Saint Bartholomew

“ BARTHOLOMEW, Saint (d. 1193) , was a Northumbrian hermit of some celebrity, who flourished in the twelfth century. His life was most probably written by Galfrid, the author of the biography of St. Godric, and a monk of Bartholomew's own monastery of St. Mary at Durham. In any case, it professes to be written in the lifetime of the saint's contemporaries. According to this life, Bartholomew was born at Witeb or Whitby. ”

“ Not satisfied with having failed to believe in Christ until he had seen and put his finger into His wounds, he was equally incredulous, if our forefathers are to be believed, when he was told of the Assumption of the Virgin, and Mary was fain to show Herself to him and throw down Her girdle to convince him.
"Saint Bartholomew is even more obscure, lost in the thick shade of the ages. He was the best educated of the Apostles, says Sister Emmerich, for the others, particularly Peter and Andrew, had preserved rough manners and a clumsy exterior from their humble origin. ”

“ Bartholomew, which miraculously saved him many times from various illusions of the enemy. And in these our days there are seen upon the top of the mountain, in the living rock, certain human footsteps, and others of a different form, which the common people, without knowing the person, affirm to be the footsteps of St. Bartholomew and the Devil, who was there defeated and his illusions confounded by the saint, coming in aid of a devout man who called upon him in the force of his tribulation. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. IX. Family life amongst the Nonconformists, in the reign of the later Stuarts, framed itself after the Puritan model; and in the memoirs of Oliver Heywood and Philip Henry, windows are open through which we discover their domestic habits. Saint Bartholomew’s Day became a solemn fast in commemoration of the ejectment,—sometimes held in fellowship with a neighbouring minister or ministers,—when “the Lord helped His servants, with strong cries, many tears, and mighty workings to acknowledge sin, accept of punishment, and implore mercy.” ”

“ It was a beautiful book; that was why René-Jean looked at it; perhaps too intently. The volume was open just where there was a large engraving representing Saint Bartholomew carrying his skin over his arm. ”

“ Bartholomew appeared to him in a vision, and directed him, on his return to London, to found a church in his honour, outside the walls, at a place called Smithfield. Although visions and their causes are not always explicable, the association of St. Bartholomew with this dream of Rahere's may, perhaps, be accounted for. The church of S. Bartolommeo all'Isola had been built, a century before Rahere's visit, within the ruined walls of the Temple of Æsculapius, on the island of the Tiber, and Saint had succeeded, in some measure, to the traditional healing-power of the God. ”

“ BARTHOLOMEW, SAINT, one of the twelve apostles, regarding whose early life we know nothing, unless in accordance with a widely-spread belief he is to be identified with Nathanael (q.v.) . If so, Bartholomew is probably a patronymic, the apostle’s full name being Nathanael Bartolmai, i.e. ”

“ From the moment of his arrival at Poissy, he preached publicly at the court, before an attentive and select assembly. This was on the 24th of August, 1561. Eleven years later, to the very day, Charles IX. and Catherine de Medicis caused [105] the tocsin of the [massacre of] Saint Bartholomew to knell. The inconstancy of human things! O profound mysteries of the future!
The same evening, meeting the Cardinal de Lorraine in the apartments of the king of Navarre, they held a conversation upon the articles of doctrine, and especially upon the Communion. ”

“ The church of the late hospital of Saint Bartholomew was in like manner to become a parish church, under the designation of Saint Bartholomew the Less. The mayor and citizens were to be the future patrons of both churches; but Thomas Birkehed was appointed the first vicar of Christ church by the king's letters patent, with a yearly pension of 26l. 13s. 4d. Further, the mayor and citizens were empowered to appoint one priest to be visitor of Newgate, with an annual stipend of 10l. ”

“ From all which it appears that Bartholomew was an Englishman born, that he studied in the Paris schools, entered the French province of the Minorite order, and became a famous professor of theology in Paris ”

“ THE SAMUEL BUTLER COLLECTION
AT SAINT JOHN’S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE A Catalogue and a Commentary
by
HENRY FESTING JONES
and
A. T. BARTHOLOMEW
cambridge
w. heffer & sons ltd.
1921
p. ivIt seems to me, the more I think of it, that the true life of anyone is not the one they live in themselves, and of which they are themselves conscious, but the life they live in the hearts of others. Our bodies and brains are but the tools with which we work to make our true life, which is not in the tool-box and tools we ignorantly mistake for ourselves, but in the work we do with them ”

