Bartholomew the Apostle

Bartholomew was one of the Twelve Apostles and appears by name in all three Synoptic Gospels and in Acts, always listed alongside Philip. His name is Aramaic for 'son of Tolmai.' Many scholars and early Church writers identify him with Nathanael of Cana in the Gospel of John — the man Philip brought to Jesus, who asked with open skepticism whether anything good could come from Nazareth. Jesus greeted him as 'an Israelite in whom there is no deceit' and told him he had seen him under the fig tree before Philip ever called. That encounter, abrupt and interior, turned a doubter into a disciple. After Pentecost, Bartholomew traveled east with Jude Thaddeus. According to tradition, their mission carried them through Mesopotamia and Parthia before reaching Armenia, a highland kingdom on Rome's eastern frontier. There Bartholomew is credited with converting King Polymius and his court — a conversion preceded, in hagiographic accounts, by miracles: a man raised from the dead, and a local healing idol exposed when the demon within it confessed aloud that its supposed cures had been illusions. The royal conversion proved fatal. King Astyages, the brother of Polymius, ordered Bartholomew arrested for bringing his brother to the Christian faith. The tradition most firmly embedded in the Church holds that Bartholomew was flayed alive — his skin removed while he still lived — then crucified or beheaded. Alternative accounts differ on the final mode of execution, and no independent historical record survives to settle the question. What is certain is that he died as a martyr in Armenia, a church that venerates him and Jude Thaddeus as its founding apostles to this day. His relics traveled a long road to their present resting place. From Armenia they were carried to the island of Lipari, then to Benevento in southern Italy, and finally to Rome in 983 when Emperor Otto III transferred them to the church built in the apostle's honor on Tiber Island — where they remain. In Western art, Bartholomew is almost always shown holding a large knife and his own flayed skin. Michelangelo gave this image its most haunting form in the Last Judgment on the Sistine Chapel altar wall: Bartholomew grips his empty skin, and the face on that skin is widely read as a self-portrait of the painter. Whether or not Michelangelo intended the identification, the image lodged itself permanently in the Western imagination. Bartholomew is patron of bookbinders, tanners, leather workers, butchers, cobblers, and shoemakers — all trades that work with hide — as well as patron against nervous and neurological diseases. His feast is observed on August 24 in the Latin Church.