How an obscure apostle became patron of bookbinders, tanners and hospitals
The gospels say almost nothing about Bartholomew beyond his name on the list of the twelve. Yet legend turned him into the patron of leatherworkers, bookbinders, butchers and even cheese merchants, and a church built on an old Roman healing shrine tied his name to hospitals for centuries.
His name comes from Aramaic and means son of Tolmai, or possibly son of the furrows. Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts list him among the apostles without further detail, which is why most scholars today equate him with Nathanael, a disciple who appears only in John's gospel. The mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich, who lived from 1774 to 1824, insisted in her visions that the two were separate men.
Where he went afterwards is a matter of tradition. The 4th-century historian Eusebius wrote that he travelled to India and left a copy of Matthew's gospel there, though many scholars suspect this India was really Ethiopia or southern Arabia. Other accounts send him to Mesopotamia and Parthia. Armenians hold that he and the apostle Jude Thaddeus brought Christianity to their land in the 1st century, and Armenia, which adopted Christianity as its state religion in 301, honours both as patron saints. The story names a converted king, Polymius, but no Armenian ruler of that name is recorded.
Tradition says he was martyred by being skinned, and artists made that his signature. From the 16th century he was routinely painted holding his own skin and a knife, most famously in Michelangelo's Last Judgement. Because of this he became patron of trades that work hides and surfaces, from tanners and glove makers to plasterers and housepainters, and medieval manuscripts, written on prepared animal skin, carried an obvious association. Sculptors used him as an anatomy lesson: Marco d'Agrate's statue of 1562 shows every muscle and tendon.
His relics travelled too. A portion went to Benevento in 838, and in 983 Emperor Otto II sent some to Rome, where they rest in San Bartolomeo all'Isola, built on the site of a temple of Asclepius, the Roman god of medicine. That location is how his name came to be linked with hospitals. Western churches keep his feast on 24 August.
Source: Bartholomew the Apostle
