Jude the Apostle

Jude the Apostle, also known as Judas Thaddaeus, Jude of James, Lebbaeus, or Thaddeus, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ and is carefully distinguished in the New Testament from Judas Iscariot. In the apostolic lists he appears under more than one name: Matthew and Mark call him Thaddaeus (some manuscripts of Matthew adding Lebbaeus), while Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13 refer to him as Judas of James, a Greek phrase that may mean either son of James or brother of James. In John 14:22, at the Last Supper, “Judas (not Iscariot)” asks Jesus why he will manifest himself to the disciples and not to the world. Later Christian tradition has often identified this apostle with Jude the brother of Jesus named in Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55, and with the author of the brief New Testament Epistle of Jude; modern historical scholarship commonly treats those identifications as uncertain or as referring to more than one person.

Almost nothing about his life can be established from contemporary first-century sources beyond his place among the Twelve and the Johannine question at the Last Supper. He is generally presumed, like most of the Twelve, to have been a Galilean. After Pentecost, later ecclesiastical writers from the fourth century onward ascribe to him missionary work in Judea, Samaria, Idumaea, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Libya. Eusebius of Caesarea and the related Abgar legend connect a Thaddaeus—sometimes identified with the apostle, sometimes with one of the Seventy—with the evangelization of Edessa in Osroene and the conversion of King Abgar. Armenian tradition holds that the Apostle Thaddeus, together with Bartholomew, brought Christianity to Armenia in the first century and is therefore counted among the founding patrons of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Western medieval hagiography, especially the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, describes Jude preaching jointly with Simon the Zealot in Persia.

Accounts of his death are traditional rather than independently documented and they disagree. Western Catholic hagiography commonly places his martyrdom, together with that of Simon, in Persia in the mid-first century, sometimes specifying death by club, axe, or halberd. Armenian tradition locates his martyrdom in Armenia. Because the traditions conflict and no first-century record survives, neither a precise year nor a single city of death can be verified. Relics attributed to Saints Simon and Jude have long been venerated in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome; the Saint Thaddeus Monastery (Qara Kelisa) in northwestern Iran is another ancient site associated with his cult. In the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran calendars his feast is kept on 28 October together with Simon the Zealot. Eastern Orthodox churches commemorate him on 19 June and again on 30 June among the Twelve Apostles; other Oriental calendars assign further dates.

Devotion to Jude was relatively muted in the medieval West, in part because his name was so close to that of Judas Iscariot. From the early modern period he became widely invoked as the patron of lost, forgotten, and desperate causes, a role that remains his most characteristic patronage. He is typically shown in Christian art holding an image of Christ (linked to the Mandylion or Image of Edessa of the Abgar legend), a club or axe of martyrdom, a carpenter’s rule, or a book or scroll representing the Epistle of Jude. He is also invoked as patron of Armenia, of hospitals, of several cities and dioceses (notably St. Petersburg, Florida), of the Chicago Police Department, of places in the Philippines such as Lucena and Sibalom, and of Clube de Regatas do Flamengo in Brazil. As an apostle he was venerated as a saint from the earliest Christian centuries and was never the subject of a later formal process of beatification or canonization.