St. Stephen occupies the third niche on the north side of the Martyrs Portal. The story of his martyrdom is told in the sixth and seventh chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. At his first appearance in Acts, we are told that Stephen is “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” and “full of grace and power.” When he is brought before the council of religious authorities known as the Sanhedrin, “all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.”
John Angel’s Stephen is nothing if not angelic, following a centuries-old tradition of representing the martyr as a beardless youth, though the Biblical account says nothing about Stephen’s age. Accordingly, Angel gives us a Stephen with full lips, large eyes, long, slender neck, and a coiffure of abundant wavy hair. His hands hold the stones that killed him and that became the attribute by which one can easily distinguish him from other saints.
Stephen was a member of the company of believers that formed in Jerusalem around the apostles during the days following Pentecost, holding “all things in common” and “attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 3:44-46). As the number of believers increased, the apostles appointed Stephen and six others, to distribute food and minister to the needs of the assembled believers. They are considered the first deacons (from Greek diakonos, “servant”).
Stephen wears a garment that in later centuries became standard for deacons – a dalmatic, a calf-length, wide-sleeved tunic worn with a stole and over an alb. It is usually adorned with horizontal and/or vertical stripes and, at times, with tassels, like those on Stephen’s shoulders.
The pedestal depicts Stephen’s martyrdom by stoning, the punishment that Jewish law prescribed for blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16). It is on this charge that he is hauled before the Sanhedrin, the council of elders that nominally governed Jerusalem under the close oversight of the Roman authorities.
Invited to speak in his own defense, Stephen at first seems to seek common ground with the elders by delivering a learned discourse on the covenant between God and the children of Israel. He touches on Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, saying nothing that his listeners might find objectionable.
But as he concludes his testimony, Stephen suddenly becomes accusatory and confrontational. He questions the centrality of the Temple, continuing:
You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels but did not keep it.
At this, the outraged elders hustle Stephen outside and stone him to death, as depicted on the pedestal.
Stephen’s pedestal differs from other north portal pedestals in that it depicts a single scene with only four characters. Most of the other pedestals display two or three scenes of a narrative and as many as ten characters. The sculptor thus compels viewers to focus their attention on the central figure, Stephen standing with hands bound and his face reflecting patient acceptance of his painful death. Two stone-throwers flank him, though the account in Acts suggests that the stoning had a larger number of participants.
On the pedestal’s left face, a man stands alone holding the coats of the stone throwers. He is Saul, who himself will soon convert and become the apostle Paul. He will later recount: “When the blood of thy witness Stephen was shed, I also was standing by and approving and keeping the garments of those who killed him” (Acts 22:20).
Stephen is known as the “protomartyr” –the first of countless martyrs to come. Stephen was also the prototype of the death a Christian martyr should die – witnessing to his faith in the presence of his persecutors (“martyr” is Greek for “witness”), speaking truth to power, facing violent death calmly and courageously, and asking God to forgive his executioners.
The most important thing required of a Christian martyr is to be Christlike. The prototype of a martyr is nothing less than the Passion of Christ himself, depicted in the portal’s tympanum and friezes. Luke – the author of both Acts and the gospel that bears his name – draws explicit parallels between the Acts account of Stephen’s martyrdom and the gospel’s narrative of Jesus’s execution.
Both Stephen and Jesus face the same accusations: blaspheming and threatening to destroy the Temple. Both report similar visions to their persecutors. Jesus: “From now on the Son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God” (Luke 23:63); Stephen: “I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:58).
Likewise, Jesus and Stephen make similar statements at the point of death. Jesus: “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46); Stephen: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”(Acts 7:59). Stephen’s final words are “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60), echoing Jesus’s “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
More than a thousand years later, Stephen would be an exemplar to his north portal neighbor, Thomas Becket. After the catastrophic confrontation with Henry II that drove him to flee England, Thomas left the castle and stopped at a nearby church where, as historian John Guy recounts:
… somewhat provocatively, he put on the pallium, the defining symbol of his office as primate, and said the special mass used on St. Stephen’s Day in honor of the first Christian martyr, in which the introit was a passage from Psalms beginning: “Princes also did sit and speak against me” (Psalm 119:23).
Another image of Stephen’s stoning can be seen in the Acts of the Apostles window in St. Ansgar’s Chapel.
For a modern take on St. Stephen, may I suggest the Grateful Dead’s “St. Stephen,” released in 1968. “Wherever he goes, the people all complain,” the song says to remind us that Stephen’s preaching was denounced as blasphemous.
Robert Hunter’s elusive lyrics raise the question of whether the other side of the apparent courage and conviction that Stephen displays in the Acts of the Apostles account may be unspoken doubts and uncertainty about whether a painful death will have any meaningful significance:
“Lady finger, dipped in moonlight / Writing “what for?” across the morning sky…”
“Did he doubt or did he try? Answers a-plenty in the by and by.”
“Did it matter, does it now? / Stephen would answer if he only knew how.”
The song would make a good starting point for considering the meaning of martyrdom in a world where the worst instances of human suffering can disappear from the news cycle in a matter of hours.
Fun fact: The memorial service for Grateful Dead founder Jerry Garcia was conducted at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Marin County, California.
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Sources:
- “St. Stephen” in The Golden Legend, William Caxton translation, 1483. E-text by Paul Halsall. https://www.christianiconography.info/goldenLegend/
- Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Acts of the Apostles: A new translation with introduction and commentary (Yale University Press, 1998).
- Guy, John. Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel (Random House, 2012).
- The author’s recollections of his trip to Woodstock in 1969.