“According to the Roman Breviary he was killed at Calamine by a spear-thrust; according to the Golden Legend he was killed with the sword in an uncertainly described place; the Portuguese assert that they have his relics at Goa, the chief of their Indian possessions.

“In the thirteenth century this saint was regarded as the type of perverse disbelief.  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.

“It is supposed that his name was Bartholomew.  The Synoptical Gospels number him among the Apostles, but Saint John omits him, and mentions in his place one Nathanael, of whom the other three Evangelists do not speak.

“It seems tolerably certain that these two were identical, and Saint Bernard supposed that this Bartholomew or Nathanael was the bridegroom of the marriage at Cana.

“He is said to have preached in Arabia, in Persia, in Abyssinia, to have baptized among the Iberi, the races of the Caucasus, and, like Saint Thomas, in India, but there is no authentic evidence to show this.  According to some writers he was decapitated; others say he was flayed alive and then crucified, near the frontiers of Armenia.

“This last view was adopted by the Roman Breviary and prevailed; hence he was chosen as the patron Saint of fleshers, who skin beasts, of leather-dressers and skinners, shoemakers and binders, who use leather, and even of tailors, for the early painters represent him with half his body flayed and carrying his skin over his arm like a coat.

“Stranger and still more puzzling is Saint Jude.  He was also called Thaddaeus and Lebbaeus, and was the son of Cleophas and of Mary the Virgin’s sister; he is said to have married and had children.

“He is scarcely mentioned in the Gospels, but they point out that he is not to be confounded with Judas—­which, however, was done, actually by reason of the similarity of name, during the Middle Ages; Christians rejected him and sorcerers appealed to him.

“He never speaks in the course of the Sacred Narrative but when he breaks silence at the scene of the Last Supper to ask the Lord a question as to predestination; and Christ replies beside the mark, or rather does not answer him at all.  He was also the author of a Canonical Epistle, in which he seems to have been inspired by the Second Epistle of Saint Peter; and, according to Saint Augustine, it was he who introduced the dogma of the Resurrection of the flesh into the Credo.