Bartholomew the Apostle

Bartholomew was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. He is named in the apostolic lists of the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles, where he commonly stands next to Philip. The name is a patronymic, from Aramaic bar-Tolmai, meaning son of Tolmai. Scripture itself records nothing of his birth, parentage, livelihood, or death. From the patristic period onward he has often been identified with Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, whom Philip brought to Jesus in the fourth Gospel and who was among those who met the risen Christ by the Sea of Tiberias. That identification, long accepted in East and West, accounts for the tradition that Bartholomew came from Cana; it is not stated in the New Testament, and some modern scholars keep the two names distinct.

Later Christian writers attributed to him a far-flung missionary work in the first century. Eusebius of Caesarea, citing the second-century Alexandrian teacher Pantaenus, says that Bartholomew had preached in India and had left behind a Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Matthew. Other traditions associate him with Mesopotamia, Parthia, Lycaonia, and Ethiopia. Armenian Christianity regards him, together with the apostle Jude Thaddeus, as a founder of the church in Armenia; both apostles are therefore principal patrons of the Armenian Apostolic Church. These itineraries cannot be verified from contemporary non-Christian evidence and belong to the church's early legendary geography of the apostolic mission.

Traditions of his martyrdom vary. The account that became dominant in Latin and much of Eastern hagiography holds that he was flayed alive and then beheaded at Albanopolis in Armenia, a locality whose precise identification remains disputed among sites in historical Armenia and Caucasian Albania. Other reports speak of crucifixion, drowning, or beheading without flaying. Because of the flaying, he is often shown in art holding a knife or his own skin, notably in Michelangelo's Last Judgment. According to medieval translation legends, relics were taken from the East to Lipari, moved to Benevento in the ninth century, and in 983 partly transferred by the emperor Otto III to the church of San Bartolomeo all'Isola in Rome, still a principal Western shrine. Further relics are claimed at Frankfurt Cathedral and at Canterbury.

His cult is apostolic and pre-congregational; he was never formally canonized by a later pope, nor was he Bishop of Rome or a patriarch of an autocephalous see, though churches in Armenia and India have claimed him as an apostolic founder. The Roman Catholic, Anglican, and some Lutheran calendars keep his feast on 24 August; the Eastern Orthodox Church on 11 June and 25 August; the Coptic Church on 1 Thout. He is patron of Armenia and of crafts that work with hides and blades—tanners, leather workers, bookbinders, butchers, cobblers, glovers, and trappers—as well as of plasterers and of those suffering from skin diseases, twitching, and neurological disorders. No historically secure evidence survives concerning a wife or children.