St. Luke the Evangelist
He stayed. Writing for the last time from prison, Paul lists the man who had left him for the world and then says: only Luke is with me. He had already given years to walking beside him, and the account we have of those journeys is his because he was there.
Canonized
No year of birth or death is recorded anywhere held. One figure survives and it is an age rather than a date: the ancient preface to his Gospel, which the encyclopedia traces back to Julius Africanus, says he was unmarried, wrote in Achaia, and “died at the age of seventy-four in Bithynia (probably a copyist’s error for Bœotia), filled with the Holy Ghost”. That is one late source reporting an age, with its own place-name already under correction, so the age is told here and not turned into years.
A convert
Luke was a Greek, and the encyclopedia says plainly that he was not a Jew — Paul separates him from those of the circumcision. He is generally held to have come from Antioch in Syria, the city he seems to know best. He was a physician by profession, and Paul calls him the beloved physician.
He steps into the story at Troas, where he meets Paul, and the reader can tell the moment it happens: the Acts of the Apostles stops saying they and starts saying we. He crossed to Europe with Paul, landed at Neapolis, went on to Philippi, and was there for the conversion of Lydia and for the night the magistrates had Paul and Silas beaten and jailed. When Paul moved on, Luke stayed behind at Philippi to carry on the work.
They met again years later, and from then on he is rarely far away. He went up to Jerusalem and saw the crowd turn on Paul. He was with him through two years of custody at Caesarea, on the voyage that wrecked off Malta, and in Rome. When Paul wrote for the last time, from prison, with one companion gone back to the world, the line he wrote was: only Luke is with me.
Two books of the New Testament have come down under his name, and together they are about as long as all of Paul’s letters. After Paul’s death almost nothing is known. One ancient preface says he never married, wrote in Achaia, and died at seventy-four. Whether he was killed for the faith is not settled. His bones were carried to Constantinople, alongside the relics of Andrew the Apostle.
What they carried
He signed on to a dangerous life. He watched Paul and Silas dragged before magistrates at Philippi, beaten with rods and thrown into prison, and escaped himself only because he did not look like a Jew. He was in the uproar at Jerusalem and aboard the storm that wrecked them off Malta.
State of life
evangelist · physician
Themes
travel · writing · care of the sick · friendship · preaching
Gospel of Saint Luke — Biography of Saint Luke (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- THE ENCYCLOPEDIA HAS NO LIFE OF LUKE, AND THIS RECORD IS BUILT FROM THE ONE ARTICLE THAT CARRIES HIM ANYWAY. Its complete L index was fetched and read: the only Luke entry on it is “Luke, Gospel of Saint”, an introduction to the book, sitting alphabetically between Luini and the Lulé Indians, so there is no life to have missed. That article opens with a section headed “Biography of Saint Luke”, and it is the longest account of him held here — Antioch, his Greek birth, the medical training, every stage of the travelling with Paul, and the ancient preface that reports his death. Everything in this record about the man comes from that section.
- THERE IS NO PAPAL BIOGRAPHY OF HIM, AND THAT IS A FINDING RATHER THAN A GAP IN THE SEARCH. Benedict XVI’s catechesis on the Apostles supplies the modern life of record for Andrew and for Matthew. It does not reach Luke. The audience of 18 October 2006 falls on his own feast and is about Judas Iscariot and Matthias; the audience that carries Mark, of 31 January 2007, is about Paul’s other collaborators and names Luke twice only as the author of Acts. Eleven vatican.va documents are held for him and not one is a portrait. So the life here rests on a single article, which is thinner than the two apostles written before him, and thin in a different way: deep in one document rather than spread across two.
- THE DEATH IS ONE LATE SOURCE AND THE RECORD KEEPS ITS HEDGES. What is known comes from the “Prefatio vel Argumentum Lucæ”, which the encyclopedia dates back to Julius Africanus, born about A.D. 165 — a century and more after Luke. It says “he was unmarried, that he wrote the Gospel, in Achaia, and that he died at the age of seventy-four in Bithynia (probably a copyist’s error for Bœotia), filled with the Holy Ghost”. BOTH PLACES ARE REPORTED HERE AND NEITHER IS CHOSEN: the correction is the article’s own, offered as a probability inside its own parentheses. Jerome adds that he was buried, and that his bones were later carried to Constantinople together with the relics of Andrew the Apostle — which is independently consistent with the translation of Andrew’s relics recorded on that record.
