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The Seven Deacons were leaders elected by the early Christian church to minister to the people of Jerusalem. They are described in the Acts of the Apostles, and are the subject of later traditions as well; for instance they are supposed to have been members of the Seventy Disciples who appear in the Gospel of Luke. The Seven Deacons were Stephen Protomartyr, Philip the Evangelist, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas.

Only Stephen and Philip are discussed in much detail in Acts. Stephen became the first martyr of the church when he was killed by a mob stirred up by Saul of Tarsus, the future Saint Paul. Philip evangelized in Samaria, where he converted Simon Magus and an Ethiopian eunuch, traditionally beginning the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Tradition calls Prochorus the nephew of Saint Stephen and a companion of John the Evangelist, who consecrated him bishop of Nicomedia in Bithynia (modern-day Turkey). He was traditionally ascribed the authorship of the apocryphal Acts of John, and was said to have ended his life as a martyr in Antioch in the 1st century.^[1] According to Caesar Baronius' Annales Ecclesiastici, now considered historically inaccurate, he was a Cypriot Jew who returned to his native island and died a martyr in 76. Other accounts say he was martyred in "Berj", an unidentified place possibly confused with Botrys. Timon was said to have been a Hellenized Jew who became a bishop in Greece or in Bosra, Syria; in the latter account, his preaching brought the ire of the local governor, who martyred him with fire. After preaching for years in Asia Minor, where Hippolytus claimed he was bishop of Soli (Pompeiopolis; though he may have been referring to Soli, Cyprus), he was said to have settled down in Macedonia, where he died at Philippi in 98 during Trajan's persecutions.

Nicholas was not remembered fondly by some early writers. According to Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses, the Nicolaitanes, a heretical sect condemned as early as the Book of Revelation, took their name from the deacon.^[2] In Philosophumena, Hippolytus writes he inspired the sect through his indifference to life and the pleasures of the flesh; his followers took this a a licence to give in to lust.^[3] The Catholic Encyclopedia records a story that after the Apostles reproached Nicholas for mistreating his beautiful wife on account of his jealousy, he left her and consented to anyone else marrying her, saying the flesh should be maltreated.^[1] In Stromata, Clement of Alexandria says the sect corrupted Nicholas' words, originally designed to check the pleasures of the body, to justify liscentiousness.^[4] The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the historicity of the story is debatable, though the Nicolaitanes themselves may have considered Nicholas their founder.^[1]