“ It is already a great distinction for Bartholomew to be selected, in preference to so many others, to join that company of men whom Our Lord Himself had chosen from all eternity to be His helpers in the great and holy work of the redemption ”

“ After three years Bartholomew returned to England, and, having for some little time served in a Northumbrian church, joined the monks at Durham. Thence, in obedience to an apparition of St. Cuthbert, he went to Farne. On reaching Farne he found it already occupied by a monk named Ebwin, who with much reluctance withdrew in favour of Bartholomew. The new hermit's life was one of the strictest asceticism. The fame of his sanctity was soon spread abroad throughout the north. ”

“ His Latin book, translated into several languages, and of which there are many very beautiful manuscripts, [301] comprises everything, from God and the angels down to beasts. Bartholomew teaches theology, philosophy, geography, and history, the natural sciences, medicine, worldly civility, and the art of waiting on table. Nothing is too high, or too low, or too obscure for him; he is acquainted with the nature of angels, as well as with that of fleas: "Fleas bite more sharply when it is going to rain." ”

“ And Bartholomew the apostle departed to the cities, which were on the seacoast, whereof the people knew not God, and he preached unto them and converted them to the knowledge of God. And they believed on our Lord Jesus Christ. And Bartholomew the apostle commanded the men to be pure, and to be remote from fornication. When Agrippa the king heard of him he was exceedingly angry with him, and he commanded his servants to put the Apostle Bartholomew in a hair sack and to fill the sack up with sand, and to cast him into the sea ”

“ One of Bartholomew's last treatises must have been his ‘Dialogus contra Judæos,’ if Leland is right in saying that this was dedicated to Baldwin when bishop of Worcester (1180–4) . Amongst others of Bartholomew's writings enumerated by the same authorities are a work on Thomas à Becket's death, one on predestination, and another entitled ‘Penitentiale,’ of which a copy still exists among the Cotton MSS. (Faust. A. viii. 1) . Bartholomew seems to have been friendly with the most learned men of his age. ”

“ I am Bartholomew, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, and come to succour thee in thine anguish, and to open to thee the secret mysteries of Heaven; know me truly, by the will and commandment of the Holy Trinity and the common favour of the celestial court and council, to have chosen a place in the suburbs of London at Smithfield, where in my name thou shalt found a church. The spiritual house Almighty God shall inhabit and hallow it, and glorify it. ”

“ The 1/2 in. series, which was extended (and its principles applied to many other works) by Mr. J. G. Bartholomew, who succeeded his father in the business, is the finest of its kind ever produced. John Bartholomew died in London on the 29th of March 1893. ”

“ When that particular comet had come and gone Bartholomew was a sorely disappointed man; whether he really had reason to be, no one will ever know.
As regards Bartholomew's status in the world, he was a smallish farmer at Orchardcroft—a middle-aged, raw-boned, hatchet-faced man, whose greatest difficulty in life was to make up his mind about anything. If an idea about sowing spring wheat or planting potatoes came into his head as he walked about his land, he would stand stock still wherever he was and scratch his ear and think and consider until his mind was in a state of chaos. ”

“ Bartholomen, from Cana, and Matthew, the tax-gatherer of Capernaum, who afterward wrote the first gospel. He also chose Thomas, of Galilee; James and Jude, two brothers from Capernaum; Simon, of Galilee, and Judas Iscariot, who came from the country near Jerusalem. Five of these, it is said, were His cousins. More than half of them were fisherman, and none of them were learned men, unless Bartholomew might be called one. How wonderful it must have been to see these twelve earnest young men gathered around Jesus, ready to go where He should send them, or follow Him to death. ”

“ Butler wrote to Robert Bridges, 6 Feb. 1900, “I have, I verily believe, the smallest library of any man in London who is by way of being literary.” (Memoir, II., 320.)
Cf. no. 9 in Section I. Pictures, “Interior of Butler’s sitting-room,” where part of his library is shown. The rest of his books were in a cupboard between his sitting-room and his painting-room. They all passed under the residuary bequest in his will to his nephew, Henry Thomas Butler, who gave them to me. Some were taken by Streatfeild, his literary executor, and some few were lost in transitu; the remainder are here. ”

