By Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos
Luke, a native of Antioch, came from a lineage located in Coele-Syria. He was a physician by profession, and thoroughly skilled in the art of painting.
In Thebes, the seven-gated city, he encountered the wondrous Paul, and abandoning his ancestral error, he approached Christ. Instead of healing bodies, he devoted himself to the healing of souls.
Moreover, the Gospel according to himself was written under the dictation of Paul. Similarly, he also authored the Acts of the Apostles.
After traveling with Paul in Rome, he returned once again to Greece. Having guided many in the light of divine knowledge, he was suspended upon a fruitful olive tree by those who denied the Divine Word, for it was not dry wood suitable to be made into a cross, and he entrusted his soul to God, having reached the age of eighty, as they say.
And where his body was laid among many tombs, it is reported that it became a site for the prayers of the faithful. For God sent down medicinal eye-drops upon His divine tomb, as a symbol, I believe, of His own healing. Hence, His tomb became well-known to all.
It is said that He was the first to depict both the image of Christ and of the One who gave birth to Him in a divine manner, as well as the foremost apostles, through the art of painting, so that such a pious and most honorable work might be spread everywhere throughout the world.
His sacred relics, worthy of all veneration, were brought by Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, from Thebes by the Great Martyr Artemios, and likewise those of Andrew the First-Called from Patras in Achaia, and also those of Timothy the Apostle from Ephesus in Asia, to the city bearing his father's name, and reverently laid them in the enclosure of the sacred Apostles.
Source: From the Ecclesiastical History. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
It is said that He was the first to depict both the image of Christ and of the One who gave birth to Him in a divine manner, as well as the foremost apostles, through the art of painting, so that such a pious and most honorable work might be spread everywhere throughout the world.
His sacred relics, worthy of all veneration, were brought by Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, from Thebes by the Great Martyr Artemios, and likewise those of Andrew the First-Called from Patras in Achaia, and also those of Timothy the Apostle from Ephesus in Asia, to the city bearing his father's name, and reverently laid them in the enclosure of the sacred Apostles.
Source: From the Ecclesiastical History. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
