On the Trail of Ignatius, by Regis Martin

By Regis Martin, Crisis Magazine, Sept. 2, 2023

Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. …

[Editor’s Note: This is the third in a multi-part series on St. Ignatius of Antioch]

 

There were altogether seven letters sent by Ignatius of Antioch, its sainted bishop and martyr, to various communities of the faithful lying between Antioch and Rome—the latter, of course, being the place of rendezvous where ravenous beasts eagerly awaited his arrival, which took place, so far as we know, in the year A.D. 107.

The first four were written in Smyrna, a large and bustling Greek city located along the Aegean coast, some thirty-five miles north of Ephesus, Rome’s provincial capital and an important link in the trade route joining the Aegean with the East. That it had also been the setting for St. Paul’s missionary initiatives, plus the later activity of St. John the Divine, lends it a special aura.  But it was in Antioch that the name Christian first surfaced, becoming the designated term for the followers of Jesus, one of whom, Ignatius—called Theopohorus, one who is filled with God—remains the central figure in the story. …

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