Red-Letter Day
Apostle
February 24
also known as Matthias, Matthaeus
Matthias the Apostle, chosen after the Ascension to fill the place left vacant by Judas Iscariot and numbered among the Twelve at Pentecost. His selection in Acts 1 is the sole canonical record of his life; the church remembers him as a faithful apostle whose obscurity in the New Testament is itself part of his witness.
In the days between the Ascension and Pentecost, about a hundred and twenty believers gathered in Jerusalem and waited. They had seen the Lord taken up; they had heard him promise the gift the Father would send; and they prayed.
Peter stood up among them. Judas, who had walked with Jesus through Galilee and Judea, who had heard the Sermon on the Mount and stood at the raising of Lazarus, had betrayed the Lord and was gone. His place among the Twelve was empty. Peter named what kind of man could fill it: one of those who had been with them "from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up" from them, so that he might "become with us a witness to his resurrection" (Acts 1:21-22 ESV).
Two men in the room met the criterion. One was Joseph called Barsabbas, surnamed Justus; the other was Matthias. Both had walked with the Lord through Galilee and Judea; both had stood within the company of disciples on the resurrection morning and on the day of his Ascension.
The gathered church prayed. "You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place" (Acts 1:24-25 ESV). It is the prayer the church has prayed at every ordination since: God knows the hearts; the church asks God to show.
They cast lots, by the ancient custom Israel had used to discern the Lord's will from the days of Joshua and Samuel. "The lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles" (Acts 1:26 ESV). Then Pentecost came, and the Holy Spirit was poured out, and Matthias stood with the Twelve when the church was born.
After that, the New Testament is silent. He is named in the apostolic list at the beginning of Acts and not named again. The church has always known what the silence means: the apostles went out into every quarter where the Lord sent them, and they preached, suffered, and died. Matthias preached too. The tradition the church received and remembered places his labor in Judea and his end as a martyr's. Some said he was stoned, some that he was beheaded; the medieval church at Trier kept his bones and called his shrine the only apostolic tomb north of the Alps.
How we know. The sole canonical witness to Matthias is Acts 1:13 (where he is named in the apostolic list after Pentecost) and Acts 1:15-26 (the selection narrative). Outside the New Testament the record is thin and consists of brief patristic notices, two short collections of attributed sayings preserved as fragments in Clement of Alexandria, and a body of later medieval expansions. There is no early vita of Matthias comparable to the accounts the church kept of Peter, John, Thomas, or Andrew.
Patristic notices. Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the early fourth century, names Matthias twice in his Ecclesiastical History. In Book 1 he identifies Matthias as one of the Seventy whom the Lord had sent out (Luke 10), promoted to the Twelve after the Ascension (EH 1.12.3, in McGiffert's translation in NPNF). In Book 3 he lists a Gospel of Matthias among the writings the church had rejected as not apostolic (EH 3.25.6, in the same translation). The Gospel of Matthias itself does not survive; only the notice of its rejection.
Clement of Alexandria, a generation earlier, quotes approvingly from what he calls the Traditions of Matthias (Greek Paradoseis), a short collection of moral sayings circulated under the apostle's name. In Stromata 2.9, in the Roberts and Donaldson rendering in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Clement attributes to this source a saying urging the believer to wonder at what stands before him as the first step of knowledge, and a counsel on disciplining the flesh as a help to the soul (Stromata 2.9, ANF). Further fragments appear in Stromata 4.6 and 7.13. Whether the sayings are authentically Matthias's or were composed in Alexandria and ascribed to him is contested. Clement received them as sayings from the apostolic memory; Eusebius later treated the related Gospel as spurious. Both notices stand together in the record.
Hippolytus of Rome, in the short patristic catalogue On the Twelve Apostles attributed to him, assigns Matthias's preaching to Judea and reports that he died in Jerusalem. The catalogue is brief and stylized, and its attribution to Hippolytus is itself questioned, but it preserves what the early church remembered as the field of Matthias's labor.
Later expansions. A Greek apocryphal narrative, the Acts of Andrew and Matthias among the Cannibals, makes Matthias the apostle who is kidnapped in a city of man-eaters and rescued by Andrew. The text dates from the fourth or fifth century and is a hagiographic romance, not an early witness; it belongs to a family of apocryphal acts of the apostles whose interest is theological and narrative rather than historical. A Latin Passio Matthiae circulated in the medieval west and is the basis of the Trier tradition that received Matthias's relics. The Trier translation of his bones in 1127, and the building of the Abbey of St. Matthias, are the load-bearing cult events for the western devotion to him.
