The name given to this apostle is a surname name which means "son of Tolmai," but his real name is Nathaniel, a native of Cana in Galilee, of whom our Lord said, "Behold! An Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." Saint John never mentions the name of Bartholomew among the apostles, and the other three evangelists take no notice of the name of Nathaniel; but they constantly put together Philip and Bartholomew, just as Saint John says Philip and Nathaniel came together to Christ; moreover, Nathaniel is reckoned with other apostles when Christ appeared to them at the sea of Galilee after His resurrection (John 21:2).
The popular traditions concerning Saint Bartholomew are summed up in the Roman Martyrology, which says he "preached the Gospel of Christ in India; then he went to Greater Armenia, and when he had converted many people there to the faith he was flayed alive by the barbarians, and by command of King Astyages fulfilled his martyrdom by beheading..." The place was Albanopolis (Derbend, on the west coast of the Caspian Sea), and he is represented to have preached also in Mesopotamia, Persia and elsewhere. The earliest reference to India is given by Eusebius in the fourth century, when he related that Saint Pantaenus, about a hundred years earlier, going into India (Saint Jerome adds "to preach to the Brahmins"), found there some who still retained the knowledge of Christ and showed him a copy of Saint Matthew's gospel in Hebrew characters, which they assured him that Saint Bartholomew had brought in those parts when he planted the faith among them. But "India" was a name applied indifferently by Greek and Latin writers to Arabia, Ethiopia, Lybia, Parthia, Persia and the land of the Medes, and it is most probably that the land visited by Pantaenus was Ethiopia or Arabia Felix, or both. It is a unanimous tradition among the later historians that Bartholomew preached and died in Armenia. His relics are venerated at present at Benevento and in the church of Saint Bartholomew-in- the-Tiber at Rome.
May the prayer of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle be with us all. Amen.
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