In the year 95, Saint John the Apostle, the beloved disciple of Our Lord, and Our Lady’s priest, was arrested at Ephesus and brought to Rome. He was there thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil. He was eighty-three years old at the time. He miraculously came out unharmed. In fear of him, the pagan Romans exiled him to the Island of Patmos. There he wrote his great prophetical book, the Apocalypse. He then returned to Ephesus where, in the year 96, he wrote his Gospel, and later his three Epistles. Saint John died in the year 100, when he was eighty-eight years old. He was the youngest of all the Apostles, but the last to leave this world. His body as well as his soul have been assumed into Heaven, as Saint Robert Bellarmine assures us and as the tradition of the Faith clearly indicates. When his grave was opened, there was found nothing but bread, and in the eleventh century, Saint Peter Damian tells us that miraculous bread was still being renewed there whenever the tomb of Saint John was opened.
Martyrdom of Saint John the Evangelist by Master of the Winkler Epitaph (details/source)
