{"author":"Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)","date_end":1885,"date_label":"1885 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain)","date_start":1885,"edition_year":1885,"edition_year_basis":"Historical ANF I copyright 1885; retained physical scan printing 1913; transcription printing date and individual translator allocation uncertain","id":"ws-library-full-note:c1ddd74e4af6dfb0c504:cite_note-1","is_genuine_commentary_verified":false,"license_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Reusing_Wikisource_content","public_import_allowed":true,"publication_location":"source-library","record_type":"editorial-footnote","references":[],"rights_approved":true,"section":"Chapter uncertain, editorial note cite_note-1","semantic_kind_reviewed":false,"source_context":["[a.d. 120–202.] This history introduces us to the Church in her Western outposts. We reach the banks of the Rhone, where for nearly a century Christian missions have flourished. Between Marseilles and Smyrna there seems to have been a brisk trade, and Polycarp had sent Pothinus into Celtic Gaul at an early date as its evangelist. He had fixed his see at Lyons, when Irenæus joined him as a presbyter, having been his fellow-pupil under Polycarp. There, under the “good Aurelius,” as he is miscalled (a.d. 177), arose the terrible persecution which made “the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne” so memorable. It was during this persecution that Irenæus was sent to Rome with letters of remonstrance against the rising pestilence of heresy; and he was probably the author of the account of the sufferings of the martyrs which is appended to their testimony. But he had the mortification of finding the Montanist heresy patronized by Eleutherus the Bishop of Rome; and there he met an old friend from the school of Polycarp, who had embraced the Valentinian heresy. We cannot doubt that to this visit we owe the lifelong struggle of Irenæus against the heresies that now came in, like locusts, to devour the harvests of the Gospel. But let it be noted here, that, so far from being “the mother and mistress” of even the Western Churches, Rome herself is a mission of the Greeks; Southern Gaul is evangelized from Asia Minor, and Lyons checks the heretical tendencies of the Bishop at Rome. Ante-Nicene Christianity, and indeed the Church herself, appears in Greek costume which lasts through the synodical period; and Latin Christianity, when it begins to appear, is African, and not Roman. It is strange that those who have recorded this great historical fact have so little perceived its bearings upon Roman pretensions in the Middle Ages and modern times."],"source_library_url":"/library/c1ddd74e4af6dfb0c504/#ws-library-full-note:c1ddd74e4af6dfb0c504:cite_note-1","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_I/IRENAEUS/Introductory_Note_to_Irenaeus_Against_Heresies#cite_note-1","translator":"Alexander Roberts (Edinburgh series editor), James Donaldson (Edinburgh series editor), Arthur Cleveland Coxe (American revision with prefaces and notes)","verification":{"proof_file":"raw/review/source-library-note-batch-0056/proof-records.jsonl","proof_file_sha256":"e0df170d421dcd73bd0a76f61768b09f25dd2e36668f01c873ba3f2300ffa8a2","proof_record_id":"ws-library-full-note:c1ddd74e4af6dfb0c504:cite_note-1"},"verified":true,"work":"Introductory Note to Irenaeus Against Heresies","work_id":"ws-anf1-remaining-1885-c1ddd74e4af6dfb0c504"}