Hierarch Papias of Hierapolis

Hierarch Papias was born around 70 and became bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia — a disciple of the Apostle John the Theologian and a close companion of Hieromartyr Polycarp of Smyrna. He belongs to the "Apostolic Fathers," early Christian writers who personally knew living witnesses of the apostolic preaching.

Papias's principal work, the five-book "Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord" (Logíōn Kyriakṓn Exḗgēsis), has not survived intact but is known through fragments preserved by Irenaeus of Lyon and Eusebius of Caesarea — one of the most important early witnesses to apostolic oral tradition and to the origins of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the image in our database (a Western woodcut inscribed "Papias," showing a bishop in a mitre with a crosier) corresponds precisely to him — a bishop, not a martyr. A later tradition (the 7th-century Chronicon Paschale) places his death as a martyrdom at Pergamum around 163–164, contemporaneous with Hieromartyr Polycarp of Smyrna — however, modern patristic scholarship (see studies on the dating of Papias) considers this the result of a later confusion between the names "Papias" and "Papylus" (the deacon-martyr of Thyatira, martyred in the same region around the same time, see the separate entry martyr_papylus): earlier, more reliable sources (Irenaeus, Eusebius) do not mention any martyrdom at all, and it is most likely the bishop died a natural death while still in office.

His feast is kept on February 22/March 7.