The “All Saints Days” column for October 18: Saint Luke the Evangelist.
Remembered on 18 October Saint Luke the Evangelist. Saint Luke was born around 10 AD and is the author of the Gospel of the same name and the Acts of the Apostles, in which he describes the evolution and history of the first Christian communities. It was never directly mentioned in biblical texts, it seems that it is mentioned in the Letters of St. Paul to the Colossians (Col 4.14), to Philemon (Phm 24.2) and to Timothy (4.11), confirming that it was. faithful follower of St. Paul and who accompanied him on the second and third journeys. According to the so-called Anti-Marcionite Prologue to Mark, a text from the 2nd century, Luke was born in Antioch to a Syrian, non-Jewish family, and practiced the profession of doctor. According to his social status, he probably had a deep Hellenistic education which reappears in the texts he composed, written in fluent and elegant Greek. There is no information about his conversion to Christianity: according to the Muratorian Canon he did not know Jesus directly and it is likely that he came into contact with the thriving Christian community of Antioch around the 40s, and joined there with Paul who he arrived in 44. Later texts identify him and old stories with one of the seventy disciples that Jesus sent on a mission (Lk 10.1), or with an anonymous disciple of Emmaus (Lk 24.13-35) or with Lucius of Cyprus (Acts 13.1). Again according to the Prologue, the Evangelist remained celibate throughout his life and had no children; he died in Thebes at the age of 84 and was buried there. According to Gaudentius of Brescia (4th century, PL XX,962) and Gregory of Nazianzus he was martyred in Patras together with the Apostle Andrew. In the De Viris Illustribus of San Girolamo, we read that the bones of San Luca were transported to Constantinople and from there to Padua, where they lie in the basilica of Santa Giustina. The Muratorian Canon, Irenaeus de Lyons (Adversus Haereses 3, 1, 1) and the aforementioned anti-Marcionite Prologue ascribe to him the author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, which is a kind of continuation of it. Both works, which were probably written between 70-80 AD, are dedicated to a certain Theophilus, perhaps an eminent Christian, according to the custom of classical writers who used to dedicate their works to eminent figures. An ancient Christian tradition has it that Saint Luke was the first iconographer and that he painted pictures of the Madonna, Peter and Paul; many Byzantine images have been attributed to him, including the icon of the Madonna of Czestochowa, the icon of the Theotokos of Vladimir, the Constantinopolitan Madonna of Padua and the painting with the Virgin, known as Salus populi romani, preserved in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, in the Pauline Chapel. The tradition that Luca wants painter and initiator of the Christian artistic tradition occurs in the context of the iconoclastic controversy of the 8th – 9th century, when it was necessary to search for ancient early Christian traditions that would support the idea of an Apostolic origin of the use of holy images. The oldest attestation of the legend is the Treatise on the Holy Images by Andrew of Crete from the 8th century, in which the author declares that he is sure of the maximum accuracy of the portraits created by Saint Luke.
From a point of view Images Saint Luke the Evangelist is depicted primarily through the use of two iconographies: the first represents him next to a book or a penthus representing him as one of the four Evangelists. The latter, however, wants him in the guise of a painter according to the tradition that sees him as the first iconographer, but also for his extraordinary ability to scrupulously describe all the characters who had an influence in the life of Jesus, an ability that was also acquired thanks to his medical profession to human nature to observe. Its iconographic characteristic is always a winged bull, whose presence next to the Evangelist has different interpretations and traditions: according to St. Jerome it is due to the fact that he introduces in his Gospel as the first character Zechariah, the father of the Baptist, who, being a temple priest, offered bull sacrifices. Others, however, associate the emblem with his Gospel, which is focused on the sacrificial nature of Christ’s death, which is then transferred to the image of the bull. Saint Luke is the patron of archivists, artists, painters, sculptors, doctors, surgeons, notaries, carpenters, glass workers, tinkerers and writers.
