Bartholomew the Apostle of Armenia

Life events

1. Other

   Bartholomew was numbered among the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, listed by name in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and the Acts of the Apostles. Most modern scholars identify him with Nathanael, who appears in the Gospel of John (1:45–51).

2. Pilgrimage

   Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History (5:10) records that after the Ascension, Bartholomew undertook a missionary journey to India, where he left behind a copy of the Gospel of Matthew; Jerome corroborates the tradition in the late 4th century.

3. Pilgrimage

   Tradition credits Bartholomew with missionary activity in Mesopotamia, Parthia, and in some accounts Lycaonia and Ethiopia, before his final mission to Greater Armenia.

4. Pilgrimage

   Together with the apostle Jude Thaddaeus, Bartholomew is reputed to have preached Christianity in Armenia in the 1st century. Armenian tradition holds that the kingdom's adoption of Christianity as a state religion in 301 traces to their mission, and that Bartholomew served as the second Catholicos-Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

5. Martyred

   In the Hellenic tradition, Bartholomew was executed in Albanopolis in Armenia after converting the local king Polymius to Christianity. Polymius's brother Prince Astyages, fearing Roman backlash, ordered Bartholomew's torture and execution by flaying; the name Polymius does not appear in Arsacid dynastic records, and other accounts name the king as Agrippa or Sanatruk.

6. Translated

   The 6th-century writer Theodorus Lector recorded that around 507 Byzantine emperor Anastasius I Dicorus gave Bartholomew's body to the refounded city of Daras in Mesopotamia. Gregory of Tours separately explained relics at Lipari (Sicily) by the body having washed ashore miraculously; these were translated to Benevento in 838, where they remain in the Basilica San Bartolomeo.

7. Translated

   In 983 Emperor Otto II gave a portion of Bartholomew's relics to Rome, where they were conserved at San Bartolomeo all'Isola — built on the site of the ancient temple of Asclepius — linking his cult to the city's medical heritage.

8. Other

   The 13th-century Saint Bartholomew Monastery was constructed in Vaspurakan, Greater Armenia (now in southeastern Turkey), at the site traditionally identified as the apostle's martyrdom.

Relationships

Documented claims

• The name Bartholomew derives from Imperial Aramaic bar-Tolmay, 'son of Tolmai' or 'son of the furrows'; most scholars today identify him with Nathanael of the Gospel of John, though Anne Catherine Emmerich's visions held the two to be distinct individuals. (likely)
• Bartholomew is most commonly depicted holding his flayed skin and the knife used to skin him — a motif dominant since the 16th century. Michelangelo included it in the Last Judgement; Marco d'Agrate's 1562 marble shows him wrapped in his own skin with every muscle and vein exposed as an anatomical study. (certain)
• Because of his martyrdom by flaying, Bartholomew became patron of tanners, leatherworkers, bookbinders, butchers, glove makers, tailors, plasterers, farmers, and housepainters; his relic site's association with Asclepius's temple further linked his name to hospitals. (likely)
• Feast days differ across traditions: Eastern Orthodox on June 11 (with August 25 for the relic translation and June 30 with the Twelve Apostles); Roman Catholic and Anglican on August 24; Coptic Orthodox on the first day of Thout (currently 11 September). (certain)
• Three distinct accounts of Bartholomew's death circulated in early Christianity: drowning after being beaten and cast into the sea; beheading; and flaying alive — the last becoming the dominant tradition in Western art and iconography. (plausible)