LYONS

LYONS. Today the third largest city in France, located on the Rhone River about 100 miles north of the Mediterranean Sea, during the Roman Empire (q.v.), it was the capital of the province of southern Gaul and site from A.D. 150 of a colony of predominantly Greek-speaking Christians, probably from Asia Minor (q.v.). Subjected to a fierce local persecution in 177, the community survived and, in the 180s and early 190s, was episcopally governed by one of the greatest of the early Church Fathers, Irenaeus (qq.v.). The latter made explicit reference to his own origins in Asia Minor as a disciple of the martyr-bishop, Polycarp of Smyrna (q.v.), a disciple-according to (Eusebius’s) Irenaeus-of the evangelist and apostle John.