Polycarp of Smyrna

The Letter of the Smyrnaeans on the Martyrdom of Polycarp summarizes the famous martyrdom of Polycarp, who had been the bishop of Smyrna. The church at Philomelium had requested mo...

Abstract A comparison of the letters that Paul and Polycarp sent to Philippi suggests some new directions in the study of Polycarp’s letter. Two key points of compar...

Izmir, the modern name for the city that once was known as Smyrna, is the third largest city in Turkey, with a population of around 3 million. Situated on the Aegean coast, it is T...

The sharp contrast which is apparent to-day between the fortunes of Smyrna and of her sister ‘Churches of Asia’ has long been brought into connection with the prophecies contained ...

The classical Black Glaze pottery is a reddish ware distinguished by a uniform, lustrous black ‘glaze’—to use the term improperly—and fairly closely standardized in its forms. The ...

Abstract: The story of Polycarp presents the challenge of steering a via media between hagiographical and demythologizing interpretations. The article explains the problems with re...

The Martyrdom of Polycarp, if it were indeed authentic and datable to the mid-second century, would give us an important glimpse of developing attitudes to martyrdom in this period...

This chapter studies a letter or set of letters written some fifty to seventy-five years after Paul, partially preserved in Greek, Latin, and Syriac: Polycarp's Letter to the Phili...