infidel country, they entrusted the care of the souls they had acquired for Jesus Christ to stable pastors; then they pursued the course of their spiritual conquests in other countries. God accompanied them everywhere, His grace strengthened them, and the Holy Spirit worked, through His servants, and in favor of their ministry, wonders as brilliant as they were numerous; thus it was not rare to see entire peoples stirred by their voice, and entering in crowds into the Church of Jesus Christ.

While Saint Irenaeus was instructing others in the religion of the Apostles and Doctors, he strove to bring back to the Church the unfaithful ministers who had deserted it for schism and heresy. As he had not had enough time in Rome to combat the errors of Valentinus and other heretics, whose party was growing day by day, he took up his pen to refute them: which he did with as much solidity as erudition and good faith. He convinced them primarily through the apostolic traditions kept inviolably by the Roman Church, from Saint Peter to the Pope under whom he was writing.

Our Saint showed no less zeal for the establishment of peace and concord in the Church than he had shown in his writings and discussions for the purity of the faith. The dispute concerning the celebration of Easter having been reawakened in almost all the Churches, Pope Saint Victor I convened a synod in Rome, where it was ordered that this feast sh ould be on the S saint Victor Ier Pope of African origin who reigned at the end of the 2nd century. unday after the fourteenth day of the March moon, in accordance with apostolic tradition. Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, resolved, on the contrary, in an assembly of the bishops of Asia, that, following their ancient custom, they would celebrate it on the fourteenth day of the moon, just as it had been celebrated by Jesus Christ Himself, and as it was in the old law, upon which he wrote a synodal Epistle to the Pope. This decree of the Asians was very poorly received by Saint Victor; he declared it contrary to apostolic tradition and the general custom of the Church, gave them a very harsh response, and threatened to excommunicate them. Our Saint foresaw that this rigor would have unfortunate consequences; having assembled a Synod of bishops where the decree of Saint Victor was received, he wrote him a letter in the name of all, in which he pointed out that he should moderate his zeal and use gentleness rather than rigor; that it was not just to cut off such a large number of Churches from the universal Church for an observance that their fathers had kept; that it was much more appropriate to maintain union with one's brothers, following the example of his predecessors, Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Sixtus, who did not fail to send the Eucharist (a mark at that time of ecclesiastical union) to those who did not celebrate Easter on the same day as the Roman Church. He added other things quite pressing and somewhat strong to oblige him to have more indulgence for the bishops of Asia. He also wrote several other letters to Churches and bishops, to exhort them to remain submissive to the Holy See and to conform to the decree of Saint Victor. It is thus that he procured great tranquility for the Church, even when it was threatened by a furious storm, which would have been capable of causing it to lose an infinity of the faithful.

All the bishops applauded such a happy outcome and blessed Irenaeus who, great according to his name, had appeared among his brothers as an angel of peace, and restored between them those bonds of charity so recommended by the divine Master.

For his part, this venerable old man gave thanks to God for a success so ardently desired; he had lived long enough, since he saw with his own eyes peace reigning once again among the children of God; he could end in joy a life he had dedicated entirely to the glory of Jesus Christ and the salvation of his brothers; he had fought the good fight of the Lord; he had arrived triumphant at the end of his career, and thus nothing remained for him but to receive the crown prepared for him by the God of all justice. But martyrdom alone could worthily crown so many labors and virtues; and the Lord, who had destined his servant to avenge the truth and to glorify his name among men, still required of him this final testimony of love, the most beautiful a Christian can give to his God, so that his providence might gather upon him the rewards it prepares for confessors, virgins, pontiffs, doctors, and martyrs.

While Saint Irenaeus was edifying his Church by the brilliance of his virtues and the purity of his doctrine, Septimius Severus, after having left t he faithful in Septime Sévère Roman emperor under whose reign Clement was ordained a priest and persecuted. peace for some time, and even having defended them on several occasions against popular fury in recognition of having received health from a Christian named Proculus, whom he kept by his side until his death, soon ceased to show them the same benevolence. Then there was a terrifying explosion of threats everywhere: cries of death rose again from all parts of the empire and consigned the Christians to the lions.

But nowhere did idolatry unleash itself against the Christians with more fury than in the city of Lyon. The vengeance that Severus had brought upon it some time before had revealed their innocence: the pagans had not forgotten it. Scarcely had they emerged from the stupor into which the wrath of the conqueror had cast them, than, measuring the full magnitude of the disasters whose sight seemed to accuse them still, they drew from their very misfortunes a new rage against innocent Christians who were weeping, over the ruins, for the crime of their fellow citizens and the common calamities.

