Saint Matthew — in Hebrew Mattithyahu, “gift of Yahweh” — is the author of the first Gospel, the most firmly rooted in the Old Testament and the most used by the Church in her liturgy and catechesis.[1] Before becoming an apostle, he bore the name of Levi, son of Alphaeus, and practised at Capernaum the most despised trade in Jewish Galilee: tax collector in the service of Rome, a tax collector.[2]
His whole story is contained in a scene of stunning brevity. Jesus passes by the tax booth, looks at the man sitting there, and says to him: “Follow me.” And Matthew gets up and follows him.[3] From this gaze that calls a public sinner to the table of the Twelve, the Gospel would make the very signature of divine mercy: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”[4]
From this converted tax collector, the Church received a Gospel written first for the Jews, which methodically demonstrates that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah announced by the prophets, the fulfilment of the Law and the new Moses. It is in this Gospel that we find the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the “Our Father” and the founding word addressed to Peter: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.”[5]
Represented by the winged man of the four Living Creatures — because his book opens with the human genealogy of Christ —, venerated as a martyr since antiquity and patron of all who handle money, Saint Matthew remains the figure par excellence of the sinner looked upon, called and raised up. His relics have rested since the 10th century at Salerno, and the Church celebrates him on 21 September.[6]
Who is Saint Matthew the Evangelist?
Levi, son of Alphaeus: the tax collector of Capernaum
The three Synoptic Gospels tell of the same calling, but with two names. Mark and Luke name the man “Levi”: Mark specifies “Levi, son of Alphaeus”, seated at his tax booth; Luke simply calls him “a tax collector named Levi”.[7][8] The Gospel of Matthew, for its part, tells the scene from the insider’s point of view of the trade, but gives the one called the name “Matthew”, and in the list of the Twelve it designates itself with a word the others keep silent: “Matthew the tax collector”.[9][10]
Christian tradition, from antiquity onward, has identified Levi and Matthew as one and the same person: the tax collector of Capernaum turned apostle.[11] Capernaum, a small fishing town on the northern shore of the Lake of Tiberias, lay on an important trade route, the Via Maris, and at the border of the territory of Herod Antipas: a customs and toll post there levied taxes on the goods passing through. It was there, at that booth, that Levi earned his living — and it was there that Jesus, who had made Capernaum the centre of his Galilean ministry, came to seek him.
Levi or Matthew? A double name, a gift of God
Why two names? The most received explanation, already given by the ancient commentators, is that Levi probably received the name Matthew at his calling, as Simon received that of Peter.[12] The name Matthew (Mattithyahu, shortened to Mattai) means “gift of Yahweh”, “given by God”: a prophetic name for the man whom grace snatches from his counter.
This double name also places Matthew within the Jewish people: his first name, Levi, is that of the priestly tribe of Israel. The man who collected the occupier’s money thus bore, in his very name, the memory of the covenant — as if everything in him were waiting to be turned back toward God.
A despised trade: what was a tax collector?
To grasp the scandal of Matthew’s calling, we must measure what a tax collector was in 1st-century Judea. The word comes from the Latin publicanus: one who farms the levying of public taxes. Rome entrusted the collection of taxes to private contractors, who advanced the money and then reimbursed themselves from the taxpayers — most often with a wide profit taken in passing.[13]
In the eyes of devout Jews, the tax collector combined three faults. He collaborated with the Roman occupier, levying for Caesar the tribute of a people awaiting nothing but deliverance. He made himself ritually impure through constant contact with pagans and their goods. And he was suspected, almost by function, of extortion and dishonesty. Hence the Gospels regularly associate “the tax collectors and sinners”, or “the tax collectors and prostitutes”: the tax collector was the very figure of the fallen Jew, excluded from the synagogue, despised by the Pharisees.[14]
It is this man — no doubt well-off, but cut off from his people — whom Jesus calls. The choice is not neutral: by making a tax collector one of the Twelve and the first of his evangelists, Christ inscribes at the very heart of the apostolic college the sign that no one is too lost to be called.
