The Tax Collector Saint

During the life of Jesus, taxes were the bane of the Roman citizenry.  The Roman government left the burden of administration upon shoulders of provincial governments which answered to appointed Roman officials.  An office of the censor was established in each province, and it was this office that was responsible for ensuring the province taxes were collected for Rome.  It did not matter how these taxes were collected, just that they were.  Rome issued no rules or laws about tax collecting other than the fees assessed per province.  So taxes were farmed out.

Tax farming looked like this: the Censor needed to procure a flat amount of taxes per year from his province.  So and he accepted bids from local Publicans willing to buy the tax debt.  This way, the Censor was guaranteed the full amount owed to Rome and his position was secure for another year.  Now, the competition for the right to collect taxes was high as this was a potentially lucrative business.  So the Censor was not above tacking on an additional bidder’s fee in order to make his own profit.  Plus, he would owe his own income taxes.  Rome would expect its Censors to claim a 10% profit from the region’s taxes.  (So if the Censor charged his Publicans 15% each, he would make a tidy, tax-free profit after he paid taxes on his own expected income.)  The Publicans who were awarded their bids would then farm out the right to levy and collect taxes to his employees.  The tax collectors themselves would buy this right, most of the time at twice the cost of the Publican’s fee to the Censor.  Since there were no laws or rules governing tax collecting, the tax collectors themselves could and would use whatever means necessary to not only collect the taxes, but to recoup their losses and to collect their own profit.  So an itemized list of a man’s tax bill might look something like this: 1% (standardized by Rome) income tax, 10% grain crop tax, 15% liquid crop tax (olive oil, wine, etc.), 1% security tax, 6% emergency tax, 5% standing tax (a warehouse tax for merchandised stored longer than the designated timeframe for moving produce) and any other tax that the collector might choose to levy.  Needless to say, this was a system ripe for corruption and extortion.  To enforce payment of these taxes, collectors would hire mercenary soldiers that doubled as body guards (hence the security tax).

The Calling of Matthew by Henrik Terbrugghen, c. 1616

In the province of Judea, most of the Publicans and tax collectors were Jews who worked under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas.  These men were reviled and outcast as criminals.  Publicans, by virtue of their wealth and power, had a more respectable social standing in spite of being generally spurned.  But tax collectors who had daily contact with the people were social pariahs.  These men would have had to develop pretty thick skins, or be prone to solitude as they were treated on par with the unclean.  The apostle Matthew was one such man.

From what might be extrapolated from the Gospel of Luke, Matthew most likely was a Publican as well as a tax collector.  (To be sure, many interpretations view Publicans and tax collectors as one and the same.) He was sitting in the tax collector’s booth in Capernaum when Jesus found him and asked him to become a follower.  But when Matthew invited Jesus to dinner that night, it was to a banquet that had been planned for other tax collectors, implying that Matthew had others working for him.  Matthew (who was known as Levi until Jesus gave him his new name which means “gift from God”) was surely testing Jesus’ resolve to include him as a follower by inviting him to that dinner, because no law-abiding Jew would be caught dead at a banquet for tax collectors!  Jesus defended his decision to attend saying he came not for the righteous, but for the sinners.  Of course, such a statement concurs with the general consensus that tax collectors by their very profession were sinners. Because Matthew was more than merely a despised tax collector in his social standing, one might speculate that Jesus’ calling him had been an attempt to appeal to those with a higher social standing.  Matthew as an apostle had the potential to reach a whole new level of people.

Being a tax collector and a Publican, Matthew would have been well educated and able to speak all the local languages (or know others who could translate what he was unable to).  He would have direct contact with a wide spectrum of society including Herod Antipas himself.  Jesus acted with a cunning shrewdness when he asked Matthew to follow him, for he knew Matthew could reach a level of society previously inaccessible to his teachings.  In Matthew, he had the ideal role model of someone whom all of society regarded as clearly sinful.  Yet if Matthew could be saved, the message would have that much more influence.  Matthew was most often paired with Thomas, another clever maneuver by Jesus.  Thomas, the resident skeptic and Matthew with his depth and breadth of knowledge would make a formidable team.  One could speculate it would be difficult to counter their arguments.

Matthew spent most of his apostolic life in his own country, preaching to those for whom Jesus called him.  Encouraged by the successes of fellow Christian apostles, he is believed to have spent time on missionary visits to Persia and Egypt.  According to Heracleon, an ancient gnostic and historian, Matthew may have been one of the only apostles who died from old age rather than persecution and martyrdom, although others say he was martyred in Parthia or Egypt.  Yet there is little evidence of his death by violence.   In spite of considerable scholarly debate, Matthew is recognized at the author of the first Gospel.  Today in our Anglican tradition, we celebrate and commemorate St. Matthew on September 21.