Archippus

Archippus is a Christian of the first century known, as a historical figure, only from two brief references in the Pauline letters of the New Testament. In the Epistle to the Colossians (4:17) the author writes that the church should tell Archippus to see that he fulfills the ministry he has received in the Lord. In the Epistle to Philemon (verse 2) he is greeted as Archippus our fellow soldier, together with Apphia and the church that met in Philemon's house. These notices place him among Paul's co-workers and in the Christian community of Colossae in Phrygia, in the Roman province of Asia in western Asia Minor (in what is now Turkey). Colossae lay in the Lycus valley near Laodicea and Hierapolis; the letter to the Colossians and the personal letter to Philemon are generally associated with that same circle. The New Testament itself gives no information about Archippus's birth, parentage, education, or death, and no other first-century historian or inscription mentions him. The ministry he had received in the Lord is left unspecified. Later commentators have suggested a local pastoral charge at Colossae or Laodicea, but that remains inference rather than documented fact.

From late antiquity, ecclesiastical tradition numbered Archippus among the Seventy Apostles, or Seventy Disciples, whom the Gospel of Luke describes as sent out by Jesus. That identification does not appear in the New Testament and cannot be confirmed by contemporary evidence; it belongs to the later catalogues of the Seventy that circulated in Greek, Syriac, and other Eastern Christian literature. The Apostolic Constitutions, a compilation of church-order material commonly dated to the late fourth century, list Archippus as bishop of Laodicea in Phrygia and Philemon as bishop of Colossae. Other hagiographical strands instead present Archippus himself as bishop of Colossae. Such episcopal titles are a conventional way in which later writers assigned sees to Pauline companions; they should not be read as documented elections or consecrations. No reliable source records that he married, that he had children, or that he belonged to a monastic or other religious order in the later sense of that term.

Greek synaxaria, the Menologion, and related liturgical-hagiographical texts transmit a martyrdom narrative that binds Archippus to Philemon and Apphia as a single household of Colossian martyrs. In the usual form of the legend, during a pagan festival the three were arrested while gathered for prayer, brought before a local governor (sometimes named Artocles), tortured, and killed; Archippus is described as having been beaten, stabbed, or otherwise slain. Some versions set the events in the reign of the emperor Nero. These stories are late, vary in detail, and are not supported by any first-century witness. They show how the names preserved in Philemon and Colossians were later woven into a unified passion account. No early, trustworthy source records a burial place or the translation of relics, and no year of birth or death can be verified.

In the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar the Apostle Archippus is commemorated on 19 February together with Philemon and Apphia, and again on 22 November with those saints and with Onesimus. The traditional Roman Martyrology entered him on 20 March, at Colossae, as the fellow soldier of Saint Paul the Apostle. His veneration is of the ancient, so-called pre-congregation type; he was not the subject of a formal papal canonization or beatification by a named pontiff of the medieval or modern period. He is not securely known as the patron of particular cities, professions, illnesses, or social groups. A distinct Byzantine legend, kept on 6 September, concerns a hermit also called Archippus, who for many years kept the church of the Archangel Michael at Chonae, near the site of ancient Colossae, and who figures in the Miracle of Chonae, in which the archangel is said to have saved the shrine from a flood. That monastic custodian should not be assumed to be the same person as Paul's first-century companion, although later piety sometimes blurred the two names.

The historical Archippus therefore remains an obscure co-worker in the Pauline mission of the mid-first century, firmly associated with Colossae by the New Testament and surrounded by later episcopal and martyrial traditions that cannot be verified from reliable contemporary sources. His years of birth and death, his birthplace, and the precise character of the ministry mentioned in Colossians are unknown.