Polycrates of Ephesus

Polycrates was a second-century bishop of Ephesus from a family with deep roots in the Asian church; he states in his letter that seven of his relatives had been bishops before him and that he was the eighth. He is known almost entirely through a single letter addressed to Pope Victor I of Rome (c. 190–196 CE), preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History (V.23–25), in which Polycrates defends the Quartodeciman practice of observing the Christian Pascha on the fourteenth of Nisan rather than on the following Sunday. In that letter he invokes a chain of Asian witnesses — including Philip (whom he calls "one of the twelve apostles," though many modern scholars identify this figure with Philip the Evangelist of Acts 6 and 21, whose daughters are attested at Hierapolis), John the Beloved Disciple (buried at Ephesus), Polycarp of Smyrna, and other Asian bishops — insisting the Asian tradition was received from the Lord's own companions. When Victor actually declared the Asian churches excommunicated, Polycrates famously refused to be intimidated, declaring he could not be frightened by threats; the excommunication was subsequently opposed by Irenaeus of Lyons and other bishops and was not enforced. He stands as the most articulate patristic spokesman for the ancient Asian liturgical calendar and for the independence of provincial churches from Roman pressure on matters of practice.