The calling of Matthew (Mt 9:9)
“Follow me. And he rose and followed him”
The scene is the barest in the Gospels. No dialogue, no bargaining, no delay:
“As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 9:9[15]
Everything lies in these few words. The Greek verb èkolouthèsen, “he followed”, is the same one describing the first disciples leaving their nets. Matthew abandons his booth on the spot — that is, his fortune, his security, his trade — to follow a homeless preacher. Saint Bede the Venerable, commenting on this passage, stresses the tax collector’s prompt obedience: he does not argue, he rises.[16]
This instantaneous obedience struck the whole tradition. Where the rich young man of the Gospel goes away sorrowful, unable to detach himself from his possessions, the tax collector Matthew leaves everything in a single movement. The grace that calls is also the grace that makes it possible to answer.
The feast of sinners: “I came not to call the righteous”
The convert’s first gesture is to open his house. Luke specifies that Levi gave Jesus “a great feast”, where a crowd of tax collectors and sinners came to table with the Master and his disciples.[17] The Pharisees are scandalized: how can a man of God eat with such people? Jesus’ answer has become one of the keys to the whole Gospel:
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. […] For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 9:12-13[18]
By reporting this scene himself, the evangelist paints himself as a healed sick man. He does not hide his past: he exposes it, because it is precisely against this background of misery that mercy shines forth. Levi’s feast is the first image of the banquet of the Kingdom, where the last are invited to the King’s table.
Matthew’s calling in art: Caravaggio’s Calling
No Gospel scene has perhaps been better translated into paint than this calling. About 1599-1600, Caravaggio painted for the Contarelli Chapel of the church of Saint Louis of the French, in Rome, The Calling of Saint Matthew.[19] In the gloom of a counting room, a shaft of light enters with Christ; his outstretched hand, a direct quotation of Adam’s hand in the Sistine Chapel, points to the tax collector. Matthew, still bent over his coins, points to himself with an incredulous air: “Me?”
This painting has marked generations of believers. Pope Francis confided that, as a young man, he was overwhelmed by this canvas, and that he read his own vocation in it: Christ’s gaze choosing an unworthy man. It is from this scene that he took his episcopal and then pontifical motto, “Miserando atque eligendo” — “looking upon him with mercy, he chose him” —, borrowed from a homily of Saint Bede the Venerable on Matthew’s vocation.[20]
Matthew among the Twelve Apostles
After his calling, Matthew appears in the four lists of the Twelve handed down to us by the New Testament: in Matthew, Mark, Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.[21] A remarkable trait of humility: it is in his own list that he calls himself “Matthew the tax collector”: alone among the evangelists, he recalls his former despised trade, where Mark and Luke have the delicacy to keep silent about it.[22] The apostle does not hide behind his new dignity; he keeps before the reader’s eyes the mire from which grace drew him.
The Gospels then report no word or personal deed of Matthew during Jesus’ ministry: like most of the Twelve, he effaces himself behind the Master. He is found named a last time in the Upper Room, among the apostles gathered in prayer after the Ascension, awaiting the Spirit of Pentecost.[23] Everything the Church knows of him after Pentecost belongs to preaching and tradition: his great act would be a book, and his crowning, martyrdom.
The Gospel according to Saint Matthew
The first Gospel: the Gospel of the Church
In every Bible, the Gospel of Matthew comes first. This is no accident: from antiquity onward, the Church placed it at the head, because it serves as a bridge between the Old and the New Testament and because it was by far the most read, most quoted and most commented of the four.[24] It has been called the “Gospel of the Church”: it is the only one to use the word ekklèsia, “Church”, and the only one to contain such developed teaching on the life of the Christian community — forgiveness, fraternal correction, common prayer.
