Bartholomew, Apostle, Saint

BARTHOLOMEW (Gr. Bartholomáios, Bartholomaeus), Apostle, Saint. -

I. SACRED SCRIPTURE

One of the twelve apostles in the New Testament, named only in the lists of the Synoptics (Mt. 10:3; Mk. 3:18; Lk. 6:14), where he is joined with Philip, and in Acts 1:13. The name is a patronymic whose two elements are Aramaic: Bar-Talmaj, "son of Talmaj." Talmaj occurs in the Bible as the name of non-Jews (Josh. 15:14; II Sam. 3:3 and 13:37, king of Geshur); the Septuagint renders it Θολμί and Θολμαί (Vulgate: Tholmai and Tholomai), and Flavius Josephus renders it Θολμαίος (Ant. Iud., XIV, 8, 1; XX, 1, 1; Bell. Iud., I, 9, 3; these are Syrian personages), perhaps by assonance with Πολομαίος. The Syriac texts transcribe it Bar Talmaj.

Although patristic tradition is silent on the matter, B. is very probably to be identified with Nathanael (v.), of whom only the Fourth Gospel speaks, placing him among the Apostles (John 1:45-51: calling after Andrew, Simon, Philip; 21:2: listed after Peter and Thomas, before the "sons of Zebedee"). The first to propose this identity, though in a doubtful form, were, among the Syrians, Išō'dād of Merw (9th century), and among the Latins, Rupert of Deutz (d. 1129; PL 169, 273); later the hypothesis was supported by C. Jansenius of Ghent, A. Salmerón, Cornelius a Lapide, A. Calmet, and purposefully upheld by two Jesuits: J. Roberti (1620) and the Bollandist Joh. Stilling (Acta SS. Augusti, V, Antwerp 1741, pp. 1-34), and today it is commonly accepted (J. Knabenbauer, J. Belser, E. Le Camus, M.-J. Lagrange, F.-M. Braun, U. Holzmeister, Th. Zahn, F. Prat, Th. Innitzer, etc.).

Nathanael ("God has given," a meaning identical to Mattaj and Mattijāh) must have been the personal name, while B. was the surname (as with Simon Barjōnā'). He was a Galilean from Cana (Jn. 21:2; cf. 2:1), where today a church is dedicated to St. B. From the Johannine account of his vocation to the apostolate, he appears to have been of a reserved and thoughtful disposition. Led by Philip, he is praised by Jesus (2:47, "behold, truly an Israelite in whom there is no guile"), who reveals his secrets to him; whereupon he bursts out enthusiastically in a profession of faith that prefigures that of Peter (Mt. 16:16): "You are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel" (Jn. 2:49). He is then present at the appearance of the Risen One by the lake (Jn. 21:2). With the apostolic college B. receives the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 1:13).

B.'s subsequent apostolate must have been extremely active, since later tradition attributes long missionary journeys to him; but nothing precise can be established.

Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., V, 10, 3; PG 20,456) relates that Pantaenus (around the year 200) found in India the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew (Aramaic) and was told that it had been brought there by B.; St. Jerome repeats this (De vir. ill., 36; PL 23,651); but it is not known whether "India" designates the regions near to Ethiopia (thus Rufinus, Hist. Eccl., 1, 9; PL 21, 478, and Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 1, 19; PG 67, 125) or Arabia Felix (thus Ps.-Jerome: PL 23, 722, L. S. Tillemont and M. Meinertz, Einleitung in das N. T., 4th ed., Paderborn 1933, p. 190). According to a legend of the late 4th century (Constitutiones Apost., VIII, 19-20 ed. F. X. Funk, I, Paderborn 1905, p. 525), B. instituted the rite for the ordination of deaconesses; Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite cites a saying of B. (PG 3, 1000). Ps.-Chrysostom (PG 59, 495) relates that B. converted the Lycaonians, and others speak of a mission of his in Asia Minor (at Hierapolis he is said to have suffered with St. Philip), whence he is then said to have traveled through Mesopotamia and Parthia. Having reached Armenia, at Albanopolis (or Urbanopolis), by order of King Astyages, whose brother Polymnius he had converted, by exorcising him his daughter, he was martyred: crucified, according to the tradition widespread in the East; beheaded according to the Martyrologies of Rabanus Maurus, Ado, Usuard (PL 110, 1164; 123, 185; 124, 394); the flaying of St. Bartholomew is affirmed by St. Isidore of Seville and by the Martyrology of Bede (PL 83, 1291; 94, 1016) and is commonly accepted among the Latins from the end of the Middle Ages (but J. de Ribera [1588-1652] depicts the crucifixion of St. Bartholomew 12 times [K. Künste, p. 117]). His remains were transported to Martyropolis or Majāfārqīn by the bishop Mārūtā (ca. 410), then to Dara in Mesopotamia (or Anastasiopolis in Phrygia?) by the emperor Anastasius I (ca. 507; Theodore Lector, 2, 57; PG 86, 211); Victor of Capua in the Codex Fuldensis says they are in Phrygia (ca. 546), then they appear at Lipari (ca. 580), at Benevento (ca. 838); today they are venerated in Rome, at S. Bartolomeo all'Isola, where they are said to have been brought by Otto III (983). St. Gregory of Tours recounts the miraculous translation of the body of St. Bartholomew to Lipari (De gloria mart., 33; PL 71, 734); Theodore Studite (PG 99, 800 ff.) and Nicetas Paphlagon (PG 105, 213-17) from Armenia to Lipari and to Benevento; Nicetas is reproduced in the Encomium of St. Bartholomew by the monk Joseph (Cod. vat. gr. 984; palimpsest of the 9th-10th century, ff. 90-95, 265-71). The feast of St. Bartholomew is celebrated by the Byzantines on 11 June, by the Latins (at least from the 8th century) on 24 August, by the Armenians on 8 December and 25 February, by the Copts and Ethiopians on 18 June and 20 November.

I. Lévy (contraddetto da J. Halévy) e B. Heller fanno dipendere dalla tradizione cristiana su B. la leggenda talmudica (Mē'ilāh, 17b) del demonio Ben-Temalion, e ricollegano entrambe a fonti indiane.

Antonino Romeo

II. ICONOGRAPHY

Originally he carries a book or a scroll, the symbol of his apostolate; from the 13th century onward a knife, the instrument of his torture, and his own skin. The oldest depictions of the saint are found in some mosaic medallions at Ravenna (5th and 6th centuries) and in a fresco in S. Maria Antiqua in Rome (ca. 705); the later iconographic documents consist of a relief in the church of the same name in Rome (12th century), of a statue at Mainz (ca. 1250), of another by Michelozzo at Montepulciano and of the naturalistic one by Marco d'Agrate (1562) in the cathedral of Milan, as well as of the famous figure in Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, with the painter's self-portrait in the skin hanging from the saint's left hand. Apart from individual episodes, traceable as early as the 9th century, in a 14th-century stained-glass window in S. Francesco d'Assisi there are represented "histories" of the legend of B. The suggestion of the cruelty of the martyrdom meant that the majority of the artists who illustrated the scene belong to the late German Gothic (Strigel, Holbein the Elder); the theme was also dear to the artists of the Baroque era (Mattia Preti, Salvator Rosa, and Ribera, who treated it no fewer than twelve times), both for effects of studied dolorous expression and for the opportunities that the subject offered of displaying a knowledge of anatomy.

III. ST. BARTHOLOMEW IN FOLKLORE

A popular poem was composed about the saint. In fact, a Historia et Oratione di S. B. and a Devotione beginning Donami gratia onnipotente Iddio, is registered in the appendix of Clement XI to the Index of Prohibited Books. The life of St. Bartholomew provided the subject for a "maggio," a popular performance of the Tuscan Apennines, of which several editions from the mid-nineteenth century are known. One may also recall a Vita e morte di s. B., commedia in tre atti all'uso dei teatrini (Novara 1859). In the Isère the saint is invoked by the people against fear, especially to remove it from the minds of children. For this purpose pilgrimages are made to his chapel at Favarges on the day of his feast, which falls on 24 August. There the blessing of salt for livestock also takes place.

