Lucius of Cyrene

Lucius of Cyrene is known primarily from a single verse in the New Testament. In Acts 13:1, the author of Acts lists him among the prophets and teachers of the Christian community at Antioch in Syria: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch), and Saul. This Antiochene church was the first major mixed Jewish-Gentile congregation and the place where the disciples were first called Christians. It was while these five men were worshipping the Lord and fasting that the Holy Spirit directed the community to set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which they had been called, thereby launching the first missionary journey of Paul. Lucius therefore stands at a pivotal moment in the expansion of the early Church, even though the biblical text records no further deeds or words of his own.

The epithet of Cyrene indicates that Lucius came from Cyrene, the principal city of Cyrenaica in North Africa, in what is now eastern Libya. Cyrene possessed a substantial Jewish population in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Cyrenian Jews are named among those present at Pentecost in Acts 2:10, and a synagogue of Freedmen that included Cyrenians appears in the dispute surrounding Stephen in Acts 6:9. Acts 11:19-21 reports that believers scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen, including men from Cyprus and Cyrene, were the first to preach the Lord Jesus to Greeks at Antioch. It is historically plausible, though not demonstrable from the text, that Lucius belonged to that group of Cyrenian missionaries who helped establish the Gentile mission in Antioch and then remained there as a teacher and prophet.

Beyond the notice in Acts 13:1, identifications of Lucius remain conjectural. Some commentators have equated him with the Lucius whom Paul, writing from Corinth, calls his kinsman in Romans 16:21, which would imply that he was a fellow Jew and perhaps a companion on later journeys; the identification is possible but cannot be proved. He is not to be confused with Luke the Evangelist: the Latin name Lucius and the Greek name Loukas are distinct, and ancient tradition associates Luke with Antioch rather than with Cyrene. Later ecclesiastical writers numbered Lucius among the Seventy or Seventy-Two disciples whom Jesus sent out according to the Gospel of Luke. Lists attributed to Hippolytus of Rome and to Dorotheus of Tyre sometimes assign a Lucius the office of bishop of Laodicea in Syria; other traditions make him the first bishop of Cyrene itself. None of these later notices can be confirmed from contemporary first-century evidence.

Virtually nothing is known of Lucius's birth, death, or personal circumstances. No year of birth or death has been preserved in any reliable source, nor any trustworthy account of a spouse, children, or place of burial. He was not Bishop of Rome and did not occupy a patriarchal see. Veneration of Lucius as a saint developed in both East and West on the strength of his appearance in the Acts of the Apostles and his later inclusion among the Seventy. The traditional Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 22 April as a bishop at Cyrene in Libya who is mentioned by Saint Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. Eastern calendars remember him with the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles and on other days associated with members of that group. Because the historical record is so thin, any reconstruction of his career after the Antiochene worship and fasting described in Acts 13 remains in the realm of pious tradition rather than documented history.