be
present at the Transfiguration, and with them was nearest to Christ at
the agony in Gethsemane. With St. Peter he was sent to prepare the
last Passover. Like his brother St. James, he shared in the fervour of
his mother, Salome, who begged for them a special place of dignity in
the kingdom of Christ. They both wished to call down fire on a
Samaritan village, and St. John asked Jesus what was to be done with
the man whom they found casting out devils in His name. Their fiery
temperament caused our Lord to give them the surname of Boanerges
("sons of thunder"). In the fourth Gospel the name of John the son of
Zebedee is never mentioned, but there are several references to an
apostle whose name is not recorded, but can be intended for no other
than St. John. At the crucifixion this apostle was bidden by our Lord
to regard Mary as henceforth his mother, and the writer claims to have
been an eye-witness of the crucifixion. In the last chapter very
similar words are used to assert that the writer is he whom Jesus loved.

In Acts St. John appears with St. Peter as healing the lame {81} man at
the Beautiful Gate of the temple, and with St. Peter he goes to Samaria
to bestow the Holy Ghost on those whom Philip had baptized. He was
revered as one of the pillars of the Church when St. Paul visited
Jerusalem in A.D. 49 (Gal. ii. 9). It is remarkable that the Synoptic
Gospels, the fourth Gospel, Acts, and Galatians, all show St. John in
close connection with St. Peter. St. John's name occurs in the
Revelation, which has been attributed to him since the beginning of the
2nd century.

Numerous fragments of tradition concerning St. John are preserved by
early Christian writers. Tertullian, about A.D. 200, says that St.
John came to Rome, and was miraculously preserved from death when an
attempt was made to kill him in a cauldron of boiling oil. Tertullian
and Eusebius both say that he was banished to an island, and Eusebius
tells us that the island was Patmos, and that the banishment took place
in the time of Domitian. On the accession of Nerva, St. John removed
from Patmos to Ephesus, where he survived until the time of Trajan, who
became emperor in A.D. 98. Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, writing
about A.D. 190, speaks of St. John's tomb in that city, and says that
he wore the _petalon_, the high priest's mitre used in the Jewish
Church. We are told by other writers how he reclaimed a robber, how he
played with a t