St Phillip the Apostle – companion of Bartholomew
Post 10 – nearly there!
St Phillip is reputed to have been a compatriot of Andrew and Peter, supposedly having come from the same city of Bethsaida – although he had a Greek name – Philip II of Macedon), spoke Greek and introduced the disciples to the Greek community.
He is always listed as the fifth disciple to join the group – and is reputed to have introduced the next disciple, Batholomew to the group.
Phillip’s greatest test whilst Jesus was alive was to solve the problem of feeding 5,000 people – so it was he who came back with the offering of five loaves and two small fishes to successfully feed a hungry multitude and as a result sometimes has the attribute of a basket of bread or a couple of small loaves .
After Christ’s resurrection the team dispersed in various directions but many of them continued to preach together – so Philip was sent with his sister Mariamne and Bartholomew to preach in Greece, Phrygia, and Syria.
I find it interesting that Mariamne is described in the Acts of Philip as a significant and important part of this apostolic team – whatever arguments rage against women priests these days – in the beginning of these missions it is told that this woman teaches and baptizes. Whilst her brother Philip converts and baptises men, Mariamne converts and baptises the women. She is strong in her faith and when challenged is tortured together with her brother and St Bartholomew.
Finally they come to Hierapolis, where Phillip threw out a demon from the temple – dramatically portrayed in the fresco below painted in the Strozzi Chapel in Florence’s Church of Santa Maria Novella by Filippino Lippi.
The team then enraged the proconsul of Hierapolis by converting his wife to Christianity – the wives of these leaders do seem to have been particularly susceptible to conversion so maybe Marianne was also good at her job – in fact for Gnostic readers Mariamne is believed to be Mary Magdalene – but that will have to be another story!
Unfortunately, the result of his wife’s conversion was that this allegedly snake -worshipping proconsul had all three – Philip, Bartholomew, and Mariamne, tortured and then Philip and Bartholomew were crucified upside-down by being hung on a tree upside down with irons in their heels and ankles..
St Phillip the Apostle somehow managed to continue to preach from his cross and persuaded the crowd to release his friend Bartholomew – insisting however that he himself , had to die there , upside down, in Hierapolis.
So St Batholomew goes on to meet his gruesome death elsewhere, and a further story has it that the proconsul of Hierapolis finally dealt with Phillip by having him beheaded.
St Phillip has been in the news again as recently as July 2011 when the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that archeologists had unearthed the Tomb of Saint Philip during excavations in Hierapolis – which is close to the Turkish city Denizli.
*An Italian professor Francesco D’Andria ,director of the Institute of Archaeological Heritage, Monuments and Sites at Italy’s National Research Council in Lecce, found the burial after intensive geophysical research at the World Heritage Site of Hierapolis, now called Pamukkale. He claims that the design of the Tomb, and writings on its walls, definitively prove it belonged to the martyred Phillip – the Apostle of Jesus.
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