IGLESIAS, a town and episcopal see of Sardinia in the province of Cagliari, from which it is 34 m. W.N.W. by rail, 620 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 10,436 (town), 20,874 (commune). It is finely situated among the mountains in the S.W. portion of the island, and is chiefly important as the centre of a mining district; it has a government school for mining engineers. The minerals are conveyed by a small railway via Monteponi (with its large lead and zinc mine) to Portovesme (15 m. S.W. of Iglesias in the sheltered gulf of Carloforte), near Portoscuso, where they are shipped. The total amount of the minerals extracted in Sardinia in 1905 was 170,236 tons and their value £765,054 (chiefly consisting of 99,749 tons of calamine zinc, 26,051 of blende zinc, 24,798 tons of lead and 15,429 tons of lignite): the greater part of them—118,009 tons—was exported from Portoscuso by sea and most of the rest from Cagliari, the zinc going mainly to Antwerp, and in a less proportion to Bordeaux and Dunkirk, while the lead is sent to Pertusola near Spezia, to be smelted. At Portoscuso is also a tunny fishery.
The cathedral of Iglesias, built by the Pisans, has a good façade (restored); the interior is late Spanish Gothic. San Francesco is a fine Gothic church with a gallery over the entrance, while Sta Chiara and the church of the Capuchins (the former dating from 1285) show a transition between Romanesque and Gothic. The battlemented town walls are well preserved and picturesque; the castle, built in 1325, now contains a glass factory. The church of Nostra Signora del Buon Cammino above the town (1080 ft.) commands a fine view.
IGNATIEV, NICHOLAS PAVLOVICH, Count (1832-1908), Russian diplomatist, was born at St Petersburg on the 29th of January 1832. His father, Captain Paul Ignatiev, had been taken into favour by the tsar Nicholas I., owing to his fidelity on the occasion of the military conspiracy in 1825; and the grand duke Alexander (afterwards tsar) stood sponsor at the boy’s baptism. At the age of seventeen he became an officer of the Guards. His diplomatic career began at the congress of Paris, after the Crimean War, where he took an active part as military attaché in the negotiations regarding the rectification of the Russian frontier on the Lower Danube. Two years later (1858) he was sent with a small escort on a dangerous mission to Khiva and Bokhara. The khan of Khiva laid a plan for detaining him as a hostage, but he eluded the danger and returned safely, after concluding with the khan of Bokhara a treaty of friendship. His next diplomatic exploit was in the Far East, as plenipotentiary to the court of Peking. When the Chinese government was terrified by the advance of the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 and the burning of the Summer Palace, he worked on their fears so dexterously that he obtained for Russia not only the left bank of the Amur, the original object of the mission, but also a large extent of territory and sea-coast south of that river. This success was supposed to prove his capacity for dealing with Orientals, and paved his way to the post of ambassador at Constantinople, which he occupied from 1864 till 1877. Here his chief aim was to liberate from Turkish domination and bring under the influence of Russia the Christian nationalities in general and the Bulgarians in particular. His restless activity in this field, mostly of a semi-official and secret character, culminated in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, at the close of which he negotiated with the Turkish plenipotentiaries the treaty of San Stefano. As the war which he had done so much to bring about did not eventually secure for Russia advantages commensurate with the sacrifices involved, he fell into disfavour, and retired from active service. Shortly after the accession of Alexander III. in 1881, he was appointed minister of the interior on the understanding that he would carry out a nationalist, reactionary policy, but his shifty ways and his administrative incapacity so displeased his imperial master that he was dismissed in the following year. After that time he exercised no important influence in public affairs. He died on the 3rd of July 1908.