- ANTIOCH IS GENERALLY HELD, NOT ESTABLISHED, AND THE ARTICLE SAYS SO IN THOSE WORDS. “It is generally held that St. Luke was a native of Antioch”, and what follows is an argument rather than a testimony: Eusebius twice, an ancient reading in Codex Bezæ that the article grants is not correct, and the observation that the writer of Acts takes a special interest in the city and knows it well. The article then uses that reasoning to exclude Renan and Ramsay, who proposed Philippi. The summary follows the article’s own register — generally held — and does not upgrade it.
- HE WAS A GREEK WHO BECAME A CHRISTIAN, AND THAT IS WHY THIS RECORD CALLS HIM A CONVERT. The encyclopedia is direct: “St. Luke was not a Jew”, separated by Paul from those of the circumcision, and his style proves him a Greek. It leaves open only how he came by his knowledge of the Septuagint, “either as a Jewish proselyte (St. Jerome) or after he became a Christian” — both readings assume he became one. NO SOURCE HELD HERE NARRATES THE CONVERSION ITSELF, and the summary does not invent a scene for it.
- NO PATRONAGE IS RECORDED, AND HE IS WIDELY CALLED THE PATRON OF PHYSICIANS. What is held is real, and none of it establishes the title. The strongest is Benedict XVI at the General Audience of 19 October 2011, greeting a pilgrimage of the Polish health service, and WHAT HE SAID WAS SAID IN POLISH: “Za wstawiennictwem świętego Łukasza, patrona Służby Zdrowia” — through the intercession of Saint Luke, patron of the Health Service. That is the wording this record follows, because Polish is the language it was delivered in. Twice more a pope describes an association’s own devotion rather than the Church’s: John Paul II to Italian Catholic doctors on 28 December 1978, invoking Saint Luke “medico caro” (Col 4,14), “che voi onorate come patrono” — whom you honour as patron; and Benedict XVI on 18 October 2006 greeting the Catholic Doctors of Pistoia, “che oggi ricordano il loro patrono, il medico san Luca”. Francis, in 2021 and 2024, calls him “the beloved physician” and attaches no title at all, quoting Colossians as the encyclopedia does. No declaring act is held, so nothing is claimed.
- THE SEARCH BEHIND THAT NEGATIVE, AND WHERE THE EVIDENCE TURNED OUT TO LIVE. Every document held for him was searched for “patron” when this was checked, in August 2026. The Holy See’s own search was then run over vatican.va, in ASCII. The queries were the claimed titles themselves — “patron of physicians”, “patron of doctors”, “patron of painters” and “proclaimed patron of physicians”. The Italian was searched for “patrono dei pittori”. Every one of them returned nothing. “patrono dei medici” returned exactly one document, the 2011 audience above. THE ENGLISH EDITIONS ARE THE WRONG PLACE TO LOOK FOR THIS SAINT: every patronage mention held for him sits in a greetings section, which each edition carries only for its own language group, so the English edition of the 2011 audience has none of it and the Italian has two.
- THE PAINTER OF THE VIRGIN IS LATE, AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA TURNS IT INTO A FIGURE OF SPEECH. It reports the tradition and dates it: “He is called a painter by Nicephorus Callistus (fourteenth century), and by the Menology of Basil II, A.D. 980”, and of the picture at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome that it “can be traced to A.D. 847”. The earliest of those is eight centuries after he lived. The article then reinterprets the whole thing, following Plummer: he was an artist “at least to the extent that his graphic descriptions of the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Shepherds. Presentation, the Shepherd and lost sheep, etc., have become the inspiring and favourite themes of Christian painters”, and “St. Luke is a painter in words”. Nothing on vatican.va calls him patron of painters or of artists; the title patron of artists there belongs to somebody else, Benedict XVI recording on 21 November 2009 that John Paul II “aveva proclamato patrono degli artisti il Beato Angelico”.
- WHAT HE WROTE IS LEFT WHERE THE SOURCES LEAVE IT. The Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles have both come down under his name, and the article treats the attribution as settled while spending nine of its ten sections arguing the case. This record reports that two books are his by tradition and their combined length — his two books “are about as long as St. Paul’s fourteen Epistles” — and claims nothing about composition, date or sources. Same treatment as Matthew and as John the Apostle, whose records leave authorship open because their documents do.
- The feast is 18 October, taken from the calendar rather than from the life. The universal calendar for October lists “St Luke, Evangelist” against 18 and grades it “feast”, and the United States bishops’ calendars for 2026 and 2027 both print “Saint Luke, Evangelist” on that day. It is also the date that explains several documents held here: three of the eleven vatican.va texts are dated 18 or 19 October and mention him only because his feast had just fallen.