AUGUST 24TH, ST. BARTHOLOMEW, APOSTLE

Month in honor of the Assumption of the BVM.

The Apostle Bartholomew was a Galilean. In the division of the world among the Apostles it fell to his lot to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in hither India. He went thither and preached to those nations the coming of the Lord Jesus, according to the Gospel of St. Matthew. When he had turned many in that province to Jesus Christ, and had endured many toils and woes, he came into the Greater Armenia. There he brought to the Christian faith Polymius the King, and his wife, and likewise the inhabitants of twelve cities. This stirred up a great hatred against him among the priests of that nation. They so inflamed against the Apostle Astyages the brother of King Polymius, that he savagely ordered Bartholomew to be flayed alive and beheaded; under which martyrdom he gave up his soul to God. His body was buried at the town of Albanopolis in the Greater Armenia, where he had suffered. It was afterwards taken to the Island of Lipari, and thence carried to Benevento. Lastly, the Emperor Otto III. brought it to Rome, where it was laid in the Church dedicated to God in his name on the Island in the Tiber.