The Repose and Relics

Where the Acts of the Apostles ends, the documentary record of Luke ends with it; what the Church says of his later years rests on sources of unequal weight. The earliest, the Anti-Marcionite Prologue, reports that he died unmarried and childless in Boeotia at eighty-four, “full of the Holy Spirit”; later martyrologies make him a martyr hanged on an olive tree. What is securely attested is the translation of his relics to Constantinople in AD 357. This file sets out the repose, the disputed manner of his death, and the well-documented history of his bones.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Last of the Documentary Record

Luke writes himself out of his own narrative before it closes. The Acts of the Apostles ends with Paul under house arrest at Rome, “preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered” (Acts 28:30–31), and the first-person “we” of the travel sections falls silent there. Nothing in the New Testament tells us what became of the Evangelist after this point (on the partnership that the close of Acts leaves open, see Companion of Paul). For his later years, his death, and the fate of his body, the Church depends entirely on tradition — and the traditions are of very different age and authority, which is why each must be pinned to its earliest attestation rather than harmonized into a single biography (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

The Anti-Marcionite Prologue: Death in Boeotia

The earliest connected notice of Luke’s end is the so-called Anti-Marcionite Prologue to the third Gospel, a short prefatory text usually dated to the late second or third century. It identifies Luke as “a Syrian of Antioch, a physician by profession,” states that he served the Lord “without distraction, having neither wife nor child,” and reports that “he died at the age of eighty-four years in Boeotia, full of the Holy Spirit” (Anti-Marcionite Prologue to Luke; text in Aland, Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum; cf. Fitzmyer 1981, 1:38–39). This is the oldest source for Luke’s later life, and it depicts not a violent death but the peaceful repose of an aged and celibate servant of the gospel in central Greece. The same Antiochene-and-physician profile underlies the Foundations of his identity (see The Physician of Antioch).

A further tradition, congruent with the Prologue, holds that after Paul’s martyrdom at Rome Luke continued to preach — in Achaia and Boeotia, and by some accounts more widely in Greece, Macedonia, and beyond — before settling and dying at Thebes in Boeotia at a great age. This tradition of an apostolate in Greece and a Theban grave became the fixed point to which the later history of the relics attaches: it is from Thebes that the bones were taken to Constantinople.

Martyr or Peaceful Repose

Against the Prologue’s peaceful death stands a strand of tradition that numbers Luke among the martyrs. Gregory of Nazianzus, in his Oration 4 (First Invective Against Julian), lists Luke among those who suffered for the faith, naming him with Stephen, Peter, Paul, James, and others (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 4; trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 7). On this and later authority the Byzantine and Western martyrologies came to describe Luke’s death as a martyrdom, and a specific form of it crystallized in the later tradition: that he was hanged on an olive tree in Greece. Other sources, following the Prologue, hold that he died peacefully and at an advanced age.

The two accounts cannot both be the bare historical fact, and the Church has not resolved them dogmatically. [Disputed: the Anti-Marcionite Prologue to Luke, the earliest source, reports that Luke "died at the age of eighty-four years in Boeotia, full of the Holy Spirit," with no mention of violence (text in Aland); Gregory of Nazianzus, *Oration 4*, names Luke among the martyrs (NPNF II/7), and the later martyrologies and synaxaria describe him as a martyr, hanged on an olive tree, while still other witnesses retain the peaceful repose. The earliest notice is of a peaceful death in old age; the martyr tradition is later and is the one most prominent in the developed liturgical commemoration.] What is common to both is the place — Greece, and specifically Boeotia — and the great age at which the Evangelist died. Luke is titled and venerated as an apostle and evangelist whether or not the martyr’s crown is added (on the title “apostle,” see Veneration and the Feast).

The Translation to Constantinople, AD 357

If the manner of Luke’s death is contested, the fate of his relics is comparatively well documented, and at one point firmly dated. In the reign of the emperor Constantius II, the relics of Luke were translated from Thebes in Boeotia to the imperial capital and deposited in the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, together with the relics of the Apostle Andrew and of Timothy — an event placed in AD 357.