Twenty-eight chapters long, Matthew’s Gospel is a carefully composed, almost architectural work. It opens with the genealogy of Jesus, “son of David, son of Abraham”, and the infancy narrative — the Magi, the flight into Egypt, the massacre of the innocents —, and it closes with the Risen One’s sending on mission.[25]
A Gospel for the Jews: the fulfilment of the prophecies
Matthew’s most characteristic trait is its rootedness in the Scripture of Israel. At each stage of Jesus’ life, the evangelist quotes the Old Testament and concludes with a formula that has become famous: “that what was spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled…”.[26] There are about ten of these “fulfilment quotations”, which make the Gospel one continuous demonstration: Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the expected Messiah, the heir of David, the Emmanuel announced by Isaiah.
“All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’ (which means, God with us).” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 1:22-23[27]
This anchoring reveals the book’s addressees: a community of Christians come from Judaism, who must be shown that the new faith does not abolish the Law and the Prophets but fulfils them. Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses: as Moses escaped Pharaoh’s massacre, the child Jesus escapes Herod; as Moses received the Law on Sinai, Jesus proclaims the new Law on the mount of the Beatitudes.
The five great discourses and the Sermon on the Mount
Matthew’s architecture is famous: it gathers Jesus’ teaching into five great discourses, which structure the whole book as the five books of the Pentateuch structure the Torah.[28] Each closes with a transitional formula: “And when Jesus had finished these sayings…”.
The first and most famous is the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5 to 7), which opens with the Beatitudes and contains the “Our Father”, the golden rule, the teaching on almsgiving, fasting and prayer. It is the great charter of Christian life, the summit of Jesus’ moral preaching.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. […] Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:3-9 (Beatitudes)[29]
“You are Peter”: the primacy in Matthew’s Gospel
It is also to Matthew — and to him alone — that the Church owes the founding text of the primacy of Peter. At Caesarea Philippi, after the apostle’s confession of faith, Jesus utters the words that all Catholic ecclesiology would take up:
“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 16:18-19[30]
This passage, proper to Matthew, is one of the scriptural foundations of the ministry of Peter and his successors. The Gospel of the Church is also the Gospel of primacy: it is no accident that the Church placed it at the head of her canon. The book closes, moreover, on the universal sending on mission, the missionary mandate founding the evangelization of all nations:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. […] And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 28:19-20[31]
The Hebrew original: the testimony of Papias and tradition
A unanimous tradition of the first centuries affirms that Matthew first wrote in Hebrew (or Aramaic), for Jewish believers, before his Gospel circulated in Greek. The earliest witness is Papias of Hierapolis (about 60-135), quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea:
“Matthew therefore compiled the logia (the sayings of the Lord) in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as he was able.” — Papias, quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, III, 39, 16[32]
This testimony is relayed by an unbroken chain of Fathers. Saint Irenaeus of Lyon writes that “Matthew published among the Hebrews, in their own language, a written form of Gospel”, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome.[33] Origen, quoted by Eusebius, affirms that the first Gospel was written “by Matthew, once a tax collector then an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for the believers come from Judaism, having composed it in the Hebrew language”.[34] Finally Saint Jerome, in his catalogue of illustrious men, reports the same tradition and adds that there still existed in his own time, in the library of Caesarea, a copy of this Gospel “according to the Hebrews”.[35]
The historical-critical debate and its limits
Part of contemporary exegesis objects that the Gospel of Matthew we possess is a Greek text, which does not bear the marks of a mere translation, and which even seems to use the Gospel of Mark, written in Greek. From this, some conclude that Papias’ note is inaccurate, or that it aimed at another writing — a collection of logia now lost —, and they date the canonical Gospel to the 80s, detaching it from the apostle himself.
These hypotheses deserve to be set out honestly, but they are by no means compelling. First, the testimony of the Fathers is early, multiple and concordant: Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius and Jerome, spread over three centuries and different regions, all attribute the first Gospel to the apostle Matthew and recognize its Hebrew origin. Overturning so tight a bundle of evidence in the name of a literary reconstruction requires more than an argument from likelihood. Second, Mark’s literary priority, if real, does not exclude Matthew — a direct witness — having first gathered the Lord’s sayings in Aramaic, and then a Greek redaction, incorporating Mark, having been established under his apostolic authority. Finally, the argument for late dating often rests on the presupposition that a precise prophecy, such as the announcement of Jerusalem’s ruin, can only be an account composed after the event: a philosophical presupposition, not a historical conclusion. The traditional position — a Gospel of apostolic origin, first Hebrew, fulfilling the Scriptures — remains fully defensible, and it is the one the Church’s liturgy has always held.
