ON ST. POLYCARP AND HIS COMPANIONS,
Martyrs at Alexandria.
UNDER MAXIMIAN.
CommentaryPolycarp, Martyr, at Alexandria (St.) Companion Martyrs, at Alexandria (SS.)
G. H.
The sacred memory of St. Polycarp the Martyr is celebrated by the Greeks in their Menaea and in Maximus Bishop of Cythera ἐν βίοις Ἁγίων; and in the Menaea they add this distich: Τμηθεὶς ὡς κλῆμα Πολύκαρπος Κυρίου, Πλείονα καρπὸν αὐτῷ πολύχουν φέρει. The cultus of St. Polycarp, Allusion is made to the name of St. Polycarp, by which Much fruit is signified; and in order that he might bear for Him greater and manifold fruit, he himself had to be cut and pruned like a branch of the Lord: namely, when he was beheaded — as is more fully explained in the Menology of the Greeks, which was composed by order of Emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus in the tenth century of Christ, in which the Contest of the holy Martyr Polycarp is set forth for this II day of April as follows:
[2] Eulogium of the Martyrdom The holy Martyr of Christ Polycarp lived under the reign of the impious and wicked Maximian, from the city of Alexandria. Since he was a Christian and burned with the greatest zeal for divine worship and honor, and saw each day those confessing the faith of Christ being thrown into chains and afflicted with manifold torments, he could no longer endure it. Seeing therefore the Prince who presided, pouring out the blood of men as though it were water, and standing before him, he reproved him, saying: Why do you thus, O insatiable dog, forget your human nature? when you are cutting down as though they were logs men of one mind and who share the same nature with you, for this reason alone, that they confess and preach the true God, and detest the error of idols: as I also do, who am likewise a servant of Christ. When by these words he had stirred up the President to wrath, he was soon bound and sharply tortured, and thus, bearing Christ on his lips to the very end of his life, he was beheaded. Thus far the text.
[3] A Greek MS. Synaxarium, which belongs to the College of Clermont of the Society of Jesus at Paris, adds several companions to him in these words: καὶ ἄθλησις τοῦ ἁγίου μάρτυρος Πολυκάρπου καὶ τῆς συνοδίας αὐτοῦ. Companions. The same words are read in the Parisian MS. of Cardinal Mazarin, and in the Milanese MS. of the Ambrosian library marked with the letter O and number 148, likewise in an Arabic-Egyptian MS. Menology, which from Arabic into Latin was translated for us by Gratia Simonius, then a student at the Maronite College in Rome, in which these words are read: Contest of St. Polycarp and of his companions.