Saint Irenaeus observed these dispositions of mind; he foresaw that hell was preparing a terrifying war for his Church; thus he did not wait for it to break out to prepare his people for it. As for himself, he saw with joy the approach of the happy day that was to illuminate his martyrdom. His ardent love for Jesus Christ would not accept a lesser sacrifice, and he implored his God to grant him this final favor. Disciple of a martyr, successor of a martyr, companion of martyrs, he had nurtured in his heart the desire and the hope of sacrificing his life to the glory of Jesus Christ, and his soul must have been inflamed with a new ardor at the approach of the day when God was finally going to fulfill his wishes. It was easy for him to inspire the same sentiments in the Christians he had formed. Without a doubt, martyrdom was then the ordinary subject of his conversations and lessons: he explained its excellence to his disciples and showed them that it was one of the most beautiful privileges of the Church of which they were members; he promised them the help and strength of the Holy Spirit, revived their courage by raising their hopes, and made the crown of glory that Jesus Christ prepares for those who have loved him even to the point of dying for him shine before their eyes. "The Church alone," said the great Irenaeus, "has the privilege of forming martyrs and populating the heavens with them: it is a favor that God grants to the love she bears him. Far from participating in her glory, cold and sterile sects do not understand the nobility of martyrdom, despise those who suffer it for the Word of God, and blaspheme the Holy Spirit who gives them the courage for it. For the martyrs, strong with the very strength of the Holy Spirit, are above human weakness, and sufferings seem light to them; they brave death and torments that would frighten nature, if the Spirit of God were not with them.

"Jesus Christ was the first to give his life for us; he therefore has the right that, out of love for him, we participate in his sacrifice. That is why he had already said to his disciples: You will appear, because of my name, before princes and magistrates: you will be pursued from city to city; you will be delivered to torments and to death. But do not fear those who, being able to tear the body, have no power over the soul; fear rather him who can condemn both soul and body to eternal flames. Yes," adds Saint Irenaeus, "fear him who crowns the martyrs and punishes the unfaithful. Heretics dare, however, to despise the martyrs, to hold up to ridicule those who give their lives for the name of Jesus Christ. But one day the sovereign Judge will avenge the honor of the saints and confound their contemners. As for us, let us imitate here below him who on the cross asked for mercy for his executioners, who recommended that we love our enemies; let us abandon ourselves to his justice and his goodness."

It was thus that, unfolding before the eyes of his disciples the tableau of the persecutions endured by the Church in all times, as in all countries, Saint Irenaeus, to excite their faith and courage, reminded them of the sublime struggle that Christians of every rank, of every sex, and of every age, eyes fixed on Calvary, hearts fortified by the Holy Spirit, had sustained against the powers of hell. Moreover, the Christians of Lyon were the children of martyrs: every day they trod the glorious theater where their fathers had fought for Jesus Christ and triumphed over tortures: the places witnessing the courage and victory of these generous athletes seemed to exhort them not to degenerate from their ancestors. The venerated names of Pothinus, Sanctus, Blandina, Epipodius, Alexander, and so many other martyrs still lived in their memory. Such beautiful examples, sown, so to speak, in their hearts, bore there those fruits of salvation that the father of the family was soon to harvest; and the hope of the happiness, the possession of which martyrdom had assured their fathers, further inflamed their courage and their desires. It was toward this glorious end that Irenaeus raised their thoughts. The disasters and bloody executions that, a short time before, had devastated the city of Lyon, still attested to the vanity of the things of this world, confirmed his lessons, and led the Christians to suffer for Jesus Christ evils that so many unfortunates were forced to undergo for a man.

But nothing seconded the lessons of Irenaeus better than the example of his virtues: thus he had the consolation of seeing grow around his old age a people of Christian heroes, whose entire ambition was to live and die with him.

It was in these dispositions that the persecution found the Lyonnais Christendom. A popular riot had given Rome the first signal of this persecution, which, for several years, flooded the empire with the blood of Christians. From Rome it passed to Alexandria, which turned into a vast theater of carnage, where the magnanimous courage of the Christians shone; then to the West, where Irenaeus, like a sun that had majestically completed its course, was about to be extinguished in floods of blood.

This great Saint had spent eighty years in the service of the Lord. For a quarter of a century he had occupied the see of Saint Pothinus; he had confounded heresy, pacified the entire Church, removed from its bosom the evils and scandals of a schism; his lights had illuminated all of Christendom, his virtues had edified it; all his great qualities had honored religion and glorified the name of Jesus Christ among the Gentiles: it only remained for Irenaeus to give the Savior the most brilliant of all testimonies, that of his blood, and his merits lacked only the palm of martyrdom.