The mission and martyrdom of Saint Matthew
From Judea to Ethiopia
After Pentecost, according to the testimony of Eusebius and tradition, Matthew first preached among the Hebrews, in Judea, before setting out for the nations: it was even, says Eusebius, at the moment of leaving Palestine that he left them his Gospel in writing, “in their mother tongue”.[36] Beyond that, traditions diverge as to the field of his mission. The most widespread leads him to Ethiopia; others mention Persia, the kingdom of the Parthians, Macedonia or Syria.[37]
The uncertainty of the routes does not erase the meaning of this mission: the tax collector of Capernaum, once chained to his counter, becomes an itinerant of the Gospel, borne by the Risen One’s mandate to the ends of the known world. He who had known only how to levy tax for Caesar goes forth to gather, for God, the tribute of the nations’ faith.
Martyrdom at the altar according to the Golden Legend
The most famous account of his death comes to us from the tradition gathered in the 13th century by Jacobus de Voragine in the Golden Legend.[38] Matthew, preaching in Ethiopia, is said to have raised the son of King Egippus from the dead, converting the sovereign and all his people; he is said to have consecrated to God the king’s daughter, the virgin Iphigenia (Ephigenia), at the head of a community of virgins.
“After the solemnities of the Mass, the king sent an executioner with a sword in his hand; he found the apostle standing before the altar, his hands raised to heaven in prayer, and struck him from behind, thus making him a martyr.” — Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, “Of Saint Matthew”[39]
On the death of King Egippus, his successor Hirtacus wished to marry Iphigenia. Matthew, summoned to plead the king’s cause, publicly recalled that the virgin was now the bride of the eternal King and could not be given to a man. Furious, Hirtacus had him struck down at the very altar, as he was celebrating — a magnificent seal for an evangelist: to die with hands raised, at the heart of the sacrifice, for having defended a soul consecrated to God.[40]
The historical uncertainties surrounding his death
It must be said with the rigour the Church herself observes: the precise circumstances of Matthew’s martyrdom are not historically assured. The author of the Catholic Encyclopedia notice frankly acknowledges it: “it is not known whether he was burned, stoned, or beheaded”, and the apocryphal acts of his martyrdom have no historical value of their own.[41] What tradition constantly affirms is that Matthew died a martyr; the details of place and punishment belong to a later and freer memory.
This honesty does not diminish the saint’s figure: it purifies it. What matters is not knowing by what weapon he fell, but that the tax collector once called to leave everything went, at the end of his course, as far as the gift of blood. The Roman Martyrology and the calendars of East and West alike celebrate him unanimously as apostle and martyr.
The spirituality of Saint Matthew
The tax collector called: conversion and mercy
Saint Matthew’s spiritual lesson can be summed up in one word: mercy that calls. Before being the evangelist, he is the public sinner whom Jesus looks upon and chooses. His holiness does not begin with a virtue, but with a gaze received: Christ’s gaze, which sees not only what man is, but what he can become.
“Jesus saw a tax collector; and because he looked upon him with mercy and chose him, he said to him: ‘Follow me.’” — Saint Bede the Venerable, Homily 21 (on Mt 9:9)[42]
This phrase of Saint Bede, “miserando atque eligendo”, has crossed the centuries to become the motto of Pope Francis. It says all of Matthew’s spirituality: conversion is not first a human effort, but an answer to a gratuitous call. The tax collector did not make himself worthy before being called; he was called as he was, and it is the call that made him worthy.
The evangelist of fulfilment
The second great note of his spirituality is the sense of fulfilment. Matthew is the man who saw, in Jesus’ life, all the threads of the Old Testament tied together. His contemplation is that of an awestruck Jewish believer: all that the prophets had announced, all that the Law prefigured, is realized in Christ. He teaches us to read Scripture as a single book, of which Christ is the key.
