02Knights Templar - Julian Emperor

SAINTS
India and Armenia. The circumstances surrounding his martyrdom
are particularly grim as he is said to have been flayed
alive at Derbend on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Some alternative
versions of his martyrdom have him beheaded or crucified
upside down.As is so often the case in religious art, the
symbols that represent him relate to his martyrdom – a set of
flaying knives. He has, by extension and perhaps rather
bizarrely, come to be considered as the patron saint of tanners
and leather workers.
During the eleventh century, his cult became popular in
England when Canterbury cathedral was given one of his
relics – an arm that was supposed to have been his – by Queen
Emma, the wife of King Cnut.The well-known church of St
Bartholomew at Smithfield in the city of London was founded
in 1123 by a courtier of Henry I called Rahere. He built the
church, together with a monastery and a hospital that are no
longer standing, in order to give thanks to God for having
spared him from a serious bout of malaria he had contracted
whilst visiting Rome. In the Middle Ages, St Bartholomew
also became the patron saint of cheese merchants because of
the similarity between his symbol of the flaying knife and a
cheese knife. He is the patron saint of Armenia and is also invoked
against nervous tics.
St Thomas
In the Gospel of John StThomas is referred to as Didymus but
he is known by the other apostles as Thomas. He is, of course,
most familiar as ‘doubting Thomas’ who doubted the physical
resurrection of Christ. Instead he famously said, ‘Unless I see
the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark
of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’ (John 20:
25–8). His moment of doubt and subsequent acceptance of the
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