What can be said. The canonical text, the patristic notices, and the apostolic catalogues together establish that Matthias was chosen to the Twelve, that he was remembered as preaching in Judea and as dying a martyr's death, and that a small body of moral sayings circulated under his name in Alexandria by the late second century. Beyond this the record does not extend. Modern historical scholarship treats the apocryphal acts as later legend, treats the Gospel of Matthias as lost beyond recovery, and divides on the authenticity of the Clementine fragments. The church's reading has held the selection of Matthias as the act of the risen Lord, the silence that follows as the silence of faithful work done, and the martyrdom as the seal of his apostolic witness.
Feast day. February 24 in the western kalendar (transferred to February 25 in leap years per the ACNA convention); August 9 in the Greek east. The 1969 Roman revision moved the feast to May 14, but the older date persists in Anglican and pre-conciliar Roman use.
Trier pilgrimage. The Abbey of St. Matthias at Trier kept his relics from the late patristic period; after the translation of his bones in 1127 it was called the only apostolic tomb north of the Alps, and pilgrims walked the Matthiasweg to it from across German-speaking Europe.
Weather lore. In Holstein and the German north, February 24 was kept as Mattheis-Tag with the proverb Matthias bricht das Eis, hat er keins, so macht er eins ("Matthias breaks the ice; if he finds none, he makes some"). The day was felt as the hinge of late winter.
Patronages. Carpenters, tailors, alcoholics in recovery, those afflicted by smallpox, and hope and perseverance under the lot.
Traditions of Matthias (fragments)(Greek, late 1st to early 2nd c. (attributed; preserved in Clement, late 2nd c.))
A short collection of moral sayings attributed to Matthias and quoted approvingly by Clement of Alexandria; surviving only as fragments embedded in Stromata 2.9, 4.6, and 7.13.
Public domain: CCEL - Clement, Stromata 2.9 (ANF 2)
Gospel of Matthias (lost)(Greek, 2nd c. (lost; known from Eusebius's notice))
A second-century work circulated under Matthias's name and listed by Eusebius among the writings the church rejected as not apostolic; the text itself does not survive.
Public domain: CCEL - Eusebius, EH 3.25.6 (NPNF2 1, the rejection notice)
Acts of Andrew and Matthias among the Cannibals(Greek, 4th to 5th c.)
A late-patristic Greek hagiographic romance pairing Andrew and Matthias; a believing-tradition reception of the apostles in narrative form rather than an early historical witness, and best read as such.
Public domain: CCEL - ANF vol. 8 (apocryphal acts)
Passio Matthiae(Latin, medieval (underlies the Trier cult))
The medieval Latin passion that underlies the Trier translation of Matthias's relics in 1127 and the western cult; not yet in a free critical edition online and best approached through scholarly summaries.
The Message of Acts (The Bible Speaks Today)(English, 1990)
John R. W. Stott's plainspoken believing-tradition exposition of Acts; the volume to pray with on the selection of Matthias and the first book to put in a thoughtful parishioner's hand.
The Fate of the Apostles(English, 2015)
Sean McDowell's believing-register survey of the martyrdom traditions for each of the Twelve; his chapter on Matthias is the most thorough single treatment in print of what can responsibly be said about his death.
Primary canonical source. Acts 1:13 ESV names Matthias in the apostolic list; Acts 1:15-26 ESV is the selection narrative and the sole canonical record of his life. The biblical-theology backdrop of the lot is Proverbs 16:33 ESV.
Patristic notices. Summarized in the History section, with links: Eusebius, EH 1.12.3 and EH 3.25.6 (NPNF, McGiffert); Clement, Stromata 2.9 and Stromata 4.6, 7.13 (ANF, Roberts and Donaldson); Hippolytus of Rome (so attributed), On the Twelve Apostles (ANF vol. 5).
Principal hagiography. The Greek Acts of Andrew and Matthias among the Cannibals (ANF vol. 8) and the medieval Latin Passio Matthiae; both are catalogued as primary-hagiography entries in the Works panel above.
Recommended modern works. Matthias has no in-print modern biography devoted to him alone; the honest pastoral recommendation routes the reader to a strong Acts commentary and to a recent survey of the apostolic martyrdoms.
John R. W. Stott's The Message of Acts (Bible Speaks Today, IVP, 1990) is the book to put in a thoughtful parishioner's hand: plainspoken believing exposition of the selection narrative as the church discerning the Lord's choice through prayer.
Sean McDowell's The Fate of the Apostles (Routledge, 2015) is the deeper pick: a believing-register survey of the martyrdom traditions for each of the Twelve, with the fullest single chapter in print on Matthias.
Further reading. John Foxe on Matthias in the Book of Martyrs (a popular tradition source, not a critical one) is at .
Almighty God, who in the place of Judas chose your faithful servant Matthias to be numbered among the Twelve: Grant that your Church, being delivered from false apostles, may always be guided and governed by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.