Trophimus (Τρόφυμος, "Nourished", "Pupil"), Saint

TROPHIMUS (Τρόφυμος, “nurtured,” “disciple”), Saint. – A Christian from Ephesus and companion of St. Paul, whose arrest in A.D. 58 he involuntarily occasioned.

He was with the Apostle at the end of his third missionary journey, together with Tychicus (q.v.) and five or six others (Acts 20:4–5), probably with a similar mission. In Jerusalem he was seen by certain Asiatic Jews from the province, who, supposing that he had been brought by Paul into the inner court of the Temple, which was forbidden to Gentiles, raised a tumult in which Paul was arrested by the Roman tribune Claudius Lysias (Acts 21:27–33). In A.D. 66–67, while accompanying the Apostle on his final journey to the East, illness compelled him to remain at Miletus (2 Tim 4:20). According to C. Spicq, G. Ricciotti, and P. De Ambroggi, Paul may already have been under arrest at that time, and some persons accompanied him, among them T.

TROPHIMUS, Saint – St. T. Fresco, 12th cent. – Nerezi (Macedonia), Church of St. Panteleimon

The Roman Martyrology commemorates T. on 29 December as bishop of Arles and martyr; the tradition that St. Paul established him as bishop of Arles during his journey to Spain is scarcely consistent with 2 Tim 4:20. For the Greeks, T. was one of the Seventy Disciples and was beheaded under Nero after St. Paul.