Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

Matthew was a tax collector at Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, in the service of Herod Antipas. The Gospel that bears his name tells that Jesus saw him sitting at the tax booth and said “Follow me”, and he got up and followed; Mark and Luke tell the same of a tax collector named Levi, and the two are usually taken as one man. Jesus then ate at his house with tax collectors and sinners, to the scandal of the Pharisees. Ancient writers from Papias onward name Matthew as the author of the first Gospel. Of his later life nothing certain is known: traditions send him to preach among the Jews, then to Ethiopia, Persia or Parthia, and the Western tradition remembers him as a martyr. Salerno claims his relics.