The Cultural Geography of a Greek Christian: Irenaeus from Smyrna to Lyons

Abstract

Though he was a Christian and a long-term resident of Roman Gaul, Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 125 – 202 CE) looked at the world and its geography in much the same way that his elite, pagan contemporaries did. His references to Gaul are all made in terms of the classical conventions of Greek geography, and he made no assumption that his Christian readers would have any familiarity with Western Europe. He likewise referred derisively to Latin as a “barbarian language,” though he made it clear that he spent most of his time speaking it in Lyons, rather than his native Greek. Irenaeus’ career thus serves both of an example of the early “Latinization” of the Christian Church in Western Europe, and as a demonstration of the growing influence of elite intellectual pretensions in Christianity, only two generations after the time of the Apostles.