TROPHIMUS (Τρόφυμος, "Nourished", "Pupil"), Saint. – A Christian of Ephesus and companion of St. Paul, of whose arrest in 58 he was the involuntary cause.

He was with the Apostle at the end of his third missionary journey, together with Tychicus (v.) and five or six others (Acts 20:4-5), with the same probable commission. In Jerusalem he was seen with Paul by some Jews from the proconsular province of Asia, who, thinking he had been brought by him, though a pagan and uncircumcised, into the inner court of the Temple, reserved for the Israelites, stirred up a riot, in which Paul was arrested by the Roman tribune Claudius Lysias (Acts 21:27-33). In 66-67, while he was following the Apostle on his last journey to the East, an illness forced him to stop at Miletus (II Tim. 4:20). According to C. Spicq, G. Ricciotti, P. De Ambroggi, perhaps Paul was already under arrest at that time and certain persons were accompanying him, among them T.

TROPHIMUS, saint - St. T. Fresco of the 12th century - Nerezi (Macedonia), church of St. Panteleimon(from L'art médiéval yougoslave, Paris 1958)

The Roman Martyrology commemorates T. on December 29 as bishop of Arles and martyr; the tradition that St. Paul established him bishop of Arles on his journey to Spain hardly agrees with II Tim. 4:20. For the Greeks T. was one of the 70 disciples and was beheaded under Nero after St. Paul.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: Acta SS. Augusti, I, ed. Antwerp 1723, p. 314; J. Knabenbauer, Epistolae ad Thess. Tim. et ad Philem., Paris 1913, p. 346; Martyr. Romanum, p. 607; J. Renié, Actes des Apôtres (La S.te Bible by L. Pirot.-A. Clamer, XI, 1), Paris 1949, p. 275; G. Ricciotti, Le lettere di s. Paolo, Rome 1949, p. 503.

Luigi Vagaggini

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

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