James, son of Zebedee (Aramaic Yaʕqov, Greek Ιάκωβος, died 44 AD) was one of the Twelve Apostles of
JesusJesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
. He was a son of
ZebedeeZebedee is a name which may refer to:-People:* Zebedee , father of James and John* Zebedee Armstrong , an American outsider artist...
and
SalomeSalome , sometimes venerated as Mary Salome, was a follower of Jesus who appears briefly in the canonical gospels and in more detail in apocryphal writings...
, and brother of
John the ApostleJohn the Apostle, John the Apostle, John the Apostle, (Aramaic Yoħanna, (c. 6 - c. 100) was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of James, another of the Twelve Apostles...
. He is also called
James the Greater to distinguish him from
James, son of AlphaeusSaint James, son of Alphaeus was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. He is often identified with James the Less and commonly known by that name in church tradition....
, who is also known as James the Lesser.
In the New Testament
James is described as one of the first disciples to join Jesus. The
Synoptic GospelsThe gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
state that James and John were with their father by the seashore when Jesus called them to follow him. James was one of only three apostles whom Jesus selected to bear witness to his
TransfigurationThe Transfiguration of Jesus is an event reported in the New Testament in which Jesus is transfigured and becomes radiant upon a mountain. The Synoptic Gospels describe it, and 2 Peter 1:16-18 refers to it....
. James and his brother wanted to call down fire on a
SamaritanThe Samaritans are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant. Religiously, they are the adherents to Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism...
town, but were rebuked by Jesus. The
Acts of the ApostlesThe Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...
12:1 records that
HerodAgrippa I also known as Herod Agrippa or simply Herod , King of the Jews, was the grandson of Herod the Great, and son of Aristobulus IV and Berenice. His original name was Marcus Julius Agrippa, so named in honour of Roman statesman Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, and he is the king named Herod in the...
had James executed by sword. He is the only apostle whose martyrdom is recorded in the New Testament. He is, thus, traditionally believed to be the first of the 12 apostles martyred for his faith. Nixon suggests that this may have been caused by James' fiery temper, for which he and his brother earned the nickname
Boanerges or "Sons of Thunder".
F. F. BruceFrederick Fyvie Bruce was a Biblical scholar and one of the founders of the modern evangelical understanding of the Bible...
contrasts this story to that of the
Liberation of PeterThe Liberation of Saint Peter is a story told in the Acts of the Apostles in which Saint Peter is rescued from prison by an angel. Although described in a short textual passage, the tale has given rise to theological discussions and has been the subject of a number of artworks.-Biblical...
, and notes that "James should die while Peter should escape" is a "mystery of
divine providenceIn Christian theology, divine providence, or simply providence, is God's activity in the world. " Providence" is also used as a title of God exercising His providence, and then the word are usually capitalized...
."
Veneration
Saint James is the
Patron SaintA patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
of Spain and according to legend, his remains are held in
Santiago de CompostelaSantiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
in Galicia (Spain). The traditional
pilgrimageA pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
to the grave of the saint, known as the "
Way of St. JamesThe Way of St. James or St. James' Way is the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried....
", has been the most popular pilgrimage for Western European Catholics from the early
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
onwards. 125,141 pilgrims registered in 2008 as having completed the final 100 km walk (200 km by bicycle) to Santiago to qualify for a Compostela. When 25 July falls on a Sunday, it is a ″Jubilee″ year, and a special east door is opened for entrance into the Santiago Cathedral. Jubilee years fall every 6, 5, 6, and 11 years. In the 2004 Jubilee year, 179,944, pilgrims received a Compostela. In the Jubilee year of 2010, the number of pilgrims is expected to exceed this figure.
The feast day of St James is celebrated on 25 July on the liturgical calendars of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and certain Protestant churches. He is commemorated on 29 April in the Orthodox Christian liturgical calendar (for those churches which follow the traditional
Julian CalendarThe Julian calendar began in 45 BC as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year .The Julian calendar has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months...
