Ephesus, Patmos, and the Apostle Who Grew Old

The later tradition settles John at Ephesus, where he is said to have led the churches of Asia into old age, and where a great basilica was later raised over his reputed tomb. Irenaeus, who had known Polycarp, claimed Polycarp had known John, giving the Ephesian tradition an unusually short chain of memory, though the link is debated.

He is remembered as the one apostle who did not die a martyr. The book of Revelation places its author in exile on the island of Patmos, traditionally under the emperor Domitian, and later legend supplied trials survived rather than a death endured: a cup of poison drunk without harm, a cauldron of boiling oil from which he emerged unscathed. These are hagiographical and late, but they express the settled tradition that John alone among the twelve reached natural old age.

His symbol, from the four living creatures of Revelation and Ezekiel, is the eagle, taken to signify the soaring opening of his Gospel. Whatever the tangled history of the writings, the figure that Christianity venerates is the beloved disciple of the Fourth Gospel: the one who leaned on Jesus at the supper and was given charge of his mother at the cross.