Bartholomew the Apostle
Bartholomew the Apostle appears in Michelangelo's Last Judgement holding his own flayed skin, along with the knife that removed it. He is one of the twelve apostles of Jesus named in the New Testament. Yet the New Testament gives him little more than a place on a list. Nearly everything else about him comes from tradition, rival claims and centuries of images.
Where did he travel, and why do scholars argue over whether his mission lay in India or somewhere closer to Africa? Who killed him, and why do the accounts disagree even about the king involved? How did a man with so thin a written record become the patron of so many trades, and the model for artists studying the human body?
The name Bartholomew is written in Greek as Βαρθολομαῖος and transliterated Bartholomaios. Behind it lies the form bar-Tolmay, which means son of Tolmai, or possibly son of the furrows. In other words, it began as a family label rather than a personal name.
Three Gospels list him among the Twelve: Matthew, Mark and Luke, known together as the Synoptic Gospels. The Acts of the Apostles repeats the listing.
The Gospel of John tells a different story. In chapter 1, verses 45-51, it introduces a man named Nathanael, and it mentions him again at 21:2. Most scholars today identify Nathanael with Bartholomew, so that one man carries two names.
Not every reader accepted that match. One visionary, born in 1774, flatly refused it.
Eusebius of Caesarea, in book 5, chapter 10 of his Ecclesiastical History, says that after the Ascension Bartholomew set out for India. He is said to have left a copy of the Gospel of Matthew behind. Other traditions send him to Mesopotamia and Parthia, and some accounts add Lycaonia and Ethiopia.
Two ancient witnesses stand behind the Indian mission. Eusebius wrote in the early 4th century, and Saint Jerome in the late 4th century. Both raise the subject while describing a reported visit to India by Saint Pantaenus in the 2nd century.
Two modern researchers, Fr A.C. Perumalil and Moraes, placed his work around Bombay on the Konkan coast. They suggested that the region may have been known in antiquity as the city of Kalyan.
Scholars have long split on the question. Neander in 1853 and Hunter in 1886 supported an Indian apostolate. Harnack in 1903 and Thurston in 1933 did not. The main objection is that the India of Eusebius and Jerome may really mean Ethiopia or Arabia Felix.
Islamic tradition offers its own itinerary. The Qur'an gives no names or numbers for the disciples of Jesus, but Muslim commentators largely agree with the New Testament list. The Andalusian scholar al-Qurtubi, quoting Ibn Ishaq, says that Ibn Talma, meaning Bartholomew, was sent to the Arab world. In the same passage, Thomas goes to Babylon and Philip to Africa.
Armenia offers the most famous road of all. Popular tradition says Bartholomew preached in India and then went on to Greater Armenia. With the apostle Jude Thaddeus, he is reputed to have brought Christianity there in the 1st century. In 301 the Armenian kingdom became the first state in history to embrace Christianity officially.
For that reason the Armenian Apostolic Church honours Bartholomew and Thaddeus as its patron saints. Tradition also counts Bartholomew as the second Catholicos-Patriarch of that church. Armenia is also where tradition places his death.
A single sentence in the tradition describes a drowning. Bartholomew is kidnapped, beaten unconscious and thrown into the sea. This is only one of several accounts of how he died.
The Hellenic tradition sets his execution in Albanopolis in Armenia. There he is said to have converted a local king named Polymius. The king's brother, Prince Astyages, feared a Roman backlash. He ordered the torture and execution of the apostle.
Historians find a problem with this version. No Armenian king of the Arsacid dynasty is recorded under the name Polymius, so the story looks ahistorical. Other accounts of the martyrdom give the king as Agrippa, identified with Tigranes VI, or as Sanatruk, king of Armenia.
In Vaspurakan, in Greater Armenia, the 13th-century Saint Bartholomew Monastery rose at the presumed site of the martyrdom. That region now lies in southeastern Turkey. His body, however, would travel far from Vaspurakan.
Anne Catherine Emmerich, who lived from 1774 to 1824, recorded the Visions of the Apostles, Martyrs and Saints. In her account, Bartholomew first preached in India. He made many converts there and left several disciples behind.
Her apostle then travelled east, passing through Japan, before turning back west by way of Arabia and the Red Sea to Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. In Abyssinia he converted King Polymius, the same name the Armenian story uses. He raised a man from the dead and silenced an idol that had spoken to the people.
At Bartholomew's command, the demon inside the idol confessed its deceit. The healings credited to the idol were illusions meant to keep the people loyal to it. The king and his household were baptized, and Bartholomew dedicated the former temple to the worship of the true God.
The priests of the old cult then accused him before Astyages, the king's brother. Astyages ordered his arrest and torture. Emmerich describes a martyrdom by flaying, during which Bartholomew kept preaching until he died. His followers recovered the body and buried it with honour, and a church was later built over the grave.
The vision ends with Astyages himself converting, while the idol priests die miserably soon after. Emmerich also gives Nathanael a separate life. In her visions, Nathanael evangelized Mauretania and Brittany and died in Tréguier, in Brittany.
Around 507, according to the 6th-century writer Theodorus Lector, the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I Dicorus gave Bartholomew's body to the city of Daras in Mesopotamia. The emperor had recently refounded that city.
A second tradition places the body on Lipari, a small island off Sicily. Gregory of Tours explained its presence there by saying it had washed ashore miraculously. A large piece of skin and many bones kept in the Cathedral of St. Bartholomew in Lipari were moved to Benevento in 838. They remain in the Basilica San Bartolomeo there.
