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Of the early life of IRENAEUS little is known. He was a native of Asia Minor; and in his youth was brought into intimate contact with Polycarp, who collected and transmitted to him many sayings of St. John and the other disciples of Christ. In the year 177 A.D. he succeeded Pothinus as Bishop of Lyons.
His great work was a treatise against the heresies of his time. He was well placed for this task. He was a Greek, thoroughly versed in the philosophical controversies of his time. And he held high office in the Western Church, of which Rome was regarded with increasing unanimity as the centre; a Church which aimed at building up a social system that should govern the souls of men, rather than at the vain attempt to satisfy intellectual curiosity by a metaphysical structure. It needed a wise, practical, and forbearing spirit to distinguish the Catholic doctrine--formed of inscrutable mysteries which surrounded its teachers with a halo of reverence, and therefore helped them forward in their work--from the incoherent novelties that the speculators of Alexandria were pouring out in mischievous profusion from the inexhaustible store of Plato's metaphysics.
Irenaeus did his work well, and thus contributed to the formation of the orthodox Catholic doctrine; a doctrine whereof the whole value consisted in forming a basis on which the practical work of the Church could proceed. It is said that Irenaeus suffered martyrdom; but there is no sufficient evidence of this.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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