Bartholomew was one of Christ’s twelve apostles, possibly the same person as Nathaniel, since Bartholomew is not a real name but means “son of Talmai” (or Tholmai). According to tradition, after the Ascension he preached Saint Matthew’s Gospel in India and Greater Armenia. After converting King Polyminus and his wife to Christianity, the king’s brother Astyages ordered the apostle to be flayed alive and beheaded. In about 71 AD Bartholomew was executed and buried in Albana, then the principal city of Armenia. His relics were transferred first to the island of Lipara, then to Beneventum and finally to the Basilica on the Tibertine Island in Rome. Saint Bartholomew is the patron of plasterers.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Witness of the Son of God, one of the princes who announced His glory to the nations, lights up this day with his apostolic flame. While his brethren of the sacred College followed the human race into all the lands whither the migration of nations had led it, Bartholomew appeared as the herald of the Lord, at the very starting point, the mountains of Armenia whence the sons of Noah spread over the Earth. There bad the figurative Ark rested. Humanity, everywhere else a wanderer, was there seated in stillness, remembering the dove with its olive branch and awaiting the consummation of the alliance signified by the rainbow which had there for the first time glittered in the clouds. Behold, blessed tidings awake in those valleys the echoes of ancient traditions: tidings of peace, making the universal deluge of sin subside before the Wood of salvation. The serenity announced by the dove of old, was now far outdone. Love was to take the place of punishment. The ambassador of Heaven showed God to the sons of Adam as the most beautiful of their own brethren. The noble heights whence formerly flowed the rivers of Paradise, were about to see the renewal of the covenant annulled in Eden, and the celebration, amid the joy of Heaven and Earth, of the divine nuptials so long expected, the union of the Word with regenerated humanity.
Personally, what was this Apostle whose ministry borrowed such solemnity from the scene of his apostolic labours? Under the name, or surname of Bartholomew (son of Tholmai) the only mark of recognition given him by the first three Gospels, are we to see, as many have thought, that Nathaniel, whose presentation to Jesus by Philip forms so sweet a scene in Saint John’s Gospel? (John i. 45‒51). A man full of uprightness, innocence and simplicity who was worthy to have had the dove for his precursor, and for whom the Man-God had choice graces and caresses from the very beginning.
Be this as it may, the lot which fell to our Saint among the twelve points to the special confidence of the divine Heart: the heroism of the terrible martyrdom which sealed his apostolate reveals his fidelity. The dignity preserved by the nation he grafted on Christ in all the countries where it has been transplanted, witnesses to the excellence of the sap first infused into its branches. When two centuries and a half later Gregory the Illuminator so successfully cultivated the soil of Armenia, he did but quicken the seed sown by the Apostle, which the trials never wanting to that generous land, had retarded for a time, but could not stifle.
How strangely sad, that evil men, nurtured in the turmoil of endless invasions, should have been able to rouse and perpetuate a mistrust of Rome among a race whom wars and tortures and dispersion could not tear from the love of Christ our Saviour! Yes, thanks be to God!The movement towards return, more than once begun and then abandoned, seems now to be steadily advancing. The chosen sons of this illustrious nation are labouring perseveringly for so desirable a union, by dispelling the the prejudices of her people, by revealing to our lands the treasure of her literature so truly Christian, and the magnificences of her liturgy, and above all by praying and devoting themselves to the monastic state under the standard of the Father of Western Monks. Together with these holders of the true national tradition, let us pray to Bartholomew their Apostle: to the disciple Thaddeus who also shared in the first evangelisation: to Ripsima the heroic virgin, who from the Roman territory led her thirty-five companions to the conquest of a new land, and to all the martyrs whose blood cemented the building upon the only foundation set by our Lord. Like these great forerunners, may the leader of the second apostolate, Gregory the Illuminator, who wished to see Peter in the person of Saint Sylvester, and receive the blessing of the Roman Pontiff, may the holy kings the patriarchs and doctors of Armenia, become once more her chosen guides, and lead her back entirely and irrevocably to the one Fold of the one Shepherd!
