Today we remember Saint Bartholemew; one of the twelve Apostles known to us as Nathanael, he is reputed to have suffered the most barbaric death of all the martyrs, being flayed alive. Bartholemew’s ‘great crime’ was introducing the King of Armenia to Christianity. Now we think of him as the patron saint of tanners, tailors, plasterers, and leather workers although the list does vary. Another of his virtues was summarised in Jesus’s comment, “Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile!” The cruelty meted out to a diligent evangelist was disproportionate, at least, to our eyes.
Today’s hymn (StF 623) is Martin Luther’s ‘A safe stronghold our God is still’. Ironic, is it not, that Luther may well have penned the words at the Diet of Speyer in 1529 when Lutherans were about to ‘come under the cosh’.
The Imperial Diet was the legislative body of the Holy Roman Empire and superior even to the emperor himself. In 1526 progress was made in Germany when it was decreed that each prince should order the ecclesiastical affairs of his own state according to his conscience. In 1529, under the control of a Catholic majority this was overturned, and legislation ended toleration of Lutherans in Catholic Districts; the Protestation of Speyer was the origin for the Protestant description that has endured.
The irony of the hymn is its strength and why what was written almost five hundred years ago was then translated two hundred and fifty years later by Thomas Carlyle and then, most recently, Rupert Davies dealt with some rather exclusive language in the last verse to give us what we have today.
There is one further association with the agonies of progress. La Marseillaise was written after the declaration of war on Austria by France (1792) but later adopted as a rallying cry for the French Revolution and since used widely as a rallying cry for revolution generally. The Poet Heine called Luther’s great hymn the Marseillaise of the Reformation.
And we are supposed to pursue peace in following the Prince of Peace. Think though, not about the terrible sins of the past (or the present) but of the towering strength of God enshrined in Luther’s great words. Do that and you get a momentary glimpse of how and why people like Nathanael and Luther himself could carry on in the face of horror.
A Prayer
Lord, I am not at all sure about my own strength; not certain how long I would hold out in the face of cruelty and agony. Remind me today, as I think of Saint Bartholemew, of the way you support those who need it most and in way that can leave us baffled.
With force of arms we nothing can,
full soon were we down-ridden;
but for us fights the proper Man
whom God himself hath bidden.
Ask ye, Who is this same?
Christ Jesus is his name,
the Lord Sabaoth’s Son;’
he, and no other one,
shall conquer in the battle. Amen.