The allusions to St. Philip in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are few, but they are such as to call up a very vivid picture of his personality. Warm-hearted, impulsive, and full of zeal for the Master’s service, he was yet cautious and reserved, making sure of his ground before he committed himself to action, but having once made up his mind, ready to risk all for the sake of the truth.
St. Philip was living in Bethsaida when he was called by Christ. He was married, and is supposed to have had several daughters, all of whom were converted to the true faith, and are spoken of by Polycrates as the “Lights of Asia.’ The father’s affection for wife and children did not prevent him from at once obeying the command to leave all and follow the Master. Some authorities, including St Clement of Alexandria, are of opinion that he was the disciple who asked to be allowed to go home and bury his father, eliciting the reproof ‘Let the dead bury their dead,’ which has been the subject of so much discussion by commentators on the Gospels. However that may be, it is certain that St. Philip allowed no earthly anxieties to interfere with his new duties as a disciple, and his one absorbing thought from the first moment of his finding the Messias, as he himself expressed it, was to win others over to his own belief. He hastened at once to his friend Nathanael to tell him the great news, and when the latter hesitated to believe that any good thing could come out of the despised Nazareth, Philip replied by the simple yet deeply significant words, ‘Come and see,’ an invitation resulting in the sceptic’s immediate conversion to belief in the Son of God. When the Lord gave to His chosen twelve the power to cast out unclean spirits and to heal all manner of sickness. He placed St. Philip fifth in the list, next to the specially-beloved disciple St. John, with whom he was often associated later. It was to St. Philip that Christ turned in the difficulty about the feeding of the five thousand, and the characteristic caution of the disciple is revealed in bis reply, ‘Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them.’
It was, moreover, to St. Philip, as one in special favor with the Lord, that the Greeks, who wished to have an interview with Him, appealed in the first instance, and that disciple again showed his cautious diffidence by asking St. Andrew to come with him to make the request.
St. Peter, St. Thomas, and St. Philip, alone of the Apostles, ventured to interrupt by any questions the last pathetic address made to them by their doomed Master, after the betrayer had ^one forth from amongst them to do his evil work. St. Peter, in his loving anguish at the approaching parting, cried, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ St Thomas; ‘Lord, we know not where you got, and how can we know the way?’ St. Philip, with a dim feeling after the great truth which was being revealed, exclaimed: ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us,’ winning the reply, so full of mournful affection, ‘Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip?’
This is the last reference to St. Philip in the Gospels, and in the Acts of the Apostles he is only referred to once, as having been present in the upper room in which the Apostles met after their return from Mount Olivet, where they had witnessed the Ascension of the Lord. The Philip spoken of in chaps, vi., viii. and xxi. of the Acts of the Apostles, who has sometimes been confounded with the Apostle of the same name in works of art, was one of the first seven deacons of the newly-founded church, and will be noticed below amongst the many early converts who are popularly looked upon as saints, although they have not all been actually canonized.
It is not absolutely certain to what country St. Philip went after the dispersion of the Apostles, but it is generally supposed that he preached chiefly in Phrygia and Galatia, and some are of opinion that he penetrated as far west as Gaul. He is said to have been one of the ‘many that had seen Christ,’ with whom St. Polycarp conversed; and if this be true, be must have lived to a great age, for the celebrated Bishop of Smyrna was not born till 69 A.D. Of the death of St. Philip nothing is really known, but according to a fairly constant tradition be was crucified at Hierapolis in Phrygia by the priests of Mars, whom he had put to shame and defied. The god, it is said, was worshipped under the form of a huge serpent, and terrible sacrifices were offered up in its honor. St. Philip asserted that he could make the idol withdraw from the temple in the name of the living God, and the challenge having been accepted, crowds assembled to witness the contest. Standing in front of the altar, the Apostle uplifted the cross he held in his hand, and in a loud voice commanded the dragon to come forth.
The evil beast at once obeyed, and after crouching at the feet of the Apostle, disappeared, leaving the sanctuary, which bad so long been revered, empty and desolate. Many, including the son of the King of the country, fell dead from the shock of the awful scene, or, as some assert, from the horrible fumes emitted by the defeated god as he retired; but St. Philip restored all the victims to life, and the people hailed him as a deliverer. The priests, however, whose power was not yet broken, seized the Saint, bound him head downwards to a tree, piercing his feet with nails, and stoned him till he was dead. The body is said to have been at first buried near the tree, and later to have been removed to Rome, where it is still supposed to be. Polycrates and Eusebius both assert that two of St. Philip’s daughters, who were unmarried, died at Hierapolis, and were buried near their father.