IV. PASSION (MARTYRDOM) OF BARTHOLOMEW

A writing (5th or 6th century) that narrates the mission and martyrdom (by rods, then by decapitation) of the apostle St. B. in India, sometimes called the Acts of B. Two different recensions survive, one Greek (Μαργύριον Βαρθολομαίου), the other Latin (Passio Bartholomaei); perhaps the original was Syriac. R. A. Lipsius detected traces of Nestorianism in it. Against Lipsius, M. Bonnet demonstrates that the Latin text (in many manuscripts of the 8th-15th centuries) is original in relation to the Greek (a single manuscript of the 13th century).

V. GOSPEL OF BARTHOLOMEW

Apocryphal, composed in the Egyptian Gnostic milieu (3rd century), belonging to the group of those esoteric pseudepigrapha with an apocalyptic background, in which the risen Jesus reveals to an apostle a mysterious point of Gnostic doctrine. It is mentioned by St. Jerome (Comm. in Matth., prol.: PL 26, 17), by the Gelasian Decree (E. v. Dobschütz [*Texte u. Untersuch., 38, IV], Leipzig 1912, pp. 11 and 51) and by St. Bede (Comm. in Lucam., I, 1: PL 92, 307); in the East, by the Ps. Areopagite (Myst. Theol., I, 3: PG 3, 1000) and by the monk Epiphanius (12th century), who invokes the testimony of B. for the testament of Mary (De vita SS. Deiparae, 25: PG 120, 213). But every trace of it had been lost, and the Gospel of B. was customarily identified with the Hebrew Matthew carried to India by B. and found there by Pantaenus, according to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl.*, V, 10). The Gospel of B. was substantially reconstructed between 1863 and 1913; a normal recension of it is known (important fragments in Greek, Slavonic, Latin), and a divergent recension in Coptic. The apostle B. questions the risen Jesus on various mysteries, especially on the descent into hell (narrated at length), or asks Mary for the particulars concerning the Incarnation. Finally the final struggles between Christ and his adversary are foretold. According to J. Kroll, in the "Interrogations of B." we have the first mentions of the descent-struggle of Jesus into hell. The original work seems to have been composed in Greek in the 3rd century (according to J. Kroll in the 2nd century), among a Christian sect separated from the Church of Alexandria.

A. Wilmart and E. Tisserant published (1913) the Greek text (fragmentary) from ms. 13 of St. Sabas (now in Jerusalem), of ca. 1000. The Slavonic text ("Interrogations of the holy apostle B.") was edited by Tichonravov (1863), and Vassiliev published a parallel Greek text (1893); N. Bonvetsch used (1897) an analogous text in the Slavonic-Serbian dialect. The primitive Greek text can for the most part be restored with the help of the two Slavonic texts.

Discovered by Cardinal A. Mai (1854), Latin fragments (in Cod. Vat. Regimen, 1050) were published by A. Wilmart and E. Tisserant. U. Moriceca published a new Latin text (ms. 1880, 11th century, of the Casanatense library): Interrogatio beati B. apostoli, vel aliorum apostolorum cum Domino Jesu Christo.

Of different content are the Coptic (Sahidic) fragments, which appear to constitute five or more derivations from a common text of the 5th or 6th century, composed on Greek sources. They are sometimes called Apocalypse of B. They were published by E. Dulaurier (1835), by A. Harnack and Schmidt (1891), by P. Lacau (1904), by E. Révillout (PO 2, 2, 123-98, and Revue Biblique, new series, I [1904], pp. 167-87, 321-55), by R. de Rustafjaell (1909), and by E. A. Wallis Budge (1913).