​Written by  Fr. Dennis O'Neill

According to the early Church historian Eusebius, Luke was a native of Antioch. This is supported by the special attention given to the Church of that city in the book of Acts, which was written by Luke himself. Luke was a gentile and a physician by trade. His high level of education is evidenced in the elevated style of Greek found in his writings. His claim to be writing actual history, his accurate use of ancient titles and names, and his many contacts with extra-biblical sources and archaeology have testified to his fidelity and credibility as an eyewitness reporter of the early Church. He was St. Paul’s companion in his travels and was his only companion when he was imprisoned in Rome at the end of his life.

​Afterwards, Luke is believed to have continued preaching the Gospel throughout Italy, Galatia, Dalmatia, and Macedon. There are differing opinions concerning the circumstances of his death; some say he was martyred, while others aver that he “suffered much for the faith” and lived into old age before dying in Bithynia (in modern western Turkey). While the Roman Martyrology says he died in Bithynia, Eastern tradition holds that he died at the age of 84 in Thebes, Greece.

The subsequent transfer of his remains to Constantinople is well-documented, having taken place in the year 357 during the reign of Emperor Constantius. Procopius and St. Jerome declare that his relics, along with those of St. Andrew the Apostle, were placed there in the Church of the Holy Apostles. (This church was demolished in the 15th century, but the Basilica of San Marco in Venice is modeled after it.) Luke’s relics were moved again during the “iconoclastic” (image-breaking) period, which swept throughout the Eastern Church in the eighth-ninth century. At this time, a priest named Urio fled Constantinople with the relics and brought them to Padua, where there was a Greek community residing at the time. In the year 899, the relics were hidden again while the Magyars (Hungarians) were sacking the city.

Finally, on April 14, 1117, they were brought out of hiding by Benedictine monks who, in 1313, enshrined them in a marble sarcophagus, which, in 1562, was put on permanent exhibition in the just-completed Basilica of Santa Giustina. 

In 1597. Pope Clement VIII gave a portion of these relics, along with some relics of St. Martin of Tours, to the church of St. Martin in Rottenburg, Germany. The original wooden church was built in 1280. In 1644, this church burned to the ground. While the shrine containing the relics was burned when the ceiling collapsed, the relics themselves survived and were enshrined in the new baroque church, which was built the next year and was eventually shifted from being the parish church to the cathedral of the town. Our relic of St. Luke was extracted from these relics. It was certified on April 17, 1871, by Bishop Karl Joseph Von Hefele of Rottenburg.

He was the perfect person to testify to their authenticity. Until he became bishop, he had been chairperson of the theology and Church history department at the University of Tubingen. He was the first Catholic theologian to introduce Christian archaeology to the academic curriculum (in 1840). And he was the author of a widely read edition of the Apostolic fathers and a seven-volume comprehensive history of the ecumenical councils of the Church. ​

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