St. Quadratus

St. Quadratus (flourished 2nd century; feast day May 26) was the earliest known Apologist for Christianity.

With only a fragment of his Apology for Christianity still extant, preserved in the Ecclesiastical History of the 4th-century scholar Eusebius of Caesarea, Quadratus has not been clearly identified. Addressed from Asia Minor to the Roman emperor Hadrian during a persecution either in 124 or 129, the Apology is thought to have been written by a disciple of the early 2nd-century Eastern Church Fathers St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Polycarp of Smyrna. The 5th-century biblical scholar St. Jerome erroneously identified the author with Bishop Quadratus of Athens, who lived during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180). Eusebius offered the improbable opinion that the author was a prophet and disciple of Christ’s first apostles. More recently, scholars have attempted, unconvincingly, to equate Quadratus’ apology with the Letter to Diognetus, a 2nd-century Christian treatise against paganism and Judaism; to relate it to anonymous accounts of early Christian martyrs; or to recognize it as part of the early medieval eulogy for monasticism in the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat.

According to Eusebius, Quadratus wrote in response to sharp attacks on the Christian religion. The same source records that the Apology expressed a primitive orthodoxy by arguing for the truthfulness of Christ’s teachings by reason of his miracles in healing the sick and in restoring life to the dead, some of whom were known to Quadratus. This biblical theological approach is the classical exemplar of the oldest post-apostolic doctrine. The surviving text of Quadratus’ Apology was edited by E.J. Goodspeed, Die ältesten Apologeten (1914; “The Oldest Apologists”).