Ephesus was an important center for Early Christianity. Both St. John and St. Paul lived in the city at different times helping to spread the religion.
St. Paul worked with a congregation of followers organizing missionary activity into the hinterlands. Ephesus is vividly alluded to in Acts 19-20 of the bible, connecting the city to the Saint’s extended ministry. He made multiple missionary trips to the city and spent two and a half years in Ephesus during his third missionary journey until an uunfortunate dispute with the artisans who sold statues of Artemis at the Commercial Agora forced him to leave quickly. Paul preached that idols should not be worshiped, and the artisans lead a movement against him that eventually left Paul imprisoned and forced to flee the city.
St. John also spent a good deal of time in Ephesus. It is believed his Gospel may have been written in the town. It is believed that St. John lived near the city with the Virgin Mary. Since the 19th century, The House of the Virgin Mary, near Selçuk, has been considered the final home of Mary, mother of Jesusbased on visions related by a bedridden German nun named Anne Catherine Emmerich. The cross-shaped house has been a popular place for Catholic pilgrimages.
The Church of Mary near the harbor of Ephesus was the setting for the Third Ecumenical Council in 431. This council, known as the Universal Council established that the Virgin Mary was not only the mother of Jesus, but the mother of God, as Jesus was man and God in one. TheSecond Council of Ephesus was held in 449. However the council that came to be called the Robber Synod of Latrocinium or the Robber Council of Ephesus was so controversial that its acts were never approved by the Catholic Church.
The Cave of the Seven Sleepers is also near Ephesus. This is a legendary site where a group of Christian youths to escape persecution. According to both the Bible and the Koran, the men fell asleep in the cave and woke up hundreds of years later to find the city of Ephesus converted to Christianity.
John was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. Christian tradition holds that he outlived the other apostles. He is the only one not to die a martyr's death. The Church considers him the same person as John the Evangelist, John of Patmos, and the Beloved Disciple who was the author of several books of the New Testament.