Introduction to This Volume

How this book is arranged

This is the third volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume is given to Irenaeus of Lyons, together with one martyr’s account from the same years.

Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.

The translations

The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations.

In this volume

Irenaeus was a Greek-speaking bishop in Gaul who, as a young man in Asia Minor, had heard Polycarp of Smyrna. His great work, Against Heresies, in five books, describes and answers the teaching of the Gnostic schools, above all the followers of Valentinus, and sets against it the faith the churches had received. Much of it survives only in an early Latin translation of the Greek, and some parts only in Syriac and Armenian fragments.

The Proof of the Apostolic Preaching is a shorter work addressed to a believer, setting out the outline of the faith and the proofs from the prophets. It was lost for centuries and survives only in an Armenian translation. The fragments gather sayings from his other writings, preserved by later authors.

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity records the arrest and death of a group of young catechumens at Carthage in the early years of the third century. It contains the prison diary of Perpetua herself, and it is among the oldest surviving writings by a Christian woman.

Dates and authorship

Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.