Apostles Philemon, Archippus, and Apphia

Philemon was a wealthy Christian of Colossae in Phrygia, one of the converts of Paul's earlier preaching, whose house served as the meeting-place of the Colossian church (Philemon 1:2). Apphia was his wife, also a Christian, and Archippus their son — whom Paul greets in the same letter as "our fellow-soldier" (Philemon 1:2).

Paul's short letter to Philemon — the briefest of the Pauline epistles — was occasioned by the conversion of Philemon's runaway slave Onesimus, who had reached Paul in his Roman imprisonment, been instructed by him, and was now being sent back to his master with a letter from the apostle asking that he be received "no longer as a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved." The letter is the foundation of the Church's later teaching on the dignity of the slave and the brotherhood of all Christians.

Philemon afterwards served as bishop of Colossae (some traditions make him bishop of Gaza), Archippus as a bishop in the same region or in Asia Minor more broadly. During one of the periodic persecutions of the apostolic age — by some accounts under Nero — they were arrested, stoned, and finally beheaded together with Apphia. Their joint feast falls on November 22.