Trophimus of the Seventy
The Holy Apostle Trophimus of the Seventy
Apostle of the Seventy · Martyr · d. c. 67
Commemorated 15 April — With the apostles Aristarchus and Pudens
Trophimus was a disciple and travelling-companion of the Apostle Paul, named several times in the New Testament, and is numbered by the Church among the Seventy Apostles. An Ephesian and a Gentile Christian, he shared Paul's journeys and sufferings, and by tradition was beheaded at Rome together with the apostles Aristarchus and Pudens in the persecution of Nero. He is commemorated on April 15 with his fellow-labourers, and among the Seventy on January 4.
Trophimus was a native of Ephesus and a Gentile by birth. He appears in the Acts of the Apostles among the companions who accompanied Paul from Greece toward Jerusalem (Acts 20:4), and it was the sight of him — "Trophimus the Ephesian" — in the city that gave occasion to the riot against Paul in the Temple, the Jews supposing that Paul had brought a Gentile into the sanctuary (Acts 21:29). In the last of Paul's letters the apostle notes that he had left Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Tim. 4:20) — a small, human detail that shows him one of the inner circle of Paul's helpers, and, incidentally, a witness that the apostles did not always heal at will.
Tradition made him one of the Seventy, and a preacher of the Gospel in his own right. The Church remembers that he shared to the end the lot of his teacher: in the persecution of Nero at Rome, Trophimus, with Aristarchus and Pudens, was beheaded for the faith, about the year 67, near the time of Paul's own martyrdom. So he passed from being Paul's companion in labour to his companion in the martyr's crown.
Feast and commemoration
April 15 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 28), together with the apostles Aristarchus and Pudens; and among the Seventy Apostles on January 4. He is to be distinguished from the several later martyrs named Trophimus commemorated on other days — Trophimus and Theophilus of Lycia (July 23), Trophimus, Sabbatius and Dorymedon of Synnada and Pisidian Antioch (September 19), Trophimus and Thalus of Laodicea (March 11), and Trophimus and Eucarpion of Nicomedia (March 18).
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 3 (common of an apostle)
O holy apostle Trophimus, intercede with the merciful God, that He may grant to our souls forgiveness of transgressions.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Trophimus is painted as an apostle — a bearded man in tunic and himation, holding a scroll or a Gospel — often shown together with Aristarchus and Pudens in the icon of the three. No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this collection.