Background
Saint Stephen is first mentioned in Acts of the Apostles as one of seven deacons appointed by the Apostles to distribute food and charitable aid to poorer members of the community in the early church.
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Saint Stephen
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In Acts 6:1-6, he appears as one of the seven "of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom" chosen by the community to exercise a ministry subordinate to that of the twelve apostles. The killing of Stephen began the persecution of a militant faction in the Jerusalem Church, a persecution in which Saul of Tarsus (the later St. Paul) played a leading role (Acts 8:1-3). It is clear from the account in Acts (6:14-8:1) that the central charge against Stephen was his proclaiming that "Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy" the Temple. This open repetition of Jesus's own words, whose insurrectionary threat to the Roman occupiers and their main Jewish collaborator, the Sadducee high priest, had been a principal cause for Jesus's crucifixion, was not tolerated by them. Stephen could not be brought to trial before the Sanhedrin, whose Pharisee majority would have acquitted him as it had just acquitted Peter (Acts 5:34-41), nor could he be charged by the Romans with proclaiming himself a king, like Jesus. Instead, a mob was formed which dragged him out of the city and, under the supervision of Saul (at the time a high official in the high priest's police force), stoned him to death. That the apostles were not targets of the subsequent persecution implies that they, unlike Stephen, were following a quietistic policy rather than resuming Jesus's open anti-Roman agitation. St. Stephen's feast day is December 26.
