Saint Titus

Basic Information

Titus was a leader of the Early Christian Church who worked closely with Saint Paul and later became Bishop of Crete. Although he does not appear in the Book of Acts, he is mentioned several times in Paul's letters, and is the stated recipient of Paul's Epistle to Titus.

He was a Greek convert to Christianity and served as Paul's secretary and interpreter. Paul sent him on missions to bring charitable donations to the Church in Jerusalem at a time when the city was suffering from a famine; and on another occasion acted as Paul's representative to mediate conflicts in the Church in the city of Corinth. Unlike Timothy, another of Paul's proteges who was a Jew of Greek descent, Paul did not urge Titus to undergo circumcision, suggesting that he was a Gentile.

According to tradition, later in his career Paul established Titus as a bishop on the island of Crete and that later he traveled to Dalmatia. The New Testament does not record his death, but there is a shrine dedicated to him in the city of Heraklion in Crete.

In the Catholic Church Calendar, he shares the same feast day, January 26, as his fellow pastor Timothy.

St Paul's Epistle to Titus is one of his Pastoral Letters, a personal letter giving advice about church leadership. Biblical scholars disagree as to whether the letter was actually written by Paul, or if it was composed by a later writer and credited to him. One notable peculiarity about this letter is that the writer makes reference to a famous philosophical conundrum. Paul writes: "One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, 'Cretans are always liars'." (Titus 1:12) This is a reference to the Epimenides paradox: "Epimenides the Cretan says, 'that all the Cretans are liars,' but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar."¹

Preliminary research² find Titus to be patron saint to the US Army Chaplain Department … and that there is at least one more St Titus (a Roman martyred during Alaric's sack of the city).

Sources

Bibliography

1. Galatians 2:1-3

2. 2 Corinthians 8: 16-24

3. Epistle to Titus

4. Wikipedia article: Saint Titus

Game and Story Use

• Titus could appear in a historical or time travel campaign set during the First Century
  • Since he's a lesser-known biblical figure, your players might not have preconceived notions about him
• He could also serve as a model for a character who is a young missionary commissioned by a more established saint.

Footnotes

1. The smartass solution to this "paradox" is that being "a liar" does not mean that everything you say is untrue, merely that you produce enough untruths that nothing you say can be trusted on its own merit.

2. That is, a few google searches