, 30 April currently falls on 13 May of the modern
Gregorian CalendarThe Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...
).
Spain
According to ancient local tradition, on 2 January of the year AD 40, the Virgin Mary appeared to James on the bank of the Ebro River at Caesaraugusta, while he was preaching the Gospel in
IberiaThe name Iberia refers to three historical regions of the old world:* Iberian Peninsula, in Southwest Europe, location of modern-day Portugal and Spain** Prehistoric Iberia...
. She appeared upon a pillar, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, and that pillar is conserved and venerated within the present
Basilica of Our Lady of the PillarThe Basilica-Cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar is a Roman Catholic church in the city of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. The Basilica venerates Blessed Virgin Mary, under her title Our Lady of the Pillar praised as Mother of the Hispanic Peoples by Pope John Paul II...
, in
ZaragozaZaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
, Spain. Following that apparition, St James returned to Judea, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in the year 44.
The 12th-century
Historia Compostellana commissioned by
bishopA bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
Diego Gelmírez provides a summary of the legend of St James as it was believed at Compostela. Two propositions are central to it: first, that St James preached the gospel in Iberia as well as in the Holy Land; second, that after his martyrdom at the hands of Herod Agrippa I his disciples carried his body by sea to Iberia, where they landed at
PadrónPadrón is a concello in the Province of A Coruña, in Galicia within the comarca of O Sar. It covers an area of 48.4 km², is 95 km from A Coruña and, , had a population of 8968 according to the INE....
on the coast of Galicia, and took it inland for burial at
Santiago de CompostelaSantiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
.
The
translationIn Christianity, the translation of relics is the removal of holy objects from one locality to another ; usually only the movement of the remains of the saint's body would be treated so formally, with secondary relics such as items of clothing treated with less ceremony...
of his relics from
JudeaJudea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
to Galicia in the northwest of Iberia was effected, in
legendA legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
, by a series of
miraculousA miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
happenings: decapitated in Jerusalem with a sword by Herod Agrippa himself, his body was taken up by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat to
Iria FlaviaIria Flavia or simply Iria in Galicia, northwestern Spain, was a Celtiberian port, the main seat of the Caporos, on the road between Braga and Astorga. The Romans rebuilt the road as via XVIII or Via Nova and refounded the Celtiberian port as Iria Flavia to complement Vespasian...
in Iberia, where a massive rock closed around his relics, which were later removed to
CompostelaSantiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
.
An even later tradition states that he miraculously appeared to fight for the Christian army during the
battle of ClavijoThe Battle of Clavijo was a legendary battle, supposedly fought in 844 near Clavijo between the Christians led by Ramiro I of Asturias and the Muslims led by the Emir of Córdoba. Saint James the Great, known to Spaniards as Santiago Matamoros , is reputed to have aided the vastly outnumbered...
, and was henceforth called
Matamoros (
MoorThe description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
-slayer).
Santiago y cierra España ("St James and strike for Spain") has been the traditional
battle cryA battle cry is a yell or chant taken up in battle, usually by members of the same military unit.Battle cries are not necessarily articulate, although they often aim to invoke patriotic or religious sentiment....
of Spanish armies.
A similar miracle is related about San Millán. The possibility that a cult of James was instituted to supplant the Galician cult of
PriscillianPriscillian was bishop of Ávila and a theologian from Roman Gallaecia , the first person in the history of Christianity to be executed for heresy . He founded an ascetic group that, in spite of persecution, continued to subsist in Hispania and Gaul until the later 6th century...
(executed in 385) who was widely venerated across the north of Iberia as a martyr at the hands of the bishops rather than as a heretic should not be overlooked. This was cautiously raised by Henry Chadwick in his book on Priscillian; it is not the traditional Roman Catholic view. The
Catholic EncyclopediaThe Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language encyclopedia published in the United States. The first volume appeared in March 1907 and the last three volumes appeared in 1912, followed by a master index...
of 1908, however, states:
The tradition was not unanimously admitted afterwards, while numerous modern scholars, following
Louis DuchesneLouis Marie Olivier Duchesne was a French priest, philologist, teacher and a critical historian of Christianity and Roman Catholic liturgy and institutions....