In 983 Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, gave a portion of the relics to Rome. They are kept at San Bartolomeo all'Isola, a church founded on the site of the temple of Asclepius. In pagan times that temple was an important Roman medical centre. The link with medicine gradually tied Bartholomew's name to hospitals.
The calendars of the churches mark him on different days. The Eastern Orthodox Church venerates him on the 11th of June, and on the 30th of June with the twelve apostles. The 25th of August commemorates the transfer of his relics. The Coptic Orthodox Church marks his martyrdom on the first day of the month of Thout. That day falls on the 11th of September today, which matches the 29th of August in the Julian calendar.
The Roman General Calendar places his feast on the 24th of August. The Church of England and other Anglican churches keep a festival on the same day.
That August date became a traditional occasion for markets and fairs. The Bartholomew Fair was held in Smithfield, London, from the Middle Ages. It provided the setting for Ben Jonson's 1614 comedy of the same name.
St Bartholomew's Street Fair in Crewkerne, Somerset, is held each year at the start of September. It dates to Saxon times, and its major traders' market is recorded in the Domesday Book. Its charter is reputed to come from the reign of Henry III, who ruled from 1207 to 1272. The earliest surviving court record dates from 1280 and is held in the British Library.
Around 1340, the Florentine artist Pacino di Bonaguida painted the martyrdom in the Laudario of Sant'Agnese. This book of Italian hymns was made for the Compagnia di Sant'Agnese. The image has five scenes. In one, three torturers flay the arms and legs of Bartholomew, who is chained to a gate. On the right, he kneels in prayer before a rock with his own skin tied around his neck. His severed head lies on the ground.
The Luttrell Psalter, made between about 1325 and 1340, shows the same moment differently. Bartholomew lies on a surgical table, ringed by tormentors who work with golden knives.
Most often, artists show him holding his flayed skin and the knife used to remove it. Sometimes he drapes the skin around his body. In Spanish painting he is often shown with a chained demon. He is the most prominent flayed martyr in Christian art, and images of the flaying were popular in the 16th century. Medieval heraldry echoed the detail with flaying knives that had silver blades and gold handles, set on a red field.
Medieval manuscripts are themselves made from flayed and prepared skin. For that reason they carry a strong visual and mental link to the saint, and he often appears in lavish ones.
The manner of his death made him the patron of many trades. These include tanners, plasterers, tailors, leatherworkers, bookbinders, farmers, housepainters, butchers and glove makers. Guido da Siena's reliquary shutters show the saint being skinned by tanners. In Florence and other parts of Tuscany, he also became associated with salt, oil and cheese merchants.
A painter working in 1634 would shift the focus from the knife to the moment just before it.
Jusepe de Ribera's Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, painted in 1634, shows the apostle's final moments before the flaying. The executioner seems to hesitate, struck by the saint's active faith. His furrowed brow and partly lit face suggest doubt, and perhaps the chance of conversion. The painting is cusped on all four edges, so it has never been trimmed. Ribera meant the figures to be pressed together and cut off by the frame.
Marco d'Agrate carved St Bartholomew Flayed in 1562. The saint is wrapped in his own skin, with every muscle, vein and tendon visible. The statue works as a plain lesson in the structure of the human body.
Contemporary artists have followed that path. Gunther Von Hagens made The Skin Man in 2002, part of his Body Worlds work. A figure reminiscent of Bartholomew holds up his own skin, and it is made from real human tissue through plastination. Von Hagens intended it to teach the public how the body works and what healthy and unhealthy lifestyles do to it.
Damien Hirst's Exquisite Pain, from 2006, shows the saint in great anatomical detail. His skin hangs over his right arm, with a scalpel in one hand and scissors in the other. The scissors were inspired by Tim Burton's 1990 film Edward Scissorhands.
Francis Bacon placed Bartholomew in a very different setting. In his utopian tale New Atlantis, the people of Bensalem are devoted to reason and natural philosophy. About twenty years after the ascension of Christ, they find an ark floating off their shore. It holds the books of the Old and New Testaments and a letter from Bartholomew, who writes that an angel told him to set the ark adrift.
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Common questions
Who was Bartholomew the Apostle?
He was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus named in the New Testament. Most scholars today identify him with Nathanael, who appears in the Gospel of John.
What does the name Bartholomew mean?
It comes from bar-Tolmay, meaning son of Tolmai or possibly son of the furrows.
Where did Bartholomew preach?
Tradition sends him to India, Mesopotamia, Parthia, Lycaonia, Ethiopia and Greater Armenia. Scholars disagree about India, since the India named by Eusebius and Jerome may mean Ethiopia or Arabia Felix.
How did Bartholomew die?
Accounts differ. One says he was kidnapped, beaten unconscious and thrown into the sea. The Hellenic tradition says he was executed in Albanopolis in Armenia, and the artistic tradition emphasizes flaying.
Why is Bartholomew shown holding his own skin?
Artists depict him with his flayed skin and the knife used on him because of the manner of his martyrdom. This also made him patron saint of tanners, bookbinders, butchers and other trades.
Where are Bartholomew's relics kept?
A large piece of skin and many bones are in the Basilica San Bartolomeo in Benevento, and a portion is at San Bartolomeo all'Isola in Rome.
All sources
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