ìÖduring the reign of Marcus Antoninus and Lucius
Aurelius Commodus in the fourth persecution after Nero, in
the presence of the proconsul holding court at Smyrna and
all the people crying out against him in the Amphitheater,[Polycarp] was burned.î 25
ìThe Stadtholder (the governor or lieutenant governor)
admonished him to have compassion for his great age, and,
by swearing by the Emperorís fortune, to deny Christ.
Thereupon Polycarp gave the following candid reply, ëI have
now served my Lord Christ Jesus eighty-six years, and He
has never done me any harm. How can I deny my King, who
hath hitherto preserved me from all evil, and so faithfully
redeemed me?íî 26ìAs soon as he had uttered the last word of his prayer (the
word ëAmení) the executioners ignited the wood upon which
he was placed; and when the flames circled high above the
body of Polycarp, it was found, to the astonishment of
everyone that the fire injured him but a little, or not at all.
The executioner was therefore commanded to pierce him
with a sword, which was instantly done, so that the blood,
either through the heat of the fire, or from some other
reason, issued so copiously from the wound that the fire was
almost extinguished thereby; and this faithful witness of
Jesus Christ, having died both by fire and the sword,
entered into the rest of the saints, about AD 168.î 27Was Polycarp another victim of the Holy See of Rome because he refused to
compromise the Gospel of Christ with paganism?
Was his death a foreshadowing of the Inquisition that the Roman Church would
unleash on the world centuries later?
The question of whether or not Christians should celebrate the Passover or
Easter did not die out. Perhaps emboldened by how they solved the Polycarp
Question, threats of excommunication were used to try to force the pagan holy day
on the followers of Christ. Excommunication made extermination that much easier
to justify.