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Bishop ofLyons, andFather of the Church.
Information as to his life is scarce, and in some measure inexact. He was born in ProconsularAsia, or at least in some province bordering thereon, in the first half of the second century; the exactdate is controverted, between the years 115 and 125, according to some, or, according to others, between 130 and 142. It iscertain that, while still very young, Irenaeus had seen and heard the holy BishopPolycarp (d. 155) atSmyrna. During thepersecution ofMarcus Aurelius, Irenaeus was apriest of theChurch of Lyons. Theclergy of that city, many of whom were sufferingimprisonment for the Faith, sent him (177 or 178) toRome with a letter toPope Eleutherius concerningMontanism, and on that occasion bore emphatic testimony to his merits. Returning toGaul, Irenaeus succeeded themartyr Saint Pothinus asBishop ofLyons. During the religious peace which followed thepersecution ofMarcus Aurelius, the newbishop divided his activities between theduties of apastor and of a missionary (as to which we have but brief data, late and not very certain) and his writings, almost all of which were directed againstGnosticism, theheresy then spreading inGaul and elsewhere. In 190 or 191 he interceded withPope Victor to lift the sentence ofexcommunication laid by that pontiff upon theChristian communities ofAsia Minor which persevered in the practice of the Quartodecimans in regard to the celebration ofEaster. Nothing isknown of thedate of his death, which must have occurred at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. In spite of some isolated and later testimony to that effect, it is not very probable that he ended his career withmartyrdom. Hisfeast is celebrated on 28 June in theLatin Church, and on 23 August in the Greek.
Irenaeus wrote in Greek many works which have secured for him an exceptional place inChristian literature, because in controverted religious questions of capital importance they exhibit the testimony of a contemporary of the heroic age of theChurch, of one who had heardSt. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, and who, in a manner, belonged to theApostolic Age. None of these writings has come down to us in the original text, though a great many fragments of them are extant as citations in later writers (Hippolytus,Eusebius, etc.). Two of these works, however, have reached us in their entirety in a Latin version:
Of his other works only scattered fragments exist; many, indeed, are known only through the mention made of them by later writers, not even fragments of the works themselves having come down to us. These are
The four fragments which Pfaff published in 1715, ostensibly from aTurinmanuscript, have been proven by Funk to beapocryphal, and Harnack has established the fact that Pfaff himself fabricated them.
APA citation.Poncelet, A.(1910).St. Irenaeus. InThe Catholic Encyclopedia.New York: Robert Appleton Company.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08130b.htm
MLA citation.Poncelet, Albert."St. Irenaeus."The Catholic Encyclopedia.Vol. 8.New York: Robert Appleton Company,1910.<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08130b.htm>.
Transcription.This article was transcribed for New Advent by Sean Hyland.Dedicated to John O'Brien and Jackie Sheehan.
Ecclesiastical approbation.Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor.Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
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