IGNATIUS (Ἰγνάτιος), bishop of Antioch, one of the “Apostolic Fathers.” No one connected with the history of the early Christian Church is more famous than Ignatius, and yet among the leading churchmen of the time there is scarcely one about whose career we know so little. Our only trustworthy information is derived from the letters which he wrote to various churches on his last journey from Antioch to Rome, and from the short epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians. The earlier patristic writers seem to have known no more than we do. Irenaeus, for instance, gives a quotation from his Epistle to the Romans and does not appear to know (or if he knew he has forgotten) the name of the author, since he describes him (Adv. haer. v. 28. 4) as “one of those belonging to us” (τις τῶν ἡμετέρων). If Eusebius possessed any knowledge about Ignatius apart from the letters he never reveals it. The only shred of extra information which he gives us is the statement that Ignatius “was the second successor of Peter in the bishopric of Antioch” (Eccles. hist. iii. 36). Of course in later times a cloud of tradition arose, but none of it bears the least evidence of trustworthiness. The martyrologies, from which the account of his martyrdom that used to appear in uncritical church histories is taken, are full of anachronisms and impossibilities. There are two main types—the Roman and the Syrian—out of which the others are compounded. They contradict each other in many points and even their own statements in different places are sometimes quite irreconcilable. Any truth that the narrative may contain is hopelessly overlaid with fiction. We are therefore limited to the Epistles for our information, and before we can use even these we are confronted with a most complex critical problem, a problem which for ages aroused the most bitter controversy, but which happily now, thanks to the labours of Zahn, Lightfoot, Harnack and Funk, may be said to have reached a satisfactory solution.
I. The Problem of the Three Recensions.—The Ignatian problem arises from the fact that we possess three different recensions of the Epistles. (a) The short recension (often called the Vossian) contains the letters to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans and to Polycarp. This recension was derived in its Greek form from the famous Medicean MS. at Florence and first published by Vossius in 1646 (see Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1906, 596 f., for an early papyrus fragment in the Berlin Museum, containing Ad Smyrn. iii. fin. xii. init.). In the Medicean MS. the Epistle to the Romans is missing, but a Greek version of this epistle was discovered by Ruinart, embedded in a martyrium, in the National Library at Paris and published in 1689. There are also (1) a Latin version made by Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, about 1250, and published by Ussher in 1644—two years before the Vossian edition appeared; (2) an Armenian version which was derived from a Syriac not earlier than the 5th century and published at Constantinople in 1783; (3) some fragments of a Syriac version published in Cureton’s edition of Ignatius; (4) fragments of a Coptic version first published in Lightfoot’s work (ii. 859-882). (b) The long recension contains the seven Epistles mentioned above in an expanded form and several additional letters besides. The Greek form of the recension, which has been preserved in ten MSS., has thirteen letters, the additional ones being to the Tarsians, the Philippians, the Antiochians, to Hero, to Mary of Cassobola and a letter of Mary to Ignatius. The Latin form, of which there are thirteen extant MSS., omits the letter of Mary of Cassobola, but adds to the list the Laus Heronis, two Epistles to the apostle John, one to the Virgin Mary and one from Mary to Ignatius. (c) The Syriac or Curetonian recension contains only three Epistles, viz. to Polycarp, to the Romans, and to the Ephesians, and these when compared with the same letters in the short and long recensions are found to be considerably abbreviated. The Syriac recension was made by William Cureton in 1845 from three Syriac MSS. which had recently been brought from the Nitrian desert and deposited in the British Museum. One of these MSS. belongs to the 6th century, the other two are later. Summed up in a word, therefore, the Ignatian problem is this: which of these three recensions (if any) represents the actual work of Ignatius?