This translation is attested across the fourth- and later-historical record. Jerome reports it in his catalogue of Christian writers: Luke’s “bones were transferred to Constantinople in the twentieth year of Constantius, together with the relics of Andrew the apostle” (Jerome, De viris illustribus 7; trans. NPNF II/3). The Chronicon Paschale, the seventh-century Byzantine chronicle drawing on earlier sources, records the deposition of the relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy in the Church of the Holy Apostles under Constantius (Chronicon Paschale, sub anno; ed. Dindorf). The Arian historian Philostorgius likewise notes the gathering of apostolic relics to the capital in this period (Philostorgius, Ecclesiastical History 3.2; epitome of Photius, trans. Amidon). The translation belongs to the great fourth-century movement by which the new Christian capital gathered apostolic relics to itself — the same impulse that made the Holy Apostles the imperial mausoleum-church (on the Byzantine cult of relics and the early Church, see Pre-Schism Church). That Luke’s body should be venerated as a precious treasure is itself in the line of the earliest Christian veneration of a martyr’s bones “more valuable than precious stones” (see St. Polycarp of Smyrna).

Dispersal: Padua and Prague

From Constantinople the relics were in time dispersed, as the relics of the great saints commonly were. The principal body of Luke’s relics is venerated in the West at Padua, in the Basilica of Santa Giustina, where a leaden sarcophagus has been honored as containing the Evangelist’s remains since the medieval period. The skull is traditionally separated from the body and kept at Prague, in the Cathedral of St. Vitus, having been given to that church by the emperor Charles IV in the fourteenth century. The distribution of head and body between two distant churches is itself an ordinary feature of the medieval economy of relics, in which a great saint’s remains were divided to multiply the places of his presence.

The 1998–2001 Examination of the Padua Relics

Because Padua claims so substantial a portion of the Evangelist’s body, and because Thebes — the traditional place of his death and original burial — sought a relic of its own, the Padua remains were subjected at the close of the twentieth century to a formal scientific examination. The study was commissioned jointly by the Metropolitan of Thebes and the Bishop of Padua, and carried out by an interdisciplinary team of Italian researchers; its results were published around 2001 (Vercelli, Capasso, et al., the University of Padua examination of the relics of St. Luke, published 2001).

The examination is best reported for exactly what it concluded, and no more. The team found the skeletal remains in the Paduan sarcophagus to be those of a single elderly male, consistent with a man who died in his seventies to eighties, of a build and morphology compatible with an eastern-Mediterranean (Syrian) origin rather than an Italian one. Radiocarbon dating placed the remains in a range consistent with the first or early centuries, and the team noted that the skull preserved at Prague matched the dimensions of the cervical vertebrae remaining at Padua, supporting the tradition that head and body belong to one person. A portion was returned to Thebes as a relic, fulfilling the purpose for which the Metropolitan had joined in commissioning the study. The examination does not, and cannot, prove that the remains are those of the Evangelist; what it concluded is that they are consistent with the tradition — an aged man of eastern-Mediterranean origin, of the right period — rather than contradicting it (on how historical and scientific findings bear on the traditions about Luke, see Authorship and History).

References

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. Acts 28:30–31.
Anti-Marcionite Prologue to Luke. In Kurt Aland, ed., Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. (Luke a Syrian of Antioch, unmarried and childless, dead in Boeotia at eighty-four, “full of the Holy Spirit.”)
Jerome. De viris illustribus (On Illustrious Men) 7. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 3. 1892. (Luke’s bones translated to Constantinople in the twentieth year of Constantius, with the relics of Andrew.)
Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 4 (First Invective Against Julian). Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 7. 1894. (Luke named among the martyrs.)
Chronicon Paschale. Ed. Ludwig Dindorf, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae. Bonn, 1832. (The deposition of the relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy in the Church of the Holy Apostles under Constantius, AD 357.)
Philostorgius. Ecclesiastical History 3.2. Epitome of Photius. Trans. Philip R. Amidon, Philostorgius: Church History. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007. (The translation of apostolic relics to Constantinople.)
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Gospel According to Luke I–IX. Anchor Bible 28. Garden City: Doubleday, 1981. (The Anti-Marcionite Prologue and the traditions of Luke’s later life, vol. 1, pp. 35–53.)
Vercelli, Cristina, Luigi Capasso, et al. The University of Padua scientific examination of the relics of St. Luke the Evangelist. Padua, published 2001. (Commissioned by the Metropolitan of Thebes and the Bishop of Padua; the remains consistent with an elderly male of eastern-Mediterranean origin; the Prague skull matched to the Padua vertebrae; a relic returned to Thebes.)