Bartholomew has the terrible symbol of knives, specifically flaying knives used to skin animals and commemorates his horrific death. Bartholomew as disciple had a minor role during Jesus’ ministry, but he may also have been known as Nathanael. If this is so, then Bartholomew would have been the butt of Jesus’s joke, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these” (John 1: 50). Bartholomew/Nathanael was also present when the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberius (John 21: 1-14).                                                      

During his apostleship, Bartholomew traveled widely, including to Armenia and India. The story goes that on mission near present-day Bombay, he converted one Polymius, a court official to the local king Pulaimi. The king was so enraged by the conversion that Bartholomew was brought to torture and death. Even by ancient standards the means was particularly gruesome: The apostle was flayed, skinned alive. A particularly grisly painting by Stefan Lochner (c. 1440) illustrates the scene.

Bartholomew’s relics are scattered over Europe, including Rome at the site of the old pagan temple of Asclepius, the god of medicine. As might be expected, Bartholomew became the patron saint of butchers, tanners, and other professions associated with knives.                                                          

His connection with Asclepius persists as London’s eponymous St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. The St. Bartholomew Massacre of the Huguenots (Paris, 1572) is named in his honor because of the date’s proximity to his feast day.

Dickerman Hollister, Jr., MD