The Relics and Their Journeys

The cult of Bartholomew in the West is bound up with the long wanderings of his relics: from the place of martyrdom to the Aeolian island of Lipari, where Gregory of Tours already locates them; thence to Benevento, traditionally in 838; and a major portion to the church of San Bartolomeo all’Isola on the Tiber island in Rome, with an arm given to Canterbury. This file follows those translations, with their dates, sources, and the competing Benevento–Rome claims.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

Lipari

The earliest Western seat of the apostle’s relics was the small Aeolian island of Lipari, off the northern coast of Sicily. By the sixth century the body of Bartholomew was venerated there, and Gregory of Tours (d. 594), in his Glory of the Martyrs, records the tradition that the apostle’s relics, set adrift or translated from the East, came to rest on Lipari, where miracles attended them (Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs 33; trans. Van Dam 1988). A legend preserved in the medieval sources tells that the apostle’s body, enclosed in a lead coffin, floated across the sea from the place of martyrdom and came ashore at Lipari — a translation-legend of the type common in relic-cults, reported here as the tradition rather than as fact. Lipari became a center of the apostle’s veneration, and he remains the patron of the island to this day.

The Translation to Benevento (838)

When the island of Lipari was sacked by the Arabs in the ninth century, the relics were carried to the mainland. By the tradition, in the year 838 the relics of St. Bartholomew were translated to Benevento, the Lombard principality of southern Italy, and enshrined in the cathedral (later the basilica) of San Bartolomeo there. Benevento has claimed the principal relics of the apostle ever since, and the date 838 is the traditional date of this translation (the Beneventan tradition; cf. the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, “Bartholomew,” and the standard accounts of the Beneventan cult).

Rome: San Bartolomeo all’Isola

A further translation carried a major portion of the relics to Rome. Under the Emperor Otto III (d. 1002), the relics — or a great part of them — were brought to Rome and enshrined on the Tiber Island (the Isola Tiberina), in the church built for the purpose and dedicated to the apostle, San Bartolomeo all’Isola, which still stands and still bears his name. The church on the island — the site, in pagan antiquity, of a temple of Asclepius the healer — became the Roman home of the apostle’s cult, his relics traditionally reposing beneath the high altar in an ancient porphyry basin. The choice of the healing-island for the apostle who, in the legend, healed the king’s daughter and overthrew the demon of disease was felt to be fitting (the standard accounts of San Bartolomeo all’Isola; Oxford Dictionary of Saints, “Bartholomew”).

[Disputed: the principal relics of St. Bartholomew are claimed by both Benevento and Rome. The Beneventan tradition holds that the chief relics were translated to Benevento in 838 and remain there in the basilica of San Bartolomeo; the Roman tradition holds that the relics (or the greater part) were translated to San Bartolomeo all'Isola on the Tiber under Otto III (c. 1000). The two claims are variously harmonized — e.g., that the body went first to Benevento and a portion thence to Rome, or that the relics were divided — and the medieval sources do not yield a single agreed account. Both translations are reported here pinned to their traditions; the competing claims are noted, not adjudicated (METHODOLOGY §3.5).]

The Arm to Canterbury

A celebrated relic of the apostle reached England. By the eleventh century an arm of St. Bartholomew was given to Canterbury Cathedral — by tradition through Queen Emma (wife successively of Æthelred and of Cnut), who is said to have obtained the relic and presented it to the cathedral church of Canterbury. The relic became one of the treasures of the medieval cathedral and a focus of devotion to the apostle in England (the Canterbury tradition; Oxford Dictionary of Saints, “Bartholomew”). The dispersal of relics to so many centers — Lipari, Benevento, Rome, Canterbury — is itself a measure of the apostle’s standing in the medieval Church, for relics were distributed only of saints whose intercession was widely sought.

The Relic-Cult and the Apostle’s Western Fame

The wanderings of the relics are the main channel through which Bartholomew’s cult flowed in the West, and they explain why so much of his later veneration is localized in Italy and the Latin Church. Each translation founded or refreshed a center of devotion; each shrine generated its hymns, its legends, and its miracle-collections. The relic-history is, in this sense, the institutional history of the apostle’s cult — the concrete, datable counterpart to the legendary biography of his mission and death. It is reported here with its dates and sources, as tradition of the medieval Western Church; the feasts that accompany the cult, East and West, are the subject of the companion file (see The Feasts).

See Also

References

  • Gregory of Tours. Glory of the Martyrs 33. Trans. Raymond Van Dam. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988. (The relics at Lipari.)
  • Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. (Entry “Bartholomew”; the translations to Benevento, Rome, and Canterbury.)
  • The medieval translatio traditions of Benevento (838) and of San Bartolomeo all’Isola, Rome (under Otto III).