Herodion of Antioch

Herodion (also rendered Herodian) is a first-century Christian figure named by the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. In Romans 16:11 Paul writes, "Greet Herodion, my kinsman," using the Greek term syngenēs, which in Pauline usage generally denotes a fellow Jew rather than a proven blood relative. The greeting belongs to a list of Roman Christians to whom Paul sent salutations, which implies that Herodion was known in the capital's Christian community around the mid-first century, when the letter is usually dated. Beyond this single New Testament notice, no contemporary narrative of his life survives. Later ecclesiastical tradition, especially in the Greek East, numbered him among the Seventy Apostles (or Seventy Disciples) whom Jesus is said in Luke 10 to have sent out, a catalogue that was elaborated in post-biblical lists attributed to Hippolytus of Rome, Dorotheus of Tyre, and other compilers of uncertain date and reliability.

Those later lists assign Herodion an episcopal see, but they do not agree. One widespread Byzantine and Slavic tradition makes him bishop of Patras or of Neopatras (New Patras) in Greece; another strand, associated with the name Dorotheus, places him at Tarsus. The designation "of Antioch" that appears in some hagiographical and encyclopedic notices may reflect a further local tradition connecting him with the Syrian metropolis, or a confusion with other early Antiochene names such as Heron (Heros), the successor of Ignatius as bishop of Antioch in the early second century. No first- or second-century historian—neither the Acts of the Apostles nor Eusebius of Caesarea in his account of the Antiochene succession—records Herodion as occupying the see of Antioch. Accordingly, claims that he was a patriarch of Antioch rest on later legend rather than on verifiable early evidence, and he does not appear in the standard reconstructed lists of bishops of that church.

Martyrdom stories attached to Herodion are likewise late and mutually inconsistent. Orthodox synaxaria describe him as a zealous preacher who converted many, then suffered a violent death: in one common account he was beaten about the head, run through with a spear, and finally beheaded, sometimes under Nero and sometimes without a named emperor. Other notices locate his passion at Patras or, less often, at Rome. None of these passions can be traced to an early acta; they belong to the medieval elaboration of the lives of the Seventy. Western martyrologies, following the Hieronymian tradition and later the Roman Martyrology, commemorate him on 8 April simply as the Herodion mentioned by Paul, without a detailed passion. In the Byzantine rite he is remembered on 8 April together with Agabus, Rufus, Asyncritus, Phlegon, and Hermes, and again on 10 November with Erastus, Olympas, Sosipater, Quartus, and Tertius, among other of the Seventy.

Historically, therefore, Herodion remains an obscure but authentic first-century Christian, attested only by Paul's greeting. His Jewish background, his presence in or connection with the Roman church in the 50s of the first century, and his later veneration as an apostle of the Seventy and as a martyr-bishop constitute the core of what tradition has preserved. Precise dates of birth and death, places of birth and burial, family life, and any formal patronage are not recorded in sources that meet a critical historical standard. His cult is ancient and liturgical rather than the product of a medieval papal canonization. Modern calendars of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Eastern Catholic churches, and the Roman Martyrology continue to mark his memory, principally on 8 April, as one of the lesser-known coworkers of the apostolic generation.