Crispus of Corinth

The Holy Apostle Crispus was the ruler of the synagogue at Corinth, baptised by the Apostle Paul and counted among the seventy apostles. He is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (18:8) and in the first Epistle to the Corinthians (1:14). His feast is on 4 January, in the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles.

The Acts of the Apostles tell that, after Paul left Athens and came to Corinth, every Sabbath he spoke in the synagogue and persuaded Jews and Greeks. Because they opposed and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them: Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean; from now on I will go to the Gentiles. Then Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptised. Paul mentions that he himself baptised Crispus.

Crispus remained a faithful disciple of Paul. According to the Eastern tradition, the apostle made him bishop on the island of Aegina, near Athens; the Menaion of Demetrius of Rostov says that he was bishop at the island of Aegina, near the Peloponnese, between the Aegean and the Ionian seas. Other sources call him bishop of Chalcedon. No news has been preserved of the place and manner of his death, nor whether he was a martyr. In the service of the day of his commemoration he is called a most God-⁠seeing luminary. The Catholic Church commemorates him on 4 October.