St. Mathias the Apostle

Feast day 24 (or 25th) February

A follower of Jesus from the Lord's Baptism to his Ascension and a witness to the Resurrection, made Matthias the ideal candidate to make up the twelve after the suicide of Judas. In the event Matthias was chosen by lot over Joseph Barsabas. He, like the other apostles received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, but then the details of his apostolate seem to dry up.

 All the above facts are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, but the rest of his life is shrouded in legend and hearsay. It is said that his first teachings were done in Judaea, which seems reasonable, but soon after the Greeks said he was preaching in Cappadocia and around the Caspian Sea. Another tradition sees Matthias in Ethiopia. Although it is possible that he did travel these vast distances, it would be unlikely, with the then political unrest and the Jewish authorities trying to stamp out the early Church, that travel would have been at all easy for a wandering evangelist. But the stories mount up, according to the fictional Acts of Andrew and Matthias, it has the apostles in the City of the Cannibals. This story proved very popular in the early church, being translated into many Eastern languages.

 It is also not easy when in some cases Matthias gets mixed up with Matthew, as he does in the Anglo-Saxon poem, "Andreas". In art Matthias is usually depicted with an axe or halberd, said to be the instrument of his martyrdom. The Empress Helen translated hi$ supposed remains from Jerusalem to Rome, when she visited the Holy Land as an elderly pilgrim, in the fourth century. In the eleventh century some of his relics were moved to Treves.

John Hayward.