For today’s reader, Matthew is the master of a faith that connects: he forbids opposing the Old and the New Testament, the Law and grace, Israel and the Church. “I came not to abolish, but to fulfil”, he has Jesus say from the very Sermon on the Mount. His spirituality is one of fruitful continuity, in which nothing God has sown is lost.
The disciple who did not hide his past
Finally, Matthew teaches a particular humility: that of one who does not disown his misery. Alone among the evangelists, he called himself “the tax collector”. He could have kept silent about his former trade, wrapped it in silence; he chose to keep it written, for ever, beside his apostolic name. This is the mark of great converts: they do not boast of their past, but neither do they hide it, because it has become the very place where mercy was manifested. Like Paul calling himself “the foremost of sinners”, Matthew makes his fall the pedestal of grace.
The cult of Saint Matthew
The winged man: why Matthew is an angel
Of all the evangelists, Matthew is represented by the winged man — often described as an angel — one of the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel’s vision and the Apocalypse, which the Fathers related to the four evangelists: the tetramorph.[43] The received distribution, fixed by Saint Jerome, attributes the man to Matthew because his Gospel opens with the human genealogy of Christ: it begins by telling Jesus’ descent as “son of David, son of Abraham”, and insists on the Incarnation, on the humanity of the Word made flesh.[44]
The winged man thus states a theological truth: Matthew’s Gospel is that of the Saviour’s human rootedness, of the Messiah born of a lineage, heir of Abraham and David, true man entered into Israel’s history. Where the lion of Mark roars in the desert and John’s eagle soars toward the divinity of the Word, Matthew’s man recalls that God made himself “one of us”.
The relics: from Ethiopia to Salerno (954)
Tradition tells that the evangelist’s remains, long venerated in the East, reached southern Italy after many vicissitudes. In 954, relics held to be Saint Matthew’s were solemnly transferred to Salerno, under the Lombard prince Gisulf I, after a dream is said to have revealed their location near Paestum.[45] In 1081, Archbishop Alfan I, completing the crypt of the new cathedral, had the body laid there in a sepulchre.
Since then, Matthew has been the patron of Salerno, whose cathedral is dedicated to him — the Cattedrale di San Matteo —, and where his crypt remains a place of pilgrimage. A local feast commemorates this translation each year. Thus the tax collector of Galilee, after travelling the world of preaching, found his rest in a Western city that claims him as its father.
Liturgical feast and patronages
The Latin Church celebrates Saint Matthew on 21 September; the Byzantine Churches celebrate him on 16 November.[46] Logically, he is the patron of all who handle money and accounts: bankers, accountants, tax collectors, revenue agents, customs officers, bank employees — that very trade of tax collector he had left, and which his conversion as it were redeemed.[47]
Depicted as an evangelist writing under the angel’s inspiration, or as an apostle holding the book and the sword of his martyrdom, Saint Matthew remains the face of the sinner called: he whose life holds in a single word of Christ — “Follow me” — and whose Gospel taught the whole Church to recognize, in the Galilean born of Abraham and David, the expected Messiah and God made man.
To go further
- Saint Mark the Evangelist — the evangelist of the winged lion, whose framework Matthew partly takes up.
- Saint Luke the Evangelist — the evangelist of the ox, who tells the same calling under the name of Levi.
- Saint Peter — the prince of the apostles, to whom Matthew alone hands on the “You are Peter”.
- Saint Paul — the Apostle of the Gentiles, another great convert who did not hide his past.
- Saint Bede the Venerable — whose homily on Matthew’s vocation gave Pope Francis his motto.
- Saint Papias of Hierapolis — the earliest witness to the Hebrew origin of Matthew’s Gospel.
- Saint Jerome — who fixed the attribution of the winged man and handed on the tradition of the Gospel “according to the Hebrews”.
