Matthias the Apostle

Matthias, whose Hebrew name Mattityahu means gift of Yahweh, is known to history almost exclusively through a single episode in the New Testament. After the death of Judas Iscariot, the remaining eleven apostles gathered in Jerusalem with a larger company of about one hundred and twenty believers. Saint Peter proposed that they choose a witness to replace Judas, specifying that the candidate must have accompanied Jesus from the time of John the Baptist's ministry through the Ascension. Two men were put forward: Joseph called Barsabbas, also known as Justus, and Matthias. After prayer, the community cast lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias, who was then numbered with the Eleven. This account, found in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is the only canonical reference to him. Nothing further is said in Scripture about his subsequent life, preaching, or death.

Later Christian writers sought to fill this silence. Clement of Alexandria, writing in the late second or early third century, counted Matthias among the Seventy or Seventy-Two disciples whom Jesus sent out according to the Gospel of Luke. Eusebius of Caesarea and other ecclesiastical historians of the fourth century likewise treated him as a member of that wider circle of early disciples. An apocryphal Gospel attributed to Matthias circulated in antiquity; Origen and Eusebius mention it, and later catalogues of heretical books list it among works not received by the Church. Surviving fragments and later legends associated with his name are of uncertain historical value and cannot be used to reconstruct a reliable biography.

Traditions concerning his missionary journeys and martyrdom diverge widely and belong to different regions and centuries. One strand, reflected in some Greek and Latin sources, holds that he preached in Judea and was eventually stoned and then beheaded in Jerusalem. Another tradition, recorded by the fourteenth-century Byzantine historian Nicephorus Callistus and by earlier compilers, sends him to Ethiopia, a name that in ancient geography could denote either the African kingdom or, more loosely, regions of the Caucasus. Georgian Orthodox tradition identifies him with missionary work in Colchis in western Georgia and places his death and burial at Gonio, near the Black Sea. Hippolytus is cited as saying that Matthias died at Sebastopolis and was buried there near a temple of the Sun. None of these accounts can be confirmed by contemporary evidence; they illustrate the early Church's desire to assign each of the Twelve a field of labor and a martyr's crown rather than a recoverable itinerary.

Veneration of Matthias is ancient. In the West his feast was long kept on 24 February, or 25 February in leap years; after the calendar reform of 1969 the Roman Catholic Church transferred it to 14 May so that it would not fall in Lent. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 9 August. Relics claimed to be his have been associated with several sites. The Abbey of Saint Matthias in Trier, Germany, has since the Middle Ages asserted possession of his body, a claim linked in local legend to translations of relics under Empress Helena or Bishop Agritius; the abbey became an important pilgrimage center. Other relics have been reported in Rome, including at Santa Maria Maggiore, and in Padua. Because he was chosen by lot after prayer, later devotion has invoked him as a patron of those who struggle with uncertainty or with alcoholism, as well as of carpenters and tailors, and against smallpox. He was never Bishop of Rome nor the occupant of any patriarchal see; his rank in Christian memory is that of apostle, one of the Twelve.