The imperial decrees arrived in Lyon at the end of the year 202, and coincided precisely with the decennial festivals that were to be celebrated on the occasion of the tenth year of the reign of Severus. It was for the pagans of this city a favorable occasion to make people forget their past revolt and to exercise their vengeance against the Christians: under the pretext of testifying their love for their sovereign, they hastened to execute his orders, celebrated festivals in his honor with extraordinary display, and multiplied sacrifices for the prosperity of his reign. As the Christians never took part in sacrilegious festivals celebrated in debauchery, their enemies took advantage of this circumstance to accuse them of rebellion against the prince, or of contempt for his person and for the gods, and thus to draw upon their heads the wrath of Severus. The Christians knew well to what dangers the refusal to participate in these abominations exposed them; but they feared only God: they therefore persevered in the practice of their duties, and abandoning themselves to the will of the Lord, they maintained the calm and patience they had shown in less threatening times, or rather they asked Jesus Christ for the favor of uniting the sacrifice of their lives to the sacrifice of the cross. Their wishes were soon satisfied. Surrounded by the veneration of the faithful, Irenaeus, as we have said, prepared them for martyrdom, revived their faith, raised their thoughts toward the heaven that was about to open before them, and taught them to despise a land where the disciples of the Gospel are forced to live mingled with the partisans of hell. He often distributed to them the bread of the strong, conferred baptism on children and catechumens, so that they would not thirst for this life before having been regenerated by this sacrament. He inspired in all the strength and courage that the coming trials demanded.

However, the pagans, free to do the Christians all the harm they wanted, exercised their power with a fury of which man seems hardly capable. Without a doubt, the priests of the false gods first made it fall upon Irenaeus, whose zeal was depopulating their temples and sustaining the constancy of the Christians; this venerable old man gave thanks to his God that he was crowning his favors with that of martyrdom.

Eyes raised toward heaven, forehead calm and majestic, he received the blow of death while blessing it, and his triumphant soul went at last to receive in the heavens the crown that so many battles on earth had earned him. His spiritual children, instructed by his lessons, animated by his example, shared his happiness and his glory. Vile assassins, drunk on their blood, flooded the city with it; armed with daggers, stones, or sharp weapons, they slaughtered them wherever their blind fury encountered them. It was only sated when it found no more victims and thousands of Christians had fallen under its blows.

The martyrdom of Saint Irenaeus occurred in the year 202, according to the most common opinion; some authors place it in 208. The Greeks honor Saint Irenaeus on August 23, and the Latins on June 28.

Mention is made of this holy Doctor in Tertullian, Eusebius, Saint Epiphanius, Saint Jerome, Saint Gregory of Tours, Oecumenius, Ado of Vienne, and in all the martyrologies.

Saint Irenaeus is found represented with a torch in his hand, either as a doctor or in his capacity as apostle of Lyon: the Gospel is indeed a light that dissipates the night of error.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS. — WRITINGS OF SAINT IRENAEUS.]

The body of Saint Irenaeus was removed under the cover of darkness by the holy priest Zacharias and deposited in the catacombs of Lyon, along with those of the other martyrs of the persecution. Later, at the edge of the city, a basilica was raised over the crypt where Saint Irenaeus had so often gathered his children, and where his mortal remains had subsequently been religiously deposited.

The faithful preserved this rich treasure with great veneration until the year 1562: the Huguenots, who then exercised a thousand impetuosities against the holy relics, having pillaged the shrine of our Saint, threw a large part of his bones into the Rhône and another part into the mud; as for the skull of his venerated head, they rolled it here and there through the streets, and left it smeared in a sewer; but it was retrieved almost at the same time by the piety of a surgeon, who kept it in his house until, the troubles of the civil wars having subsided, the archbishop with his clergy, accompanied by the magistrates of the city, transported it solemnly in a general procession, as a precious relic, from the place where it was to a church dedicated under the name of Saint-Irenaeus.

As for the basilica, it was partially overturned by the sectarians, then rebuilt and destroyed again, during the memorable and cruel siege of Lyon. The current basilica of Saint-Irenaeus is almost entirely new: it has nothing ancient except the substructures of the apse and its underground church; it touches the magnificent palace forming the Saint-Michel refuge, which possesses a charming church. Near it also is a fountain whose ornamentation and character do honor to the architect's taste.