“ His home was in Cana of Galilee. The reasons for assuming that Bartholomew and Nathanael are the same persons are these: Bartholomew is named in each of the three synoptic Gospels as an apostle, but Nathanael is not mentioned. ”

“ This was not the first essay of our bishop in witch-laying. When he was still Prior of Witham, Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter, a learned and pious man, and one of St. Thomas’ opposers, consulted him upon a sad case. Bishop Bartholomew was interested in spiritualism (which shews the same face in every century, and never adds much to its phenomena) , as Matthew Paris recounts. A poor girl was the prey of a most violent and cruel Incubus, whom no fasts or austerities could divorce from her. Hugh suggested united prayer on her behalf, which was made, but not answered. ”

“ John’s College has contributed £30 towards the expenses of printing and publishing this catalogue. I offer them my most cordial thanks for their generosity. I am also deeply indebted to them for finding space in which to house the collection. I shrank from the responsibility of keeping it myself. I remembered also that an individual dies; even a family may become extinct; but St. John’s College, we hope, will enjoy as near an approach to immortality as can be attained on this transient globe. ”

“ Bartholomew at last grew restless and she went for the medicine she had prepared, she saw with some astonishment that it was not in the exact place on the shelf where she had placed it,—or, at least, in the exact place where she felt sure that she had placed it. But even this did not alarm her or arouse her suspicion. How could it when everybody in the house was devoted to its master—or at all events gave every evidence of being so. ”

“ This article was not reproduced in Essays on Life, Art and Science (afterwards The Humour of Homer) because of the trouble of reproducing the illustrations, but it is among the Universal Review articles bound together and included in this catalogue (p. 19) .
A print of the great statue of S. Carlo Borromeo, near Arona, called “S. Carlone.”
A collection of photographs of Italian pictures, unmounted.
p. 51Three large cards with photographs of the fresco by Gaudenzio Ferrari which is in S. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo-Sesia. It is in twenty-one compartments. ”

“ Oil Painting: Two heads done as a study at Heatherley’s.
I showed this to Gaetano Meo, and he remembered that the man was Calorossi, a model, whose brother went to Paris and became known as the proprietor of a studio there. The woman, he said, was Maria, another model. The background is Dieppe. I suppose that Butler did this study in the autumn of 1866, using nos. 10 and 11, the water-colours of Dieppe, or some other sketch made on the spot, for the background. The idea was to make portraits of two heads with a landscape background in the manner of Giovanni Bellini. ”

“ Bartholomew, in Smithfield, telling the sub-prior and monks, who came in their copes to meet him, that he had come to visit them, who replied very respectfully that "they knew their bishop (whose only office it was) to be a very sufficient man in his place," and that, "although they were sorry to disappoint him, they could not recognise any other." ”

“ Throughout his life he made a practise of sketching his friends. I suppose he must have met and sketched Butler on some occasion when Butler was in London staying with his cousins the Worsleys. The artist’s son, the Rev. H. E. D. Blakiston, when President of Trinity College, Oxford, gave me a cutting from The East Grinstead Observer containing a full obituary of him. It is among the papers at St. John’s College, and is referred to in the Postscript to the Preface to my Memoir of Butler. ”

“ THE BARTHOLOMEW EJECTMENT.
Edward Calamy that very Saturday preached a sermon at St. Austin's Church, in London, for Father Ash (the old man who shed tears of joy over Charles' early promises) , from the words "The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come,"—words befitting the interment of a Puritan patriarch on Bartholomew's eve. ”

“ If you like to make me a kettle-holder, you may, for I only have one just now, and I like to have two because I always mislay one; but I won’t have people working their fingers out to knit me stockings.”
Miss Savage to Butler, 27th Oct. 1884: “Here is a kettle-holder. And I can only say that a man who is equal to the control of two kettle-holders fills me with awe, and I shall begin to be afraid of you. . . . The kettle-holder is very clumsy and ugly, but please to remember that I am not a many-sided genius, and to expect me to excel in kettle-holders and stockings is unreasonable. ”