08 — Martyrdom, Relics, and Veneration
The end of Luke’s life and the afterlife of his memory in the Church: the tradition of his later preaching and repose in Greece, the contested question of whether he died a martyr or in peace, the well-attested translation of his relics to Constantinople in AD 357, their later dispersal and veneration at Padua and Prague, and the feast of October 18 by which East and West alike keep him. As with everything reported of Luke after the close of Acts, the record here is a mixture of early notice and later tradition; these files pin each claim to its earliest attestation and report the rest as tradition.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)
Luke vanishes from the documentary record at the point where his own narrative ends — with Paul under house arrest at Rome (Acts 28:30–31). What the Church says of his subsequent decades, his death, and the fate of his body comes from sources of very different weight: the Anti-Marcionite Prologue, the earliest, which has him die unmarried and full of the Holy Spirit in Boeotia at eighty-four; the later martyrologies, which make him a martyr hanged on an olive tree; and a firm strand of fourth-century historiography — Jerome, the Chronicon Paschale, Philostorgius — which records the translation of his bones, with those of Andrew and Timothy, to the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople in 357. This section sets out the repose and the relics, and then the veneration: the feast, the iconography of the winged ox, the liturgical place of his two volumes, and the patronages — of physicians, of artists, of iconographers — that the Church and the West have gathered around his name.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Repose and Relics | Luke’s later preaching and death in Greece (the Anti-Marcionite Prologue: unmarried, childless, dead in Boeotia at 84); the [Disputed] question of martyrdom (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 4) versus peaceful repose; the translation of his relics to Constantinople under Constantius II in 357 (Jerome, De viris illustribus 7; the Chronicon Paschale; Philostorgius); the later dispersal — the body at Padua, the skull at Prague — and the 1998–2001 scientific examination of the Padua relics. |
| Veneration and the Feast | The feast of October 18, kept in East and West alike; Luke among the Seventy (Synaxis, January 4); his iconography — the winged ox of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, the [Disputed] assignment of the evangelist symbols (Irenaeus, AH 3.11.8; Jerome’s standard scheme); Luke depicted writing the Gospel and painting the Theotokos; the liturgical place of his Gospel and of Acts; and the patronages of physicians, artists, and iconographers. |
See Also
- The Physician of Antioch — the Antiochene birth and the Anti-Marcionite Prologue that also reports Luke’s death in Boeotia
- Companion of Paul — the partnership with Paul whose end opens the question of Luke’s own later years
- The First Iconographer — the tradition that underlies Luke’s patronage of artists and iconographers
- The Theotokos in Luke — the Marian material that grounds his depiction painting the Mother of God
- Reception and Legacy — the historical questions of authorship and reception
- Great Feasts — the structure of the liturgical calendar in which October 18 falls
- St. Polycarp of Smyrna — the earliest Christian cult of relics and the keeping of a martyr’s feast-day
- The Church Fathers — Jerome, Eusebius, and the patristic notices on which the record of Luke’s repose rests
References
- Jerome. De viris illustribus (On Illustrious Men) 7. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 3. 1892.
- Anti-Marcionite Prologue to Luke. In Kurt Aland, ed., Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
- Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 4 (First Invective Against Julian). Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 7. 1894.
- The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church. Trans. Christopher Hookway. Ormylia: Holy Convent of the Annunciation, 1998–2008.