St. Matthew the Apostle
Four words carry him: “he rose and followed him”. Jesus called a man everyone else had written off, at his table, in the middle of a job nobody admired, and he got up and went — leaving the money behind and taking Jesus home to dinner with the rest of the tax collectors.
Canonized
No year of birth or death appears in any document held. Nothing survives that would fix either: the encyclopedia says plainly that “Of Matthew’s subsequent career we have only inaccurate or legendary data”, and Benedict XVI opens his portrait by granting that “it is almost impossible to paint a complete picture of him because the information we have of him is scarce and fragmentary”. The one date that is firm is not a date in his life: his feast is 21 September in the Latin Church and 16 November in the Greek.
Matthew sat in the custom house at Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, collecting duties for Herod Antipas. Mark and Luke tell the same scene and call the man Levi; the encyclopedia takes Levi for his original name and Matthew — gift of God — for the name he was known by afterwards.
It was not a respectable job. He handled money the Pharisees considered impure, and he worked for a foreign power that could set its tributes as it liked. The Gospels name his trade in the same breath as sinners, prostitutes and extortioners, and Benedict XVI is blunt about what that meant: Jesus took into his closest friends a man his own people counted a public sinner.
Jesus passed the tax office and said two words to him. Matthew rose and followed him. Then he gave Jesus dinner at his house, with other tax collectors at the table, and when the Pharisees objected Jesus answered that the healthy have no need of a physician — he had come to call sinners, not the righteous. John Chrysostom noticed that the Gospels name the trade only for some of the apostles, and that his was the least admired of them.
After that he is in the lists of the Twelve and little else: a witness of the Resurrection, present at the Ascension, in the upper room at Jerusalem praying with Mary and the others. Where he went afterwards is not known — the ancient writers send him to different countries and agree on none. From about the year 130 the Church has attributed the first Gospel to him, on the word of Papias, who said Matthew set the words down in Hebrew and everyone interpreted them as best they could. That Hebrew or Aramaic text is lost.
What they carried
He was despised. A tax collector handled money the Pharisees held to be impure and worked for an occupying power whose tributes could be set at will, and the Gospels pair his trade with sinners, with prostitutes and with extortioners. Following Jesus meant leaving the one thing that guaranteed him an income.
State of life
apostle · evangelist
Themes
conversion · mercy · ordinary work · being misjudged · writing
Benedict XVI on Matthew, the tax collector called (General Audience, 30 August 2006)
- Two documents carry this life, and a third is held for one sentence. The Catholic Encyclopedia article “St. Matthew” supplies the tax office at Capernaum, the duties collected for Herod Antipas, the Levi identification, the ancient writers on where he later preached, and the feast days. Benedict XVI’s General Audience of 30 August 2006, the catechesis on Matthew in his series on the Apostles, supplies the reading of the call, what a tax collector was in that society, John Chrysostom on the trades, and Papias on the Gospel. His Angelus of 21 September 2008, Matthew’s feast, adds one line the record uses for its shape rather than its facts: that Matthew went from being “last” to being “first”. Both editions of each vatican.va document were read against each other.
- THE ENGLISH EDITION OF THE 2006 AUDIENCE PUTS PAPIAS IN THE WRONG COUNTRY, AND THE ITALIAN IS WHY THIS RECORD DOES NOT. The English reads “Bishop Papias of Hierapolis in Frisia, in about the year 130”. Frisia is the North Sea coast of the Netherlands and Germany. The Italian edition of the same audience reads “Papia, Vescovo di Gerapoli in Frigia” — Phrygia, in Asia Minor, which is where Hierapolis is and where a bishop of about 130 could be. This record names Papias and the year and says nothing about the province, because one edition of one document is wrong and the other is right, and nothing held here settles which spelling the Holy See would stand behind.
