Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/379

 io s. xii. OCT. is, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

311

and when he preached to the neighbouring Lycaonians and worked miracles of healing, he and his comrade were roughly handled. The traditions of the Church, through Eusebius, Chrysostom, St. Theodore, and Gregory of Tours, make St. Bartholomew also the apostle to the Lycaonians ; and his martyrdom is placed at Albanopolis in Armenia.

Noting the coincidence of this tradition in the Church with the fact that the name borne by the Tiber island (both before and after the enshrinement there of the Apostle's supposed relics) was " Licaonia," I ventured (long before M. Besnier's fine work appeared) to suggest that the enshrinement was perhaps not an accident, but of deliberate purpose, for I had in mind the excessive predilection for cheap plays upon words in that age, e,g,. how Silvester II. (999-1002), dying while at Mass in the Church of Sta. Croce in Geru- salemme, asked, " Where am I ? " and one said to him, "In Jerusalem," and he knew that the end was come, for it had been fore- told that he should die in Jerusalem ! But, of course, the remembrance of the connexion between the Apostle and the Lycaonians may not have occurred to the clergy of the church of St. Adalbert at all. That church did not change its name for more than a century, until the cult of St. Bartholomew had achieved much further development.

Here, however, I would wish to modify one attribution in my former communica- tion upon this subject. Some archaeologists have ascribed the origin of " Licaonia," as applied to the Tiber island, to Jupiter, who had a small temple thereon. With this it is impossible to agree. The temple of Jupiter there was attached to the temple of ^Escu- lapius, and was dedicated to Vejovis, a peculiarly obscure divinity, who owned another shrine on the Capitoline Hill. Gel- lius identifies him with Apollo. His emblems were arrows and a goat. A second shrine was dedicated to Jupiter Jurarius. That he was a " god of healing " may be inferred from his intimate connexion with the temple of ^Esculapius. Another temple of his was at Bovillse, which directly connects his cult with the Gens Julia. But there is nothing whatever to connect him with Lycaonia, or with Jupiter Lycaeus, or with Lycaon.

During the Byzantine period at Rome numbers of Greeks and Asiatics became located in various sections of the city, some of which gradually took new names from them. One of the names of the Tiber island became Insula Grsecorum ; and it is

possible that immigrants from Iconium, the chief city of Lycaonia, may have settled upon it. The earliest mention of it as Insula Licaonia known to me occurs in 945. The death of Otho III. is dated 1001. Hence it seems possible that the name may have been due, not to a cult, but to alien colonists. The cult of St. Bartholomew perhaps reached Britain through the disciples of St. Martin of Tours, before St. Augustine's coming. We have seen that St. Gregory of Tours in the sixth century emphasized the traditions of this Apostle, just as two centuries before had been done by St. Ambrose, who mentions his healing of a lunatic maiden. Toward the close of the seventh century St. Bartholomew is found acting as the special friend and defender of St. Guthlac, the hermit of Croyland. Orde- ricus informs us that this saint settled into his chosen locality on the eighth of the Kalends of September, and that the Apostle to whom that day is sacred, appeared to him arranged in robes of celestial light, and defended him from evil spirits. Luminosity by the way, is constantly connected with St. Bartholomew. In the days of Henry I. (and but eight years before the founding of the Priory in Smithfield) the same Apostle once more appeared at Croyland, and per- formed a miracle at the tomb of the executed Earl Waltheof, by uniting the deceased nobleman's head to his body. In the ninth century, the Lipari Islands being invaded by the Saracens, the Apostle's coffin was hurled by them into the sea. A Greek monk, seeing the coffin floating and filled with luminosity, dragged it ashore, and reverently took the remains to Benevento, where the Lombard Duke Sicardo enshrined them in the cathedral in 839 : an incident significantly referred to in the metrical martyrology of the Saxon Wandelbert, c. 842 (cf. also Leo Ostiensis, lib. i. c. 24) : Nunc ilium fama est varia pro sorte sepulchri, &o. It is probable that this event caused a fresh interest in this " heavenly physician " ("quo doctore Dei"), which was destined to become almost universal in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

It is time, however, to turn to the Benedic- tines, whose connexion with medicine was far anterior to the eleventh century, if their own records may be trusted ; but that they were really monopolists of such science as obtained in those, dark days would be assert- ing too much. The inference, however, that during the darkest period of the Christian era, medical learning, like most other knowledge, was retained in the hands of the