St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor, probably in Smyrna, around the year 130. As a boy he heard the elder Polycarp, bishop and martyr, who had himself been a disciple of John the Theologian. The continuity from the Apostle to Polycarp to Irenaeus is one of the visible threads by which the early Church guarded the deposit of faith.

He travelled west to Gaul as a priest of the Christian community at Lyons. When the persecution of 177 cut down the bishop Pothinus and a great company of the faithful, Irenaeus was away in Rome bearing a letter; on his return he was consecrated to the empty see.

His Against Heresies, written about 180, was the first systematic refutation of the Gnostic sects, especially the school of Valentinus. He answered them, paradoxically, by going through their own writings and showing how completely they had abandoned the apostolic preaching, particularly the testimony of the Fourth Gospel.

Irenaeus is the earliest extant Father to cite all four Gospels together as a single canonical witness, and the first to develop in detail the doctrine of recapitulation: that Christ, by becoming what we are, sums up the whole of human nature and restores in Himself what Adam lost. He is honored as a martyr, though the manner of his repose around 202 is not certainly known.