The principal work of Saint Irenaeus, in five books, is known under this title: *Adversus hæreses*, against heresies.

In his first book, Saint Irenaeus exposes the reveries of Valentinus on the genealogy of thirty Aeons. These imaginary beings were a species of inferior divinities that were made to be produced by the eternal, invisible, incomprehensible God, named *Bathos* or *Depth*, to whom was given as a wife *Ennoia* or *Thought*, otherwise called *Sige* or *Silence*. This absurd system was formed on the theogony of Hesiod and on some ideas of Plato, into which Valentinus mixed certain truths he had borrowed from the Gospel according to Saint John. Saint Irenaeus refutes it by the authority of Scripture, by that of the creed of which he reports almost all the articles, and by the unanimity of the different churches in the same faith, a unanimity to which he opposes the difficulty that heretics have in agreeing among themselves. After speaking of several of their variations, he describes at length the superstitions and impostures of Marcus, leader of the Marcosians; then he exposes the errors of the other heretics who appeared at the birth of Christianity.

He shows in his second book that God created the universe, and refutes the system of the Aeons. He asserts, B. II. c. LVII, ed. Ben. Oton. 32, that Christians performed miracles in the name of the Son of God, and he puts this gift among the characteristic marks of the true Church.

In his third book, Saint Irenaeus complains that the heretics, being pressed by Scripture, studied its authority, claiming that tradition was for them, and that when they were attacked by tradition, they abandoned it and appealed to Scripture alone, whereas Scripture and tradition provided invincible weapons against their errors. He observes that the Apostles transmitted the truth and all the mysteries of the faith to the pastors who succeeded them, and that it is to them consequently that we must address ourselves to have knowledge of it.

The holy doctor, in his fourth book, proves the unity of God, and shows, c. XVII, XVIII, that Jesus Christ, in abolishing the ancient sacrifices, substituted for them that of his Body and his Blood, which must be offered throughout the world, following the prediction of Malachi. He gives the multitude of martyrs as a mark of the true Church, and maintains that heretics cannot boast of the same advantage, although some of them have been mixed into the crowd of our martyrs, c. XXXIII.

He speaks, in his fifth book, of our redemption by Jesus Christ, and reports there the proofs of the resurrection of the bodies; he returns, c. VI, to the prophetic gifts and miracles which, in his time, subsisted in the Church. Follows a recapitulation of the heresies refuted in the work. "Their novelty," says Saint Irenaeus, "would alone suffice to confound them." He adds some remarks on the coming of the Antichrist. He concludes, from a passage of the Apocalypse, which he interpreted poorly after Papias, his master, that before the last judgment, Jesus Christ would reign a thousand years on earth with his elect in the enjoyment of spiritual pleasures. (Cerinthus and other heretics claimed that these pleasures would be carnal.) By consulting tradition, as the holy doctor himself orders, one will soon lead the opinion of the Millenarians. It has been renewed in Germany by several Lutherans, and by some Protestants of England, notably by Doctor Wells, in his notes on the Apocalypse.

Besides the five books against heresies, Saint Irenaeus composed several others of which only the titles or very small fragments remain to us. These are: 1st A treatise on the Monarchy, against Florinus; 2nd a treatise on the Ogdoad, or number of eight, against the same; 3rd a treatise on Schism, against Blastus; 4th a Letter to Pope Victor concerning Easter; 5th a book of Science; 6th a Collection of various disputes; 7th Discourses on the faith; 8th the Letter of the Churches of Lyon and Vienne.

The works of Saint Irenaeus were published by Erasmus and by Feu-Ardent. Grabe had them reprinted at Oxford in 1702; but he often altered the text of his author; he also added notes which disfigure them by their heterodoxy, and which, for the most part, have as their object to establish the particular ideas of the editor, in relation to the new religion he had embraced. The best of all the editions we have of the works of the holy doctor is that which Dom Massuet, a Benedictine of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, gave in Paris in 1710, in-folio. Pfaff, a Lutheran, published, in 1715, four new fragments of Saint Irenaeus, from a manuscript in the Turin library. The second of these fragments presents in summary the doctrine of the Church on the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. In 1734, the edition of Dom Massuet was reprinted in Vienna with the fragments of Pfaff. This work was translated by M. de Gencode.

The Rev. Fr. Feu-Ardent, of the Order of Friars Minor, doctor of the Faculty of Paris, gave us his life at the beginning of the learned Remarks he made on his works; it is from there and from the Annals of Cardinal Baronius, as well as from the History of Saint Irenaeus, by the Abbé Prat, that we have drawn the best part of this account.