Notes and References
J.-E. Jacquier, “St. Matthew”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. X, Robert Appleton Company, New York, 1911 (full text on New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10056b.htm). Reference notice on the identity of Levi/Matthew, the double name, the tax-collector trade, the Hebrew origin of the Gospel, the preaching in Judea then toward Ethiopia, Persia and the land of the Parthians, the uncertainty of the martyrdom (“it is not known whether he was burned, stoned, or beheaded”), the symbol of the winged man holding a spear and the feast of 21 September.
1 11 12 24 36 37Gospel according to Saint Mark 2:14: “And as he passed on, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’” Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf. Traditional identification of Levi and Matthew: see Jacquier, Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Matthew”.
2 7 22Gospel according to Saint Matthew 9:9: “As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him.” Jerusalem Bible translation, Éditions du Cerf.
3 9 15Gospel according to Saint Matthew 9:10-13: the meal with tax collectors and sinners, and the word “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick… For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf.
4 14 18Gospel according to Saint Matthew 16:18-19: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church… I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Passage proper to Matthew, scriptural foundation of Peter’s primacy. Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf.
5 30Liturgical feast: 21 September in the Roman calendar (Latin Church); 16 November in the Byzantine calendar (Orthodox Churches and Eastern Catholic Churches of the Byzantine rite). See the Roman Martyrology and Jacquier, Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Matthew”.
6 46Gospel according to Saint Luke 5:27-28: “After this he went out, and saw a tax collector, named Levi, sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he left everything, and rose and followed him.” Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf.
8Lists of the Twelve in which Matthew appears: Mt 10:3 (“Matthew the tax collector”), Mk 3:18, Lk 6:15, and Acts of the Apostles 1:13 (the apostles in the Upper Room after the Ascension). Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf. Matthew alone, in his own list, describes himself as a “tax collector”.
10 21 23On the Roman system of farming out taxation (publicani, portoria, tolls and customs), the social and religious status of tax collectors in Judea and their assimilation to sinners: see Jacquier, Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Matthew” (New Advent), as well as the “Publican” / “Tax collector” notices and current Bible dictionaries. The Gospels regularly associate “the tax collectors and sinners” (Mt 9:11; Mt 11:19; Lk 15:1).
13Saint Bede the Venerable, Homily I, 21 (on Mt 9:9), Homiliae, CCSL 122: “Vidit ergo Iesus publicanum, et quia miserando atque eligendo vidit, ait illi: Sequere me” — “Jesus therefore saw a tax collector, and because he looked upon him with mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me.” This formula, miserando atque eligendo, was adopted by Pope Francis as his episcopal and pontifical motto; he expressly linked it to Matthew’s vocation and to Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew. See the Vatican page on Francis’ coat of arms (vatican.va).
16 20 42Gospel according to Saint Luke 5:29: “And Levi made him a great feast in his house; and there was a large company of tax collectors and others sitting at table with them.” Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf.
17Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio), The Calling of Saint Matthew (Vocazione di san Matteo), oil on canvas, about 1599-1600, Contarelli Chapel of the church of Saint Louis of the French (San Luigi dei Francesi), Rome, where it forms a pair with the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Saint Matthew and the Angel. See the notice of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi and the Caravaggio catalogues.
19Gospel according to Saint Matthew 1:1-17: genealogy of Jesus “son of David, son of Abraham”, then the infancy narrative (Mt 1-2: Joseph, the Magi, the flight into Egypt, the massacre of the innocents). Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf.
25The “fulfilment quotations” proper to Matthew (about ten occurrences), introduced by the formula “that what was spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled”: e.g. Mt 1:22-23 (Is 7:14, the Emmanuel), 2:15 (Hos 11:1), 2:17-18 (Jer 31:15), 4:14-16 (Is 8-9), 8:17 (Is 53:4), 12:17-21 (Is 42), 21:4-5 (Zech 9:9), 27:9-10. Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf. On the theme of fulfilment and Jesus the “new Moses”, see Jacquier, Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Matthew”.
26 27Structure of Matthew in five great discourses, each closed by the formula “And when Jesus had finished these sayings” (Mt 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1): (1) Sermon on the Mount and Beatitudes (Mt 5-7); (2) missionary discourse (Mt 10); (3) parables of the Kingdom (Mt 13); (4) ecclesial discourse / the life of the community (Mt 18); (5) eschatological discourse (Mt 24-25). Text of the Beatitudes: Mt 5:3-12. Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf.
