Biography
Matthias of Jerusalem
About Matthias of Jerusalem
Matthias of Jerusalem was one of the early bishops who led the city’s Jewish Christian community. Eusebius places him eighth in its succession, after John and before Philip. The list situates him among fifteen bishops of Hebrew descent who served between the apostolic age and the siege under Hadrian. This is the principal surviving evidence for his place in the community.
Eusebius also admits the limits of his information. He had not found a written chronology for these bishops and reports a tradition that their periods of leadership were short. His list establishes an order of succession; it does not supply a detailed account of Matthias’s childhood, appointment, daily ministry or final illness.
The Catholic Encyclopedia’s history of Jerusalem places Matthias’s death around 120. That conventional dating provides a useful early second-century setting, but it should not be mistaken for a securely recorded day or month. The same account locates him within the sequence of Jewish bishops before the later transformation of the city’s Christian leadership.
He must be distinguished from Matthias the Apostle. In discussing the apostle’s relics, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes an older scholarly question: whether some relics attributed to the apostle might instead belong to the bishop of Jerusalem who lived around 120.
Matthias remains significant as a named link in Jerusalem’s earliest recorded Christian leadership.
Wondering how to weigh the stories and sources? Learn how to read a saint biography.