[14] Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History (5:10) states that after the Ascension, Bartholomew went on a missionary tour to India, where he left behind a copy of the Gospel of Matthew.

Stallings (1703), Neander (1853), Hunter (1886), Rae (1892), Zaleski (1915) supported it, while scholars such as Sollerius (1669), Carpentier (1822), Harnack (1903), Medlycott (1905), Mingana (1926), Thurston (1933), Attwater (1935), etc.

[17] Christian tradition offers three accounts of Bartholomew's death: "One speaks of his being kidnapped, beaten unconscious, and cast into the sea to drown."

In the Hellenic tradition, Bartholomew was executed in Albanopolis in Armenia, where he was martyred for having converted Polymius, the local king, to Christianity.

Enraged by the monarch's conversion, and fearing a Roman backlash, King Polymius's brother, Prince Astyages, ordered Bartholomew's torture and execution.

[35][36] The 6th-century writer Theodorus Lector averred that in about 507, the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I Dicorus gave the body of Bartholomew to the city of Daras, in Mesopotamia, which he had recently refounded.

[37] The existence of relics at Lipari, a small island off the coast of Sicily, in the part of Italy controlled from Constantinople, was explained by Gregory of Tours[38] by his body having miraculously washed up there.

[43][42] An echo of concentration on these details is found in medieval heraldry regarding Bartholomew, which depicts "flaying knives with silver blades and gold handles, on a red field.

[46] Bearing in mind that manuscripts are in fact made from flayed and manipulated skin, they hold a strong visual and cognitive association with the saint during the medieval period.

[47] Due to the nature of his martyrdom, Bartholomew is the patron saint of tanners, plasterers, tailors, leatherworkers, bookbinders, farmers, housepainters, butchers, and glove makers.

[48][43] In works of art the saint has been depicted being skinned by tanners, as in Guido da Siena's reliquary shutters with the Martyrdoms of St. Francis, St. Claire, St. Bartholomew, and St. Catherine of Alexandria.

The viewer is meant to empathize with Bartholomew, whose body seemingly bursts through the surface of the canvas, and whose outstretched arms embrace a mystical light that illuminates his flesh.

Transfixed by Bartholomew's active faith, the executioner seems to have stopped short in his actions, and his furrowed brow and partially illuminated face suggest a moment of doubt, with the possibility of conversion.

By limiting the number of participants to the main protagonists of the story (the saint, his executioner, one of the priests who condemned him, and one of the soldiers who captured him), and presenting them half-length and filling the picture space, the artist rejected an active, movemented composition for one of intense psychological drama.

[53] This idea has influenced some contemporary artists to create an artwork depicting an anatomical study of a human body is found amongst with Gunther Von Hagens's The Skin Man (2002) and Damien Hirst's Exquisite Pain (2006).

[54] In Exquisite Pain 2006, Damien Hirst depicts St Bartholomew with a high level of anatomical detail with his flayed skin draped over his right arm, a scalpel in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

[55] Bartholomew plays a part in Francis Bacon's Utopian tale New Atlantis, about a mythical isolated land, Bensalem, populated by a people dedicated to reason and natural philosophy.

[59] Quoting Ibn Is-haq, Qurtubi gives the following details concerning the mission of the disciples of Jesus Christ: He sent Peter and Paul to the Roman lands; Andrew and Matthew to Cannibals; Thomas to Babylon; Philips to Africa; John to Damascus the town of the seven-sleeper; Jacob to Jerusalem; Ibn Talma (i.e., Bartholomew) to the Arab world; Simon to the Berbers; Yehuda and Bard to Alexandria.