St., one of the apostolical fathers, and Bishop of Antioch, was a Syrian, but the place and time of his birth is uncertain. He is called Theophorus, or Deifer, a name by some supposed to have been given him because he was the child whom our Lord took in his arms when correcting the ambitious views of his disciples (Mark ix. 36); but Ignatius himself gives the true meaning of the appellative as "one that has Christ in his heart;" and it is stated by Chrysostom that this father never saw Jesus Christ. By some he has been called a disciple of Peter, but the authority of the Martyrdom Ignatii makes him, along with Polycarp, a hearer of St John. Little is known of his history, either before or during his episcopate, except that we gather from his works that he was filled with high conceptions of the dignity of his office, and, from the Martyrium, that he was anxious for the steadfastness of his flock during the persecution of Domitian, and indefatigable in promoting their edification. On the breaking out of the persecution under Trajan, Ignatius took no pains to avoid its fury, but seems rather to have courted the crown of martyrdom, and was brought before the emperor at Antioch. The conference or trial ended in his being sentenced to be thrown to wild beasts at Rome; a fate which he boldly met on the 20th December, on what was called "the feast of the thirteenth," i.e., the thirteenth before the kalends of January; but the exact year is not known, various writers placing it at as wide intervals as A.D. 107, and A.D. 116. His remains were interred at Antioch, and his tomb was shown there in the time of Jerome.

But the principal interest in the name of Ignatius is gathered round his works, which, short as they are, have excited much controversy from an early period in the history of the revival of letters. In his way from Antioch to Rome, he is said to have written seven epistles, which are enumerated by Eusebius and Jerome; but there are extant fifteen letters ascribed to him, though only seven are considered genuine. Of these there are two copies, one shorter than the other, and criticism has generally given its verdict in favour of the least diffuse edition. The whole of the letters have been considered as spurious by some writers, but learned men have generally admitted the genuineness of the seven. The decisive testimony borne to episcopacy, and to our Lord's divinity, by these ancient documents, caused them to be closely scrutinized; and from the Reformation to the present day the controversies as to what Ignatius wrote, and what his expressions mean if admitted as genuine, has been carried on with some acrimony. The author of the Centuriae Magdeburgenses first gave utterance to some doubts on the subject; Calvin followed more positively, and on subjective grounds declared the letters apocryphal, calling them nasia and larce. In 1644 Archbishop Usher published his edition of the epistles, and contended for the genuineness of six of them; he added a valuable introduction and notes. Vossius followed, printing the text from a Medicean M.S. In 1666 Daillé fiercely attacked the whole collection, and this gave rise to Bishop Pearson's Vindiciae Ignatianae, which, for the time, put an end to the controversy.

The treasures of Syriac literature brought from Egypt to this country by Dr Tattam have revived the interest felt in the writings of Ignatius, and led to their renewed criticism. Among the MSS. purchased of the monks in the Desert of Nitria was found a Syriac copy of the Epistles to Polycarp, the Romans, and the Ephesians only; and these were edited and published, with notes, by the Rev. W. Cureton, in 1845. These translations are much shorter than the supposed Greek originals; and it is remarkable that some of the omitted or wanting portions are those which relate to episcopal authority, and the deity of Christ, and these are supposed by Mr Cureton to have been introduced into the Greek text as bearing on the Arian and Aetian heresies. That gentleman has since more fully considered the whole literature of the subject in his Corpus Ignationum, and is a strenuous advocate for the genuineness of the Syriac or shorter recension. But, although this dictum has not yet been very strongly opposed, it is far from being generally submitted to, and it is probable the grounds of Mr Cureton's conclusions may yet be warmly contested. Further researches into the Syriac translations of theological works furnish evidence of a custom of abridging or making compendia of the original treatises, and it is far from unlikely that this plan was pursued in making the version of the Epistles of Ignatius. It should be said, however, that previous to the discovery of this version, many critics—as Beausobre, Lardner, and Priestly—had expressed their conviction that the Greek copies had been largely interpolated.