Ignatius
（
Ἰγνάτιος). A martyr who suffered at Rome during the
third persecution of the Christians. He was a Syrian by birth, and an immediate disciple of
St. John the Evangelist, who, in A.D. 67, committed the church at Antioch to his pastoral
superintendence, as successor to Euodius. Over this bishopric he presided for upwards of forty
years, when the emperor Trajan, after his triumph over the Dacians, entering the city,
exercised many severities towards those who professed the Christian faith, and summoned the
prelate himself before him, on which occasion Ignatius conducted himself with such boldness in
the imperial presence that he was sent to Rome, and ordered to be exposed in the amphitheatre
to the fury of wild beasts. This dreadful death he underwent (October 17) with great
fortitude, having availed himself of the interval between his sentence and its execution to
strengthen, by his exhortations, the faith of the Roman converts. After his decease, which
took place A.D. 107, or, according to some accounts, A.D. 116, his remains were carried to
Antioch for interment.
It is reported that Ignatius was one of the little children whom Jesus took up in his arms
and blessed, whence he was called Theophorus or “God-borne”; and it is
certain that he conversed familiarly with the Apostles, and was perfectly acquainted with
their doctrine. Of his works there remain seven genuine epistles, on the various forms
of which see
Zahn, Ignatios von Antiochien (1873), and Bishop
Lightfoot,
The Apostolic Fathers, pt. ii. 2d ed.
(1889).