II. History of the Controversy.—The history of the controversy may be divided into three periods: (a) up to the discovery of the short recension in 1646; (b) between 1646 and the discovery of the Syriac recension in 1845; (c) from 1845 to the present day. In the first stage the controversy was theological rather than critical. The Reformation raised the question as to the authority of the papacy and the hierarchy. Roman Catholic scholars used the interpolated Ignatian Epistles very freely in their defence and derived many of their arguments from them, while Protestant scholars threw discredit on these Epistles. The Magdeburg centuriators expressed the gravest doubts as to their genuineness, and Calvin declared that “nothing was more foul than those fairy tales (naeniis) published under the name of Ignatius!” It should be stated, however, that one Roman Catholic scholar, Denys Petau (Petavius), admitted that the letters were interpolated, while the Protestant Vedelius acknowledged the seven letters mentioned by Eusebius. In England the Ignatian Epistles took an important place in the episcopalian controversy in the 17th century. Their genuineness was defended by the leading Anglican writers, e.g. Whitgift, Hooker and Andrewes, and vigorously challenged by Dissenters, e.g. the five Presbyterian ministers who wrote under the name of Smectymnuus and John Milton.[1] The second period is marked by the recognition of the superiority of the Vossian recension. This was speedily demonstrated, though some attempts were made, notably by Jean Morin or Morinus (about 1656), Whiston (in 1711) and Meier (in 1836), to resuscitate the long recension. Many Protestants still maintained that the new recension, like the old, was a forgery. The chief attack came from Jean Daillé, who in his famous work (1666) drew up no fewer than sixty-six objections to the genuineness of the Ignatian literature. He was answered by Pearson, who in his Vindiciae epistolarum S. Ignatii (1672) completely vindicated the authenticity of the Vossian Epistles. No further attack of any importance was made till the time of Baur, who like Daillé rejected both recensions. In the third stage—inaugurated in 1845 by Cureton’s work—the controversy has ranged round the relative claims of the Vossian and the Curetonian recensions. Scholars have been divided into three camps, viz. (1) those who followed Cureton in maintaining that the three Syriac Epistles alone were the genuine work of Ignatius. Among them may be mentioned the names of Bunsen, A. Ritschl, R. A. Lipsius, E. de Pressensé, H. Ewald, Milman, Bohringer. (2) Those who accepted the genuineness of the Vossian recension and regarded the Curetonian as an abbreviation of it, e.g. Petermann, Denzinger, Uhlhorn, Merx, and in more recent times Th. Zahn, J. B. Lightfoot, Ad. Harnack and F. X. Funk. (3) Those who denied the authenticity of both recensions, e.g. Baur and Hilgenfeld and in recent times van Manen,[2] Völter[3] and van Loon.[4] The result of more than half a century’s discussion has been to restore the Vossian recension to the premier position.
III. The Origin of the Long Recension.—The arguments against the genuineness of the long recension are decisive. (1) It conflicts with the statement of Eusebius. (2) The first trace of its use occurs in Anastasius of Antioch (A.D. 598) and Stephen Gobarus (c. 575-600). (3) The ecclesiastical system of the letters implies a date not earlier than the 4th century. (4) The recension has been proved to be dependent on the Apostolical Constitutions. (5) The doctrinal atmosphere implies the existence of Arian and Apollinarian heresies. (6) The added passages reveal a difference in style which stamps them at once as interpolations. There are several different theories with regard to the origin of the recension. Some, e.g. Leclerc, Newman and Zahn, think that the writer was an Arian and that the additions were made in the interest of Arianism. Funk, on the other hand, regards the writer as an Apollinarian. Lightfoot opposes both views and suggests that it is better “to conceive of him as writing with a conciliatory aim.”
IV. The Objections to the Curetonian Recension.—The objections to the Syriac recension, though not so decisive, are strong enough to carry conviction with them. (1) We have the express statement of Eusebius that Ignatius wrote seven Epistles. (2) There are statements in Polycarp’s Epistle which cannot be explained from the three Syriac Epistles. (3) The omitted portions are proved by Lightfoot after an elaborate analysis to be written in the same style as the rest of the epistles and could not therefore have been later interpolations. (4) The Curetonian letters are often abrupt and broken and show signs of abridgment. (5) The discovery of the Armenian version proves the existence of an earlier Syriac recension corresponding to the Vossian of which the Curetonian may be an abbreviation. It seems impossible to account for the origin of the Curetonian recension on theological grounds. The theory that the abridgment was made in the interests of Eutychianism or Monophysitism cannot be substantiated.