- THE LEVI IDENTIFICATION IS AN ARGUMENT AND IS LEFT AS ONE. The encyclopedia reasons it from the Synoptic parallels — the man “sitting in the custom house” in Matthew 9:9 and the man “sitting at the receipt of custom” in Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 are the same, and “Hence Levi was the original name of the man who was subsequently called Matthew”. It then proposes, as a probability rather than a fact, that Jesus conferred the name Mattija at the call. Benedict XVI sets the two names side by side without arguing the point: Mark and Luke “also tell of the calling of the man sitting at the tax office, but they call him ‘Levi’”. The summary follows that second, quieter form — same scene, two names, no claim about who gave which — and Levi is carried as a name form so that a candidate named Levi reaches him.
- WHERE HE PREACHED AFTERWARDS IS NOT KNOWN AND THIS RECORD DOES NOT CHOOSE. The encyclopedia is explicit that “Ancient writers are not as one as to the countries evangelized by Matthew”, and then names them: Irenaeus has him preaching among the Hebrews, Clement of Alexandria for fifteen years, and almost all mention Ethiopia — with a warning the article makes itself, that the Ethiopia meant is “to the south of the Caspian Sea (not Ethiopia in Africa)”. Persia, Parthia, Macedonia and Syria appear too. The Roman Martyrology, which the article quotes, says he suffered martyrdom preaching in Æthiopia, without that caveat. Naming one of these would be choosing between documents that do not agree, so the summary says only that the writers send him to different countries.
- HE IS LISTED AS APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST AND NOT AS A MARTYR. That is a decision about what a structured list can carry, not a doubt about his death. The encyclopedia reports that Heracleon held he did not die a martyr, answers that the opinion “conflicts with all other ancient testimony”, dismisses the surviving account of the martyrdom as “absolutely devoid of historic value”, and then says of the rest that “it is not known whether he was burned, stoned, or beheaded”. A field listing what someone was would have to assert one side of that; the note on his historicity can hold both, and does.
- THE GOSPEL UNDER HIS NAME IS LEFT WHERE THE SOURCES LEAVE IT. Both documents report the ancient attribution and neither closes the question of what he wrote. Benedict XVI gives Papias, from about 130 — “Matthew set down the words (of the Lord) in the Hebrew tongue and everyone interpreted them as best he could” — and Eusebius, that he wrote for the Jews before going to other peoples, and then states that the Hebrew or Aramaic Gospel “is no longer extant”. The summary carries the attribution, the date and the loss, and claims nothing about the Greek text we have. Same treatment as John the Apostle, whose record leaves the authorship of the Fourth Gospel open because Benedict XVI left it open.
- THE PATRONYMIC IS SINGLE-SOURCED AND IS NOT BUILT ON. The encyclopedia gives “Matthew, the son of Alpheus (Mark 2:14)” and adds that he “was a Galilean, although Eusebius informs us that he was a Syrian”. Both are reported here and neither is developed: no held document says anything about his family, and nothing here connects him to any other apostle.
- NO PATRONAGE IS RECORDED, AND HE IS WIDELY CALLED THE PATRON OF ACCOUNTANTS AND BANKERS. Nothing held supports it, and unlike some cases the silence here is complete: the word “patron” does not occur in any of the five documents held for him, in either language. The Holy See’s own search was then run over vatican.va, in ASCII, in English and Italian. The queries were the titles themselves — “patron of accountants”, “patron of bankers”, “patron of tax collectors” and “proclaimed patron of accountants”. The Italian was searched for “patrono dei ragionieri” and “patrono dei banchieri”. Every one of them returned nothing. There is no declaring act, no papal use of a title, and not even a reference work describing the devotion — which is less than is held for Andrew, where at least the encyclopedia reports the custom. A search of this kind covers the phrasings it was given and nothing else; these are the phrasings, and they were run in August 2026.
- The feast is 21 September, taken from the calendar rather than from the life. The universal calendar for September lists “St Matthew, Apostle, Evangelist” against 21 and grades it “feast”, and the United States bishops’ calendars for 2026 and 2027 both print “Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist” on that day. The encyclopedia agrees and adds the other half of the picture: “The Latin Church celebrates the feast of St. Matthew on 21 September, and the Greek Church on 16 November.”