What Christian does not approach with veneration this city that was in France the cradle of the true religion, and where amid persecutions and tortures rose for the first time the Cross of Christ? Who does not tread with veneration the soil impregnated with the blood of so many martyrs and forever consecrated by the glories of a see that justly claims the title Primate of Gaul?--CHARLES DE MONTALEMBERT, visiting Lyons in 1831.
In its early Christian memories Lyons outrivals all other cities of France. It claims a clear apostolic tradition, and boasts that, next to Rome, it shed most Christian blood witnessing to the planting of the Cross. And modern Lyons is the center of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which sends forth to non-Christian lands more missionaries than any other group in western Christendom--apostles who obey the mandate given to Lyons' first martyr-bishops: Go, teach ye all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Imperial Rome, that foreshadowed many things, chose Lyons, before the birth of Christ, as starting point for her network of highways and aqueducts over Gaul. Augustus made it the capital of Celtic Gaul. It was the bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp (d. A.D. 166), the disciple of St. John the Beloved (d. A.D. 100), who sent the first two bishops of Lyons to Christianize Gaul, Pothinus (d. A.D. 177), an Asiatic Greek, and Irenæus (d. A.D. 202), one of the most remarkable writers of the early Christian era, lettered in Greek literature and writing in Greek. With profound knowledge of Christian doctrine, he advocated, for the guidance of the Church, tradition, or the spoken word of the Apostles, as well as their written word. Often with just pride did Irenæus boast that his doctrine came direct from the contemporaries of the Saviour: "I could describe to you the very spot where the blessed Polycarp sat when he preached God's word.... His discourse to the people is engraved in my heart. He had talked with John and the others who saw the Lord."
For twenty years St. Irenæus served as priest in Lyons under Bishop Pothinus, and then when that holy prelate, at ninety years of age, was martyred during the persecutions of the Christians under Marcus Aurelius, Irenæus went to Rome to be consecrated primate of Gaul in his place. When the pagan judge asked Pothinus who was the Christians' God, the aged man made answer: "Merit him and you will know him." For twenty years, till his death in 202, St. Irenæus evangelized the country with such success that Lyons was almost a Christian city when the persecution of Septimus Severus broke out. Then followed evil days when the streets of Lyons ran red with blood, and her learned bishop perished with nineteen thousand Christian martyrs.