Apostle Bartholomew

Bartholomew is numbered among the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ in the New Testament lists of Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:14, and Acts 1:13. The name is a patronymic from Aramaic bar-Talmai, meaning son of Talmai. In those catalogues he is regularly placed beside Philip. The Gospel of John never uses the name Bartholomew, but it does describe a disciple called Nathanael, of Cana in Galilee, whom Philip brought to Jesus (John 1:45-51; cf. John 21:2). From late antiquity onward, and especially in medieval liturgy and exegesis in both East and West, Bartholomew and Nathanael have commonly been treated as the same person. In the Johannine scene Jesus greets Nathanael as an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, and Nathanael confesses him as Son of God and King of Israel. Historians note that this identification, though traditional and liturgically widespread, is not stated in the New Testament itself and remains a matter of probability rather than demonstration.

Apart from his place in the lists of the Twelve and the possible Johannine notices, the canonical scriptures supply no further information about Bartholomew's family, trade, or later life. He is presumed, like most of the Twelve, to have been a Galilean Jew of the early first century. After the resurrection appearances and Pentecost, later Christian literature ascribes to him wide-ranging missionary activity. In the early fourth century Eusebius of Caesarea reported that the Alexandrian teacher Pantaenus, travelling in India in the later second century, found Christians who used a Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Matthew which they said the apostle Bartholomew had left with them. Jerome repeated the same tradition. Other ancient and medieval writers associate him with preaching in Mesopotamia, Parthia or Persia, Egypt, and Phrygia. Armenian ecclesiastical tradition, which became especially influential, presents Bartholomew and the apostle Jude Thaddeus as the First Illuminators of Armenia, missionaries who established the church there well before the kingdom's official conversion in the early fourth century.

Stories of his death are late, diverse, and historically unverifiable. The narrative that became dominant in the Latin West, and that shaped his iconography, is that he was flayed alive and afterwards beheaded. Medieval collections such as the Golden Legend located this passion at Albanopolis (sometimes called Urbanopolis) in Armenia, although the identification of that city is uncertain and has been linked by different authors to sites in historic Armenia or in Caucasian Albania. Alternative traditions speak of crucifixion, of drowning, or of martyrdom in India. No first- or second-century source confirms the place or manner of his death. Relics attributed to him have a complicated translation history: late antique reports speak of a shrine on the island of Lipari off Sicily; in the ninth century relics were moved to Benevento in southern Italy; and around the year 1000 the emperor Otto III founded a church on Tiber Island in Rome, the present Basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola, to house relics of the apostle. Other churches in East and West have also claimed portions of his relics.

In the Roman Rite the principal feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle is 24 August. The Byzantine rite commemorates him on 11 June together with the apostle Barnabas, and some Eastern calendars also note 25 August. Because he belongs to the apostolic college, his sanctity was recognized by immemorial cult rather than by any later process of beatification or canonization. He is invoked as a patron of Armenia and of occupations that use knives or work with hides and skins, including butchers, tanners, leather workers, bookbinders, cobblers, shoemakers, glovers, and trappers, as well as of plasterers. The flaying legend also made him a patron against skin diseases and neurological disorders. In Christian art he is frequently depicted holding a flaying knife or his own skin; Michelangelo famously included a flayed Bartholomew, with the artist's own face on the skin, in the Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel. His cult remains strong in Armenia, in Italy (especially Benevento and Rome), and in many local churches dedicated to him throughout Europe.