Bartholomew the Apostle

Life events

1. Other

   Bartholomew was counted among the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, listed by name in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts of the Apostles. Most modern scholars identify him with Nathanael, who appears in John 1:45–51 and 21:2.

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 also attests this tradition when discussing Pantaenus's 2nd-century reported visit to India.

3. Pilgrimage

   Tradition records Bartholomew's missionary work in Mesopotamia, Parthia, Lycaonia, and Ethiopia, though which region was primary remains divided in scholarship; later traditions add Arabia and the Konkan coast near Bombay.

4. Pilgrimage

   Together with the apostle Jude Thaddeus, Bartholomew is credited in Armenian tradition with preaching Christianity in Greater Armenia in the 1st century — a mission held to have laid the groundwork for Armenia's adoption of Christianity as the state religion in 301.

5. Martyred

   In the predominant Hellenic tradition, Bartholomew was executed at Albanopolis in Armenia after converting King Polymius to Christianity; Prince Astyages, Polymius's brother, ordered his torture and death. The name Polymius does not appear in Arsacid dynastic records; other accounts name the king as Agrippa (identified with Tigranes VI) or Sanatruk.

6. Translated

   The 6th-century writer Theodorus Lector recorded that around 507 the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I Dicorus gave Bartholomew's body to the city of Daras in Mesopotamia. Gregory of Tours later explained a relic presence at Lipari, Sicily, by the body having washed ashore miraculously.

7. Translated

   In 838 a large piece of Bartholomew's skin and many bones were transferred from Lipari to Benevento, where they remain in the Basilica San Bartolomeo. In 983 Emperor Otto II gave a further portion to Rome; it is kept at San Bartolomeo all'Isola, built on the site of the ancient temple of Asclepius.

8. Other

   The 13th-century Saint Bartholomew Monastery was built at the presumed site of his martyrdom in Vaspurakan, Greater Armenia, in the region now part of southeastern Turkey.

Relationships

Documented claims

• The name Bartholomew derives from Imperial Aramaic bar-Tolmay, meaning 'son of Tolmai' or 'son of the furrows'; the Greek form is Βαρθολομαῖος. (certain)
• The Armenian Apostolic Church honours Bartholomew and Thaddeus as its co-patron saints; tradition further identifies Bartholomew as the second Catholicos-Patriarch of that church. (plausible)
• Standard iconography depicts Bartholomew holding his own flayed skin and the knife used to skin him — a motif prominent in Michelangelo's Last Judgement (1541) and Marco d'Agrate's marble sculpture St Bartholomew Flayed (1562). (certain)
• Because of his martyrdom by flaying, Bartholomew became the patron of tanners, leatherworkers, bookbinders, glove makers, plasterers, tailors, butchers, farmers, and housepainters. (likely)
• San Bartolomeo all'Isola in Rome, which houses a portion of Bartholomew's relics, was built on the site of the ancient temple of Asclepius; this medical association contributed to Bartholomew's name becoming linked with hospitals. (likely)

Sources

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