28 29Gospel according to Saint Matthew 28:18-20: the Risen One’s missionary mandate, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Jerusalem Bible translation, Cerf.
31Papias of Hierapolis, quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, book III, ch. 39, § 16 (about 325). Greek text: “Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρμήνευσεν δ’ αὐτὰ ὡς ἦν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος.” — “Matthew therefore compiled the logia in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as he was able.” Reference edition: Sources Chrétiennes no. 31, transl. Gustave Bardy, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1952.
32Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies (Adversus haereses), III, 1, 1 (about 180): “Matthew published among the Hebrews, in their own language, a written form of Gospel, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and founding the Church.” Sources Chrétiennes, Éditions du Cerf. Testimony taken up by Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, V, 8, 2.
33Origen, Commentary on Matthew (first book), quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, VI, 25, 4: the first Gospel was written “by Matthew, once a tax collector then an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for the believers come from Judaism, having composed it in the Hebrew language”. Sources Chrétiennes, Cerf.
34Saint Jerome, On Illustrious Men (De viris illustribus), chapter 3, “Matthaeus” (about 392-393): “Matthew, also called Levi, first a tax collector then an apostle, composed the first in Judea a Gospel of Christ, in Hebrew letters and language, for those of the circumcision who had believed.” Jerome adds that a copy of the Gospel “according to the Hebrews” was kept in his time in the library of Caesarea. Edition: Patrologia Latina 23.
35Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (Legenda aurea, about 1260-1266), chapter “Of Saint Matthew, apostle”: preaching in Ethiopia, resurrection of the son of King Egippus, conversion of the king and his people, consecration of the virgin Iphigenia, then martyrdom of the apostle struck at the altar on the order of King Hirtacus while he was celebrating Mass. Reference edition: The Golden Legend, transl. William Granger Ryan, Princeton University Press. Legendary and late account, with no historical value of its own as to detail (cf. Jacquier, Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Matthew”).
38 39On Saint Iphigenia (Ephigenia) of Ethiopia, virgin consecrated by Saint Matthew and defended by him against King Hirtacus: tradition handed down by the Golden Legend and the Apocryphal Acts of Matthew; memorial on 21 September. See the “Ephigenia of Ethiopia” notice (Wikipedia) and the synaxaria. These sources are apocryphal or legendary and do not carry the authority of the Gospels.
40On the uncertainty of Matthew’s manner of death and the lack of historical value of the apocryphal acts of his martyrdom, see explicitly J.-E. Jacquier, “St. Matthew”, Catholic Encyclopedia, X, New Advent (“it is not known whether he was burned, stoned, or beheaded”).
41On the tetramorph and the attribution of the winged man (angel) to Saint Matthew: vision of the four Living Creatures in Ezekiel 1:5-10 and Revelation 4:6-7; Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, III, 11, 8 (about 180), first correspondence of the four Living Creatures with the evangelists; Saint Jerome, prologue of the Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (about 398), which fixes the received distribution — Matthew/man, Mark/lion, Luke/ox, John/eagle — the man being attributed to Matthew because his Gospel opens with the genealogy and humanity of Christ. See also the “Tetramorph” notice, Wikipedia.
43 44Translation of Saint Matthew’s relics to Salerno in 954 under the Lombard prince Gisulf I (according to the translatio preserved in a manuscript of the second half of the 11th century), then laid in the crypt of the cathedral completed by Archbishop Alfan I about 1081. See the “Salerno Cathedral” notice (Wikipedia) and the Cattedrale di San Matteo (Diocese of Salerno website). A feast of the translation is celebrated locally on 6 May.
45Saint Matthew, the former tax collector, is traditionally invoked as patron of bankers, accountants, tax collectors, revenue agents, customs officers and bank employees. See the current hagiographical notices (Martyrology, Lives of the Saints) and patronage directories.
47