Archbishop Stachys

Stachys, whose name in Greek (Stachys) means an ear of grain, is known from a single New Testament reference and from later Eastern Christian tradition. In the Epistle to the Romans, written in the mid-first century, the Apostle Paul greets him as my beloved Stachys (Romans 16:9), together with Urbanus. That greeting places him among Paul's circle of coworkers and friends and implies that he was already a recognized figure in the churches of the apostolic generation. Eastern Orthodox tradition further numbers him among the Seventy Apostles, the larger group of disciples sent out in the Gospel accounts. No contemporary source records his parentage, birthplace, or early life, and no year of birth can be established from any reliable historical witness.

Later Greek ecclesiastical tradition, preserved in catalogues of the bishops of Byzantium and in hagiographical notices associated with the name of Dorotheus of Tyre, identifies Stachys as the first bishop of the city of Byzantium. According to this tradition, the Apostle Andrew preached along the Black Sea coast and the Bosporus, founded the church in Byzantium, and ordained Stachys to its episcopal chair. Traditional lists assign him an episcopate of sixteen years, often dated from about 38 to about 54. These figures come from medieval patriarchal catalogues rather than from first-century documents. Modern historians treat the earliest names on the Byzantine episcopal list with caution, regarding them as expressions of the later church's memory of an apostolic foundation rather than as independently verified chronology. The see of Byzantium is poorly attested in surviving literature before the fourth century, when the city, refounded as Constantinople, rose to imperial and ecclesiastical prominence.

Nothing reliable is known of Stachys's pastoral work, writings, or the manner of his death. Tradition locates his ministry and death at Byzantium, on the European shore of the Bosporus in Roman Thrace, but no ancient martyrology preserves a detailed passion narrative, and no historically secure burial site has been identified. He belonged to the apostolic age, before the rise of the later monastic orders, and there is no evidence that he was a monk. Whether he was married or had children is not recorded. He was never Bishop of Rome. In the official succession lists of the Church of Constantinople he stands first, and later generations therefore counted him as the inaugural holder of the see that became the Ecumenical Patriarchate, even though the titles of archbishop and patriarch were applied to that see only in subsequent centuries.

The Eastern Orthodox Church keeps his feast on 31 October, together with the apostles Amplias, Urban, Narcissus, Apelles, and Aristobulus, several of whom are likewise named in the closing chapter of Romans. He is also commemorated on 4 January in the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles. In iconography he appears as a bishop or as one of the Seventy, sometimes holding a Gospel book. No extensive list of specific patronages of cities, trades, or illnesses is attached to his name in the principal synaxaria. His importance in the Christian East lies less in a documented biography than in his place as the apostolic first link in the chain of bishops of Byzantium and Constantinople, a tradition the Orthodox Church has maintained in its liturgical memory and in its official patriarchal catalogues.