Index apostolorum

The names of the twelve apostles who proclaimed the gospel of Christ and how they were perfected. Of Epiphanius. 1. Simon Peter, the foremost of the apostles, as is evident through his epistles, proclaimed the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, Italy, Asia, and in Illyricum; later in Rome, under the emperor Nero, he was crucified head downwards, having himself deemed it worthy to suffer thus, and he was buried in that same Rome before the third of the Kalends of July, which is the fifth of Epiphi. 2. Andrew, his brother, as those before us have handed down, preached to the Scythians, Sogdians, and Gorsinians, and in great Sebastopolis, where the camp of Apsarus is, and the harbor of Hyssus, and the river Phasis, where the Ethiopians dwell; he was buried in Patras of Achaia, having been bound to a cross by Aegeas, the king of Patras. 3. James, the son of Zebedee, brother of John the evangelist, proclaimed the gospel of Christ to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion; he was slain by the sword by Herod the tetrarch of the Jews and was buried there in Judea. 4. John, his brother, proclaimed the gospel of Christ in Asia; he was exiled by Trajan, the emperor of the Romans, to the island of Patmos on account of the word of the Lord; while there he composed the Gospel according to John and published it through Gaius the innkeeper; after the death of Trajan he returned from the island to Ephesus and there buried himself alive, being one hundred and twenty years old by the will of God.

5. Philip the apostle: he was from Bethsaida, from the village of Peter and Andrew, and in Upper Phrygia he proclaimed the gospel; he dies in Hierapolis and is buried there gloriously with his own. 6. Bartholomew the apostle proclaimed the gospel of Christ to the Indians called the Eudaemons, and having written the holy Gospel according to Matthew for them in their own dialect, he fell asleep in the city of Albania of Greater Armenia and was buried there. 7. Thomas the apostle, as the tradition holds, was from the city of Paneas in Galilee, and he proclaimed the gospel of the Lord to the Parthians and Medes, and also to the Persians, Germans, Hyrcanians, Indians, Bactrians, and Magi; he fell asleep in the city of Calamene in India. 8. Matthew the evangelist was from Jerusalem, and there he composed the gospel of the Lord in the Hebrew dialect, and he published it for the holy apostles, and James the brother of the Lord interpreted it; he fell asleep in Hierapolis of Parthia and is buried there.

9. James, called Thaddaeus, who was the brother of the Lord according to the flesh, and who was first appointed bishop in Jerusalem by the apostles; when a pretext arose from disputes among the Jews, he was stoned by them, fell asleep in Jerusalem, and was buried there gloriously near the tomb of the priests. Simon the Zealot, having traversed all of Mauretania and the land of the Africans and proclaimed Christ, was later crucified by them in Britain and, having been perfected, is buried there. 10. Thaddaeus, also called Lebbaeus, his brother, who was surnamed Judas of James, proclaimed the gospel of the Lord to the Edessenes and all Mesopotamia, in the time of Abgar the king of the Edessenes; he died in Berytus and was buried there gloriously. 11. Judas, the brother of the Lord, after his brother James and Symeon, the cousin of the Lord, having left him as bishop in Jerusalem for seven years, proclaimed the gospel of Christ in all Judea and Samaria; he also wrote a catholic epistle, and earlier had two sons, James and Zoker; he died in Jerusalem gloriously.

11. Simon, called Judas, who also became bishop after the death of James in Jerusalem under the emperor Trajan, was bound to a cross and died in Ostracina of Egypt, having lived 120 years. 11. Simon the Cananaean, the son of Clopas, who was also called Judas, became bishop in Jerusalem after James the Righteous, and having lived 120 years, was handed over to the cross and suffered martyrdom under the emperor Trajan. 12. Matthias, being one of the seventy disciples, whom our Lord designated after his resurrection from the dead, and who was also counted among the eleven apostles in place of Judas Iscariot, proclaimed the gospel of our Lord in outer Ethiopia and there suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Ethiopians at the harbor of Hyssus. 13. Paul the apostle, after the Lord’s ascension into heaven, began to proclaim the gospel of the Lord, starting from Jerusalem and advancing as far as Illyricum, Italy, and Spain, where his letters, full of wisdom, are preserved among us. Under Nero, son of the emperor Claudius, in the city of Rome, he was beheaded and suffered martyrdom on the fifth day before the third of the Kalends of July; and there he was buried near the holy apostle Peter, and there they remain to this day in Christ. The martyrdom of Paul the apostle.

Under Nero Caesar of the Romans, the apostle Paul was martyred there, his head cut off by the sword in the thirty-sixth year of the saving passion, having contended in the noble contest in Rome on the fifth day according to the Syro-Macedonians of the month Panemus, which is called by the Egyptians Epiphi, and by the Romans the third day before the Kalends of July in the month of June, on which the holy apostle was perfected in his martyrdom in the sixty-ninth year of the presence of our savior Jesus Christ. The entire time from which he was martyred is three hundred thirty years up to this present consulship, the fourth of Arcadius and the third of Honorius, the two brothers, emperors Augusti, in the ninth indiction of the fifteen-year cycle, on the twenty-ninth day of the month of June. 14. Mark the evangelist was a Cyrenaean of Libya, but he proclaimed the gospel to the Alexandrians and to all their surrounding territory as far as the Pentapolis and throughout all Egypt, the gospel having been given by the apostle Peter; he imparted the mystery of piety in the great city of Alexandria, and having been dragged with ropes he died and was reduced to ashes by the idol-mad Greeks, and was laid in the place of Bucolus, where he remains to this day. The day of his falling asleep is Pharmouthi, lord, which is April. Mark the evangelist and first bishop of Alexandria proclaimed the gospel of the Lord to the Alexandrians and to all its surrounding territory, from Egypt as far as the Pentapolis.

During the reign of Trajan in Alexandria, having received a blow to the neck from the Boukoloi and dragged from the places called Boukolou as far as the places called Angeloi, he was burned there by fire from the idol-worshippers on the thirtieth of the month Pharmouthi, and there he was buried in the Boukolou. Mark the evangelist, having preached the gospel of the Lord to the Alexandrians and to all its surrounding region as far as the Pentapolis, is buried in Alexandria in the Boukolou with Iktaros the protomartyr in the Lykos, whom Alexander brought down and placed where all the bishops lie. 15. Luke the evangelist, a physician by trade, himself composed the Gospel according to Luke under the commission of Paul the apostle. He preached in Greece and in Rome and in Italy, and he also wrote the Acts of the Apostles under the commission of Paul the apostle, for he accompanied the apostles, especially the holy Paul, who, remembering him, writes in his epistles: “Luke the physician greets you in the Lord.” He died and was buried there as bishop of Thebes.

Luke the evangelist was by race an Antiochene, and by craft a physician. He composed the Gospel at the commission of the apostle Peter, and the Acts of the Apostles at the commission of the apostle Paul; for he traveled with the apostles, and especially with Paul, whom Paul mentioned and wrote in an epistle: “Luke the physician, the beloved in the Lord, greets you.” He died in Ephesus and was buried there, but was later transferred to Constantinople together with Andrew and Timothy the apostles, in the times of the emperor Constantius, son of Constantine the Great. It is Luke the evangelist who narrates the Acts of the Apostles. For he, being by race an Antiochene and by profession a physician, traveled with the apostles and especially with Paul, and knowing accurately, he writes; he relates how the Lord was taken up as if by angels, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that occurred at Pentecost upon the apostles and all those then present, and the appointment of Matthias in place of Judas the traitor, and the appointment of the seven deacons, and the election of Paul, and all that he suffered, and all that the apostles accomplished through prayer and faith in Christ himself.