We learn from Eusebius and Saint Jerome that before going to Armenia, his final destination, Saint Bartholomew evangelised the Indies where Pantaenus a century later found a copy of Saint Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew characters, left there by him. Saint Denis records a profound saying of the glorious Apostle, which he thus quotes and comments: “The blessed Bartholomew says of Theology that it is at once abundant and succinct; of the Gospel, that it is vast in extent and at the same time concise, thus excellently giving us to understand that the beneficent Cause of all beings reveals or manifests Himself by many words or by few, or even without any words at all, as being beyond and above all language or thought. For He is above all by His superior essence, and they alone reach Him in his truth, without the veils with which He surrounds Himself, who, passing beyond matter and spirit and rising above the summit of the holiest heights, leave behind them all reflections and echoes of God, all the language of Heaven, to enter into the darkness in which He dwells, as the Scripture says, who is above all.”
The city of Rome celebrates the feast of Saint Bartholomew tomorrow, as do also the Greeks who commemorate on the 26th of August a translation of the Apostle’s relics. It is owing, in fact, to the various translations of his holy body and to the difficulty of ascertaining the date of his martyrdom that different days have been adopted for his feast by different churches, both in the East and in the West. The 24th of this month, consecrated by the use of most of the Latin churches, is the day assigned in the most ancient martyrologies, including that of Saint Jerome. In the 13th century, Innocent III, having been consulted as to the divergence, answered that local custom was to be observed.
* * * * *
ON this day of your feast, O holy Apostle, the Church prays for grace to love what you believed and to preach what you taught. Not that the Bride of the Son of God could ever fail either in faith or love, but she knows only too well that though her Head is ever in the light, and her heart ever united to the Spouse in the Holy Spirit who sanctifies her, nevertheless, her several members, the particular churches of which she is composed, may detach themselves from their centre of life and wander away in darkness. O you who chose our West as the place of your rest, you whose precious relics Rome glories in possessing, bring back to Peter the nations you evangelised. Fulfil the now reviving hopes of universal union. Second the efforts made by the Vicar of the Man-God to gather again under the shepherd’s crook those scattered flock whose pastures have become parched by schism. May your own Armenia be the first to complete a return which she began long ago: may she trust the Mother-Church and no more follow the sowers of discord. All being reunited, may we together enjoy the treasures of our concordant traditions, and go to God, even at the cost of being despoiled of all things, by the course so grand and yet so simple taught us by your example and by your sublime theology.Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Carthage, three hundred holy martyrs in the time of Valerian and Gallienus. Among other torments inflicted on them, a pit filled with burning lime was prepared by order of the governor, who, live coals with incense being brought to him, said to the confessors: “Choose one of these two things: to offer incense to Jupiter on these coals, or to cast yourselves into the lime.” Armed with faith, and confessing Christ to be the Son of God, they quickly precipitated themselves into the pit and amid the vapours of the lime were reduced to dust. From this circumstance this blessed troop obtained the appellation of White Mass.
At Nepi, St. Ptolemy, bishop, a disciple of the blessed Apostle St. Peter. Being sent by him to preach the Gospel in Tuscany, he died a glorious martyr of Christ in the city of Nepi.
In the same place, St. Romanus, bishop of that city, who was the disciple of St. Ptolemy and his companion in martyrdom.
At Ostia, St. Aurea, virgin and martyr, who was plunged into the sea with a stone tied to her neck. Her body, being cast on the shore, was buried by blessed Nonnus.
In Isauria, St. Tatio, martyr, who received the crown of martyrdom by being beheaded in the persecution of Domitian under the governor Urbanus.
The same day, St. Eutychius, a disciple of the blessed Evangelist St. John. He preached the Gospel in many countries, was subjected to imprisonment, to stripes and fire, and finally he rested in peace.
Also St. George Limniota, monk. Because he reprehended the impious emperor Leo for breaking holy images and burning the relics of the saints, he had his hands cut off and his head burned by order of the tyrant, and went to our Lord to receive the recompense of a martyr.
At Rouen, St. Owen, bishop and confessor.
At Nevers, St. Patrick, abbot.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
