St. Titus
What is St. Titus the patron saint of?
Who was St. Titus?
What happened to the relic of St. Titus’s head?
St. Titus (flourished 1st century ce—died, traditionally Crete; Western feast day January 26 [with St. Timothy], Eastern feast day August 25) was a disciple of St. Paul the Apostle, for whom he served as secretary. According to tradition, he was the first bishop of Crete.
Known from New Testament allusions in Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Letters, Titus was a Gentile convert whom Paul, in contrast to his expediency in St. Timothy’s case, refused to allow to be circumcised (Galatians 2) at Jerusalem when the Jewish-Christian party demanded this concession to religious tradition. He also appears in connection with the Corinthian church, where he was lauded by Paul.
Titus was specially entrusted with organizing the alms collection for poor Christians of Judaea and evidently acted as a commissioner of Paul at Corinth, where he replaced Timothy. According to 2 Timothy 4:10, he made a subsequent mission to Dalmatia, but The Letter of Paul to Titus, which contains the rule of episcopal life, implies that he superintended a zealous apostolate in Crete as Paul’s delegate. Later tradition made him bishop of Crete.
In 1966 his head was returned from Venice, where the relic had been venerated at St. Mark’s since the 9th century, to the Church of St. Titus in Iráklion (Herakleion) in Crete.
