Accused of blasphemy at his trial, he made a speech denouncing the Jewish authorities who were sitting in judgment on him[3] and was then stoned to death.

[7] Artistic representations often show Stephen with a crown symbolising martyrdom, three stones, martyr's palm frond, censer, and often holding a miniature church building.

[8] As another deacon, Nicholas of Antioch, is specifically stated to have been a convert to Judaism, it may be assumed that Stephen was born Jewish, but nothing more is known about his previous life.

[5] The reason for the appointment of the deacons is stated to have been dissatisfaction among Hellenistic Jews that their widows were being slighted in preference to Hebrew ones in the daily distribution of food.

They dragged him to appear before the Sanhedrin, the supreme legal court of Jewish elders, accusing him of preaching against the Second Temple and the Torah.

[12] Stephen faced two accusations: that he had declared that Jesus would destroy the Temple in Jerusalem and that he had changed the customs of Moses.

Pope Benedict XVI stated in 2012 that Stephen appealed to the Jewish scriptures to prove how the laws of Moses were not subverted by Jesus but were instead being fulfilled.

[17] However, Stephen looked up and cried, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God."

[18][19] The people from the crowd, who threw the first stones,[20][18] laid their coats down so as to be able to do this, at the feet of a young man named Saul (later identified as Paul the Apostle).

[29] That Jacob's body was carried to a final resting place in Shechem is not recorded in Genesis, though it does not exclude the possibility that his bones were transferred to Shechem for a final burial place, as was done with the bones of Jacob's son Joseph, as described in Joshua 24:32 Other scholars consider these and other discrepancies as errors.

[26] Another possibility is that the discrepancies come from an ancient Jewish tradition which was not included in the scriptures or may have been popular among people of Jerusalem who were not scribes.

[18] The criticism of traditional Jewish belief and practice in Stephen's speech is very strong – when he says God does not live in a dwelling "made by human hands", referring to the Temple, he is using an expression often employed by Biblical texts to describe idols.

– "Lord Jesus, receive my soul!”[32] Acts 8:2[33] says "devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him," but the location where he was buried is not specified.

After that, the relics of the protomartyr were taken in procession to the Church of Hagia Sion on 26 December 415, making it the date for the feast of Saint Stephen.

[35] In 439, the relics were translated to a new church north of the Damascus Gate built by the empress Aelia Eudocia in honor of Saint Stephen.

[37] A different tradition is documented from the end of the Crusader period, after the disappearance of the Byzantine church: as Christian pilgrims were prohibited from approaching the militarily exposed northern city wall, the name "Saint Stephen's Gate" was transferred to the still accessible eastern gate, which bears this name until this day.

[38] The relics of the protomartyr were later translated to Rome by Pope Pelagius II during the construction of the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura.

In his book The City of God, Augustine of Hippo describes the many miracles that occurred when part of the relics of Saint Stephen were brought to Africa.

It is a public holiday in many nations that are of historic Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran traditions, including Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Catalonia and the Balearic Isles.

Among the most notable are the two sites in Jerusalem held by different traditions to be the place of his martyrdom, the Salesian monastery of Beit Jimal in Israel held to be the place where his remains were miraculously found, and the church of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura in Rome, where the saint's remains are said to be buried.