The chief attributes in art of St Philip are the scroll bearing the words, ‘He descended into hell,’ and the cross, which is of varying form, being sometimes of the shape of a T, and sometimes a long staff with a small Latin cross at the top. A dragon is often placed near him, in allusion to the legend related above; be constantly bolds a book, as one of the preachers of the Gospel, and he often has in his bands or beside him two or three loaves or a basket of bread, because it was to him Christ said, ‘Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?’ He is generally represented as a man in the prime of life, with thick curling hair, little or no beard, and handsome features, full of cheerful benignity and earnest thought. He is constantly associated with St. James the Younger, although they were little together in life, having worked in different countries, and died at widely separated dates. The reason of this companionship is probably the fact that the two Apostles are honored by the Church on the same day. May 1; and a similar explanation applies to their being also occasionally grouped with Saints Sigismund and Walpurga. Single figures of St. Philip are rare in art, but he is sometimes introduced in rood-screens with his basket of bread. There is a fine statue of him by Nanno di Banco on the north facade of Or San Michele at Florence, and one in the Cathedral of Siena by Beccafumi.
Of the few pictures in which St Philip is introduced may be noted the ‘Virgin with Saints John the Evangelist, Philip, Anthony and Peter,’ by Piero di Cosimo, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; the painting in the Venice Academy, by Bonifazio II., representing the touching moment when St. Philip asked of the Master, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us’; the scenes from the life of the Apostle by Filippino Lippi in the S. Maria Novella, Florence, including the Exorcising of the dragon and the Crucifixion of St. Philip. The frescoes in the Basilica of S. Antonio at Padua by Giovanni and Antonio Padovano, which, though much defaced, were well restored in the eighteenth century, representing the scene in the temple after the defeat of the dragon, are also very interesting, and there is a beautiful ‘Head of St. James,’ by Albert Dürer, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Of St. Bartholomew, whose name signifies merely the son of Tolmai, or Barthlomew, absolutely nothing is known with any certainty, for he is never mentioned in the Gospels or Acts of the Apostles, except in the lists of the first disciples. Some are of opinion, however, that he was the Nathanael who was brought to Christ by St. Philip, for St. John does not mention him amongst the Apostles, and the other three Evangelists never allude to him by the name given to him by St. Philip. The obscurity with regard to him has as usual led to the springing up of many legends, some relating that he was the son of a tiller of the soil, others of a Prince named Ptolomeus. He is supposed to have preached the Gospel in India, using as his text-book, the writings of St. Matthew, for it is said that when 200 years later St. Pantaenus went to that country to try and convert the Brahmans to the true faith, certain of them showed him the Gospel of St. Matthew in Hebrew, telling him that it had been left behind him by St. Bartholomew. From India the Apostle returned to Phrygia, and at Hierapolis he met his old friend St Philip, with whom he had much pleasant converse. After parting with him, St. Bartholomew penetrated into Armenia, and in the city of Annapolis, having offended the heathen priests, he was put to a terrible death, having been first flayed alive and then crucified. His remains were buried by some of his converts without the city, and are said to have been removed in the sixth century to Duras in Mesopotamia, and thence in the ninth century to Rome. There a beautiful church on the Tiber is named after him; beneath its high altar some assert that his relics still rest, whilst others are equally certain that the bones are those of St. Paulinus of Nola, and that the building containing the tomb was originally dedicated to St Adalbert of Gnesen, and named S. Bartolommeo by mistake.
According to tradition, St. Bartholomew was a tall, dignified-looking man, with a long black beard and a quantity of black hair. His chief symbols in art are the knife, the supposed instrument of the torture preliminary to the death on the cross, which led to his being chosen as their patron by butchers, tanners, and bookbinders; and the Gospel of St. Matthew, which he generally holds in his right hand, but which is occasionally replaced in early representations of him by the scroll, with the words, ‘Ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God the Father.’ Examples occur, as in ‘The Last Judgment’ by Michael Angelo, of the Saint being represented carrying his own skin over his arm, and in the Cathedral of Milan is a remarkable statue by Marcus a Grate, in which he is seen with every vein and muscle laid bare and his skin flung oyer his shoulder. On the old bronze door of the Basilica of S. Paolo fuori le Mura St. Bartholomew is amongst the crucified Apostles, but his arms are uplifted instead of being extended sideways, and at bis feet is the executioner, about to begin the flaying with an instrument like a pair of pincers.
The figure of St. Bartholomew with bis knife and book is often introduced in rood-screens, especially in England, and there is a fine brass with the same subject in the Cathedral of St. Albans; but representations of scenes from his life and of his martyrdom are rare. In the Academy of Venice, however, is an altar-piece by Simone da Cusighi in the side-panels of which the story of St. Bartholomew is given. The same gallery owns one, and the Pitti Gallery, Florence, another, of Ribera’s fine pictures of the Martyrdom, a subject which appealed forcibly to the gloomy imagination of the great Spanish master. In the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, there is a pleasing painting representing one of the few miracles attributed to St. Bartholomew — the healing of a
Princess of Armenia; and he is introduced in some few devotional pictures, notably in ‘The Virgin and Child,’ with Saints Blaise and Bartholomew, ascribed to Pinturicchio, and ‘The Marriage of St. Catherine,’ by Fra Bartolommeo, both in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; ‘The Marriage of St. Catherine,’ by Fra Bartolommeo and Mariotto Allwrtinelli, in the Pitti Gallery ; ‘The Madonna and Child,’ by Piero di Cosimo, in S. Spirito, Florence; and the same subject, by Rudolfo Ghirlandajo, in S. Felice, Florence.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901)