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Bartholomew
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Saint Bartholomew was one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus. Bartholomew (transliterated "Vartholomeos") comes from the Aramaic bar-Tôlmay (??????????-????), meaning son of Tolmay (Ptolemy) or son of the furrows (perhaps a ploughman). Many have, based on this meaning, assumed it was not a given name, but a family name.
The festival of St Bartholomew is celebrated on August 24 in the western Church and on June 11 in the Eastern churches.
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Saint Bartholomew was one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus. Bartholomew (transliterated "Vartholomeos") comes from the Aramaic bar-Tôlmay (??????????-????), meaning son of Tolmay (Ptolemy) or son of the furrows (perhaps a ploughman). Many have, based on this meaning, assumed it was not a given name, but a family name.
The festival of St Bartholomew is celebrated on August 24 in the western Church and on June 11 in the Eastern churches. The Armenian Apostolic Church honours Saint Bartholomew, along with Saint Thaddeus as their patron saint. The Coptic Church remembers him on January 1. The festival in August has been a traditional occasion for markets and fairs; such a fair serves as the scene for Ben Johnson's comedy Bartholomew Fair (1614).
New Testament references
Though Bartholomew is listed among the Twelve Apostles in the three Synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and also appears as one of the witnesses of the Ascension (Acts 1:4, 12, 13), each time named in the company of Philip, he is one of the apostles of whom no word is reported nor any individual action recorded in the New Testament. Nor are there any early acta, the earliest being written by a pseudepigraphical writer who assumed the identity of Abdias of Babylon and is called "the pseudo-Abdias".
Nathanael
In the East, where Bartholomew's evangelical labours were expended, he was identified with Nathanael, in works by Ebedjesu, the fourteenth century Nestorian metropolitan of Soba, and Elias, the bishop of Damascus. Nathanael is mentioned only in the Gospel according to John. In the Synoptic gospels, Philip and Bartholomew are always mentioned together, while Nathanael is never mentioned; in John's gospel, on the other hand, Philip and Nathanael are similarly mentioned together, but nothing is said of Bartholomew. Giuseppe Simone Assemani specifically remarks, "the Chaldeans confound Bartholomew with Nathaniel". Some Biblical scholars reject this identification, however.
In the Gospel of John , Nathanael is introduced as a friend of Philip. He is described as initially being skeptical about the Messiah coming from Nazareth, saying: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?", but nonetheless, follows Philip's invitation. Jesus immediately characterizes him as "Here is a man in whom there is no deception." Some scholars hold that Jesus' quote "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you", is based on a Jewish figure of speech referring to studying the Torah. Nathanael recognizes Jesus as "the Son of God" and "the King of Israel". Nathanael reappears at the end of John's gospel as one of the disciples to whom Jesus appeared at the Sea of Tiberias after the Resurrection.
Tradition
Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History (v §10) states that after the Ascension, Bartholomew went on a missionary tour to India, where he left behind a copy of the Gospel of Matthew. Other traditions record him as serving as a missionary in Ethiopia, Mesopotamia, Parthia, and Lycaonia.
Along with his fellow Apostle Jude, Bartholomew is reputed to have brought Christianity to Armenia in the 1st century. Thus both saints are considered the patron saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church. There is also a local tradition that he was martyred at the site of the Maiden Tower in present-day Baku, Azerbaijan, at the time part of Caucasian Albania, by being flayed alive and then crucified head down. In the nineteenth century, an Orthodox chapel was built on the supposed site of Bartholomew's death in Baku, but in 1936 it was ordered destroyed by the Soviet government.
Bartholomew's relics
The sixth-century writer in Constantinople, Theodorus Lector, averred that ca 507 the Emperor Anastasius gave the body of Bartholomew to the city of Dura-Europos, which he had recently founded (actually re-founded). The existence of relics at Lipari, a small island off the coast of Sicily, in the part of Italy controlled from Constantinople, was explained by Gregory of Tours by his body having miraculously washed there: a large piece of his skin and many bones that were kept in the Cathedral of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, Lipari, were translated to Beneventum in 803, and to Rome in 983 by Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, conserved at the basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola. In time, the church there inherited an old pagan medical center. This association with medicine in course of time caused Bartholomew's name to become associated with medicine and hospitals. Some of Bartholomew's skull was transferred to Frankfurt, while an arm is venerated in Canterbury Cathedral today.
Miracles
Of the many miracles performed by St. Bartholomew before and after his death, two very popular ones are known by the townsfolk of the small island of Lipari. When St. Bartholomew's body was found off the shore, the Bishop of Lipari ordered many men to take the body to the Cathedral. When this failed due to its extreme weight, the Bishop then sent out the children. The children easily brought the body ashore.
The people of Lipari celebrated his feast day annually. The tradition of the people was to take the solid silver and gold statue from inside the Cathedral of St. Bartholomew and carry it through the town. On one occasion, when taking the statue down the hill towards the town, it suddenly got very heavy and had to be set down. When the men carrying the statue regained their strength they lifted it a second time. After another few seconds, it got even heavier. They set it down and attempted once more to pick it up. They managed to lift it but had to put it down one last time. Within seconds, walls further downhill collapsed. If the statue had been able to be lifted, all of the townspeople would have been killed.
During World War II, the Fascist regime looked for ways to finance their activities. The order was given to take the silver statue of Saint Bartholomew and melt it down. The statue was weighed, and it was found to be only several ounces. It was returned to its place in the Cathedral of Lipari. In reality, the statue is made from many pounds of silver and it is considered a miracle that it was not melted down.
St. Bartholomew is credited with many other miracles having to do with the weight of objects.
Art and literature
In works of art Bartholomew is often represented with a large knife, or, as in Michelangelo's Last Judgment, with his own skin hanging over his arm. Tradition holds that in Armenia he was flayed alive and then crucified upside down. This fate has led to him being adopted as the patron saint of tanners.
Saint Bartholomew plays a part in Francis Bacon's Utopian tale The New Atlantis, about a mythical isolated land Bensalem populated by a people dedicated to reason and natural philosophy. Some twenty years after the ascension of Christ the people of Bensalem found an ark floating off their shore. The ark contained a letter as well as the books of the Old and New Testaments. The letter was from Bartholomew the Apostle and declared that an angel told him to set the ark and its contents afloat. Thus the scientists of Bensalem received the revelation of the Word of God.
See also
Other sources
- Easton's Bible Dictionary, 1897.
- Encyclopedia Anglicana, 1911
- Dictionary of First Names, Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges. Oxford University Press, 1996
- Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0140513124.
For a discussion of Baroque paintings of St. Bartholomew by the Spanish artist Ribera, see: Williamson, Mark A. "The Martyrdom Paintings of Jusepe de Ribera: Catharsis and Transformation", PhD Dissertation, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York 2000 (available online at myspace.com/markwilliamson13732)
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