Saint Philip the Deacon

After this celebration, the Spirit caught Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more; but he was thereby confirmed in the belief that this man had been sent to him extraordinarily by God to put him on the path of salvation. As for our holy deacon, he found himself in Azotus, a city in the land of the Philistines, which the sojourn of the Ark of the Covenant made very famous; and he continued to preach Jesus Christ in all the cities of the region, until he finally arri ved at Caesarea in P alestine, the place of his birth and his dwelling. The wife he had, before being called to the school of Our Lord, of whom he was a disciple, had left him four daughters; he remained the rest of his life with them. He had the honor of receiving Sai nt Paul in to his home during the journey he made from Asia to Jerusalem. The manner of his death is not certain; it is only assured that it was very holy and in conformity with the innocence and purity of his life. It is placed in the year 58 of Our Lord.

The Greeks assure that this blessed disciple was bishop of the Trallian s, in Asia Minor, in the province of Lydia. They recount that he performed many miracles there, that he founded a church there, and that he subsequently went to the Lord to receive his crown. The city of Tralle, or Trallium, is situated on the banks of the Meander: it was one of the most opulent cities of Asia. What demonstrates the antiquity of the church of Tralle is the ve ry letter th at Saint Ignatius, disciple of Jesus Christ and the Apostles, addressed to the Christians of that city.

If the city of Tralle possessed, in the course of the centuries, the relics of Saint Philip, deacon, it is because they were transported there from Caesarea in Palestine, where tradition says he was buried beside his daughters.

Another tradition reports that this illustrious disciple made a journey to Abyssinia to proclaim the Gospel there, and to a part of Ethiopia, where he is said to have confirmed the preaching of the eunuch of Candace. These peoples invoke him in a very special way.

According to this same tradition, Philip is said to ha ve place d Narcissus at the head of the Church he founded in Arabia, which is contiguous to Ethiopia and Abyssinia.

As for his four daughters, one cannot deny them the prerogative of virginity and prophecy; Saint Luke, in chapter 21 of the Acts of the Apostles, attributes both to them: this is why Saint Jerome, writing agai nst Jovinian, says "that they consecrated in their bodies the first fruits of virginity"; and in one of his epistles, the twenty-seventh to Eustochium, he assures that, in his time, one could still see in Caesarea their small chambers and that of their father, and that Saint P aula, while passing through there, visited them with devotion. Some authors say that they predicted to Saint Paul, just as Agabus did, the persecutions he would endure from the Jews in Jerusalem. Their names are unknown. Thus, all that remains for us to say is that, having died in great holiness, they were all four buried in the sepulcher of Saint Philip. As for Saint Hermione, who is spoken of in the Menologion of t he Greeks, who endured martyrdom under Trajan and was buried in Ephesus, we believe that she was a daughter of Saint Philip the Apostle, rather than of Saint Philip the Deacon.

He may be depicted baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, or in the chariot of the Ethiopian queen, in the company of his neophyte; or in a group featuring his four daughters.

Cf. Acts, VIII, XXI; Tillassant, etc. — History of the Seventy-Two Disciples, by Abbé Malaire.