Archippus of Colossae
The Holy Apostle Archippus of the Seventy
Apostle of the Seventy · Apostle · Martyr · d. c. 68, at Colossae
Commemorated 19 February — The apostle-feast of Archippus, with Philemon and Apphia, 22 November — With the Colossian household of Philemon, Apphia and Onesimus
Archippus was an apostle of the Seventy and a minister of the church of Colossae in Phrygia, greeted by the Apostle Paul as "our fellow soldier" (Philemon 2) and charged in the Epistle to the Colossians to "take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it" (Colossians 4:17). The Byzantine tradition remembers him as the son of Philemon and Apphia, in whose house the Colossian church assembled, and numbers him with his father among the Seventy. Under Nero he received the crown of martyrdom at Colossae, dragged before the mob and stoned to death — the hymnography singing that he "longed for the cornerstone Stone" and so "was battered with stones for love of Him." He is kept with the whole Colossian household on November 22, and again on February 19, where the day is led by his own name and his proper hymns.
Archippus (Greek Ἄρχιππος, "master of horses") belongs to the household of Philemon and Apphia at Colossae, whose full story — the house-church of the Lycus valley, the Epistle to Philemon, the slave Onesimus, the apostolic labours through Phrygia, and the martyrdom under Nero — is told at that group's principal entry and is not repeated here. Archippus is named in the New Testament twice: in the greeting of the Epistle to Philemon, where Paul salutes "Archippus our fellow soldier" (Philemon 2), and in the closing charge of the Epistle to the Colossians, "Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry (διακονία) which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it" (Colossians 4:17). That soldierly epithet and that solemn commission mark him out as an active and responsible minister of the Colossian church — held by the tradition to have been the son of Philemon and Apphia, and reckoned, with his father, among the Seventy Apostles sent out by Christ (Luke 10).
Beyond the Scriptural notices the synaxaria relate that Archippus laboured for the Gospel through Phrygia, and some accounts make him bishop of Colossae or associate him with the church of nearby Laodicea. His end came in the persecution under Nero: during a pagan festival an enraged crowd fell upon the Christians of Colossae at their prayers, and Archippus, standing his ground with Philemon and Apphia, was seized, beaten, and — as the Byzantine hymnography of his feast insistently sings — stoned to death. (The prose synaxarion of November 22 describes him rather as cut down with knives on the way to judgment while Philemon and Apphia were stoned; the divergence between the hymns' stoning and the narrative's knives is noted at the group entry and left unresolved.) The synaxarion couplet for February 19 fixes both the manner and the day: "Longing for the cornerstone Stone, Archippus was ground down with stones for love of Him," and "On the nineteenth, Archippus died by stones."
Feast and commemoration
Archippus has two feasts. His principal commemoration with the whole household — Philemon, Archippus, Onesimus and Apphia — is November 22, where the family's full Life is authored. February 19 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 4) is his own apostle-feast, led in the Greek Menaion by the name of Archippus and furnished with proper hymns addressed to him (the apolytikion "Holy Apostle Archippus…" and the kontakion "As a great star…") which the November feast, gathering the company under Philemon, does not carry. It is on account of these proper hymns and of the day's leading of Archippus by name that this focused entry is authored, cross-linking the household entry for the shared narrative rather than duplicating it. February 19 also keeps Philemon and Apphia with him, and — separately in the same calendar — the great Athenian new-martyr Philothei of Athens. Archippus belongs, with his father, to the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles on January 4.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 3
O holy Apostle Archippus, intercede with the merciful God, that he may grant to our souls the forgiveness of transgressions.
Original translation from the Greek
Kontakion — Tone 4
Possessing thee, O Archippus, as a great star, the Church, illumined by the beams of thy wonders, crieth out to thee: Save those who with faith honour thy memory.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Archippus is depicted as a young apostle — beardless or lightly bearded, in tunic and himation, holding a scroll or the Gospel — in the apostle-rows and in the menologion miniatures; in the narrative type of his passion he is shown seized and stoned by the mob, or (in the November tradition) stabbed. He appears together with Philemon and Apphia, and among the ranks of the Seventy in their common Synaxis. The Menologion of Basil II (c. 985, Vatican) illustrates the Colossian company's martyrdom — one apostle struck down, a second lying dead — the miniature stored with the household entry.
The stored image is the miniature of the Menologion of Basil II (Constantinople, 985) for the February commemoration: the torments of Archippus and his companions of the Colossae church, in the manuscript's paired martyrdom scene.