John the Evangelist is considered to be the Apostle John, one of Jesus’s original 12. He was born c.AD6 but is believed to be the only apostle to have lived a life of longevity and not be martyred for his faith, dying in c.AD100.

John is strongly associated with the city Ephesus: it is claimed that he lived his prominent life there and is buried in the city. He is known as the son of Salome, as well as the younger brother of St James, also an original Apostle. Alongside, St Peter and St James, the three of them are referenced in the Gospels of the New Testament as particularly close to Jesus.

St John is considered as one of the four evangelist authors of the Gospels of the Bible in the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, and Luke being the other three. Despite the centuries-old debate of St John’s authorship of the Gospel of John, the three Epistles bearing his name plus the Book of Revelation, he is still considered by many people to be the real author.

Throughout the Gospel of John, perhaps in the attempt to provide anonymity to the author, the Apostle John is referred as a nameless man or as the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. The Book of Revelation is considered to have been written by St John when he was exiled to the island of Patmos.

In medieval art, John is often presented in an androgynous or feminized manner. Historians have related such portrayals to the circumstances of the believers for whom they were intended, eg that John's feminine features might have helped to make him more relatable to women.

The feast day of St. John the Evangelist is December 27th. St John is known to be a patron saint of a prolific nature, but he is mainly identified as the patron saint of love, loyalty, friendships, and authors.

Picture above: St John portrayed in stained glass at St Aidan's Cathedral, County Wexford in Ireland. Photograph by Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons