Eusebius in his Chronicon gives A.D. 166 as the date of Poly carp's death, and until the year 1867 this statement was never questioned. In that year appeared Waddington's Memoire sur la chronologie de la vie du rheteur Aelius Aristide, in which it was shown from a most acute combination of circumstances that the Quadratus whose name is mentioned in the Martyrium was pro consul of Asia in 155-156, and that consequently Polycarp was martyred on Feb. 23, 155. Waddington's conclusion has received overwhelming support amongst recent critics. His views have been accepted by (amongst many others) Renan (Antechrist, 1873, p. 207), Hilgenfeld (Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol., 1874, P. Gebhardt (Zeitschr. f. hist. Theol., 1875, p. 356), Lipsius (Jahrb. f. Prot. Theol., 1883, p. 525), Harnack (Chronologie, i. Zahn (Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol., 1882, p. 227), Lightfoot (Ignatius and Polycarp, i. 629-702) and Randell (Studia biblica, 1885, i. 175). Against this array of scholars only the following names of importance can be quoted in support of the traditional view Keim (Aus dem Urchristentum, p. 9o), Wieseler (Die Christen verfolgungen der Caesaren, 1878, p. 34) and Uhlhorn (Studia Biblica, 189o, ii., o5-156). The problem is too complex to admit of treatment here. There seems to be little doubt that the case for the earlier date has been proved.
The significance of Polycarp in the history of the Church is out of all proportion to our knowledge of the facts of his career. The violent attack of the Smyrnaean mob is an eloquent tribute to his influence in Asia. "This is the teacher of Asia," they
shouted, "this is the father of the Christians : this is the destroyer of our gods: this is the man who has taught so many no longer to sacrifice and no longer to pray to the gods." And after the execu tion they refused to deliver up his bones to the Christians for burial on the ground that "the Christians would now forsake the Crucified and worship Polycarp." Polycarp was indeed, as Poly crates says, "one of the great luminaries" (,u€76.Xa crrotxaa) of the time. It was in no small degree due to his staunch and un wavering leadership that the Church was saved from the peril of being overwhelmed by the rising tide of the pagan revival which swept over Asia during the first half of the 2nd century, and it was his unfaltering allegiance to the Apostolic faith that secured the defeat of the many forms of heresy which threatened to destroy the Church from within.
Polycarp had no creative genius. He was a "transmitter, not a maker." As Irenaeus says (iii. 3, 4), "Polycarp does not appear to have possessed qualifications for successfully conducting a controversial discussion with erroneous teachers . . . but he could not help feeling how unlike their speculations were to the doctrines which he had learned from the Apostles, and so he met with in dignant reprobation their attempt to supersede Christ's gospel with fictions of their own devising." It is this that constitutes Polycarp's service to the Church, and no greater service has been rendered by any of its leaders in any age.