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 Ninth Centenary of the Death of Saint Bartholomew Scott 200-202 (1955) On December 29, 1955 the Vatican issued a set of three stamps to mark the ninth centenary of the death of St. Bartholomew of Rossano. The design shows Saint Bartholomew to the right on all three stamps, and a general view of the facade of the Monastery Church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Grottaferrata, a Basilian Foundation 11 miles from Rome and 2 miles from Frascati. Grottaferrata takes its name no doubt from the iron grating which surrounds or protects the image of the Blessed Virgin in a local church. The figure of St. Bartholomew is taken from an ancient mosaic representing St. Nilus and St. Bartholomew of Rossano still visible in the sanctuary of the abbey church. Here is a photo of the Abbey, taken in 2006:  Abbey at Grottaferrata, Lazio, Italy Photo by Lepacifique From Wikimedia Commons Used under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license The actual founder of the Greek (Basilian) monastery or abbey of Grottaferrata on the Tuscan plain, St. Nilus, died in the year 1005, and was succeeded as abbot in quick succession by Paul, Cyril, and Bartholomew. They were all personal disciples of Nilus, the last being like him a native of Rossano in Calabria. He is venerated as the lesser founder of the abbey, for St. Nilus and his first two successors were able only to clear the land and begin building, while St. Bartholomew carried the work to its conclusion and firmly established his monks, the Basilian (Eastern Rite), who had been driven from Southern Italy by the Saracen invasions. He made his monastery a center for learned studies and the copying of manuscripts, he himself being very skilled in the art of calligraphy, and he also composed a number of liturgical hymns. But his outstanding work was the Life of his master, St. Nilus, from which he gathered much information about the Italo-Greek monasteries, which were still numerous at that time. It was St. Bartholomew, who in the last and troublesome years of Pope Benedict IX, after his resignation as Pope, took him in at the Grottaferrata monastery. It was this Pope's grandfather, Count Gregory of Tusculum, who had given the land on which the abbey was built. A canon in the liturgical office of St. Bartholomew refers to this when it recounts, "When, O father, thou didst see the Roman Pontiff rejected, thou didst persuade him by wise words to give up his throne and to end his days in the happy life of a monk." This Pope was driven from Rome in 1048, and at that time he was only about thirty-six years old. Some authorities have St. Bartholomew dying in 1065; the date of commemoration on the Vatican stamps are 1055. His Feast is kept on November 11th. The Cardinal Conmendatore of the abbey, Giuliano della Revere (afterwards Pope Julius II), surrounded the abbey with battlements and towers from designs by Bramante, like a mighty fortress. The buildings consist of the palace of the Commandery which contains a rich museum of objects found in excavations in the neighborhood. The Monastery has a valuable collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts, a school of Paleography, a meteorological observatory, and the church of Santa Maria with a chapel decorated with frescoes by Domenichino representing incidents in the life of St. Nilus and St. Bartholomew. These are in what is called the chapel of St. Nilus. Of the church consecrated by Pope John XIX in 1024, little can be seen except the mosaics in the narthex and over the triumphal arch, the medieval structures have been covered or destroyed during the "restorations" of various commendatory abbots. In 1874 the building was declared a national monument and in 1903 the church received the rank of Roman Basilica. In 1904, the ninth centenary of the foundation of the abbey, it received a judicious but partial restoration. The beautiful campanile is well worth a visit in itself. The stamps issued for Saint Bartholomew were printed in the format where the upper right stamp block on the stamp sheet forms an "ornamental corner block": The stamps of the issue were printed in sheets containing 64 stamps in a grid of 8-by-8. To facilitate the sale of the stamp sheets, the four upper right stamp positions were replaced with the wording "IL FOGGLIO DI SESSANTA FRANCOBELLI VALE LIRE XXX" ("SHEET OF SIXTY STAMPS WORTH XXX LIRE") to create the corner blocks. 
This article originally appeared in Vatican Notes in 1956. It has been edited to include color images of the stamps and corner blocks, as well as the photo of the Abbey. In addition, the last paragraph describing the ornamental corner blocks has been added. The original article may be accessed by clicking on the reference below. REFERENCE: |