, reject it. The
BollandistThe Bollandists are an association of scholars, philologists, and historians who since the early seventeenth century have studied hagiography and the cult of the saints in Christianity. Their most important publication has been the Acta Sanctorum...
s however defended it (their
Acta SanctorumActa Sanctorum is an encyclopedic text in 68 folio volumes of documents examining the lives of Christian saints, in essence a critical hagiography, which is organised according to each saint's feast day. It begins with two January volumes, published in 1643, and ended with the Propylaeum to...
, July, VI and VII, gives further sources). The suggestion began to be made from the 9th century that, as well as evangelizing in Iberia, his body may have been brought to Compostela. No earlier tradition places the burial of St James in Hispania. A rival tradition places the relics of the Apostle in the church of
St. SaturninSaint Saturnin of Toulouse , with a feast day entered for November 29, was one of the "Apostles to the Gauls" sent out during the consulate of Decius and Gratus to Christianize Gaul after the persecutions under Emperor Decius had all but dissolved the small Christian communities...
at
ToulouseToulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
; if any physical relics were ever involved, they might plausibly have been divided between the two.
The authenticity of the relics at Compostela was asserted in the
BullA Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....
of
Pope Leo XIIIPope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...
,
Omnipotens Deus, of 1 November 1884.
The
Catholic Encyclopedia (1908) registered several "difficulties" or bases for doubts of this tradition, beyond the late appearance of the legend:
James suffered martyrdom in AD 44. According to the tradition of the early Church, he had not yet left Jerusalem at this time. St Paul in his
Epistle to the RomansThe Epistle of Paul to the Romans, often shortened to Romans, is the sixth book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by the Apostle Paul to explain that Salvation is offered through the Gospel of Jesus Christ...
written after AD 44, expressed his intention to avoid "building on someone else's foundation", by visiting Spain, suggesting that he knew of no previous evangelization in Hispania.
The tradition at Compostela placed the discovery of the relics of the saint in the time of king
Alfonso IIAlfonso II , called the Chaste, was the king of Asturias from 791 to his death, the son of Fruela I and the Basque Munia.He was born in Oviedo in 759 or 760. He was put under the guardianship of his aunt Adosinda after his father's death, but one tradition relates his being put in the monastery of...
(791-842) and of bishop Theodemir of
IriaIria Flavia or simply Iria in Galicia, northwestern Spain, was a Celtiberian port, the main seat of the Caporos, on the road between Braga and Astorga. The Romans rebuilt the road as via XVIII or Via Nova and refounded the Celtiberian port as Iria Flavia to complement Vespasian...
. These traditions were the basis for the pilgrimage route that began to be established in the 9th century, and the
shrineA shrine is a holy or sacred place, which is dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon or similar figure of awe and respect, at which they are venerated or worshipped. Shrines often contain idols, relics, or other such objects associated with the figure being venerated....
dedicated to James at
Santiago de CompostelaSantiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
, in Galicia in Spain, became the most famous pilgrimage site in the Christian world. The
Way of St. JamesThe Way of St. James or St. James' Way is the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried....
is a tree of routes that cross Western Europe and arrive at Santiago through Northern Spain. Eventually James became the
patron saintA patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
of Spain.
The English name "
JamesThe name James is derived from the same Hebrew name as Jacob, meaning "Supplanter" ....
" comes from Italian "Giacomo", a variant of "Giacobo" derived from
Iacobus (
JacobJacob "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.In the...
) in Latin, itself from the Greek
Ἰάκωβος. In French, Jacob is translated "Jacques". In eastern Spain, Jacobus became "Jacome" or "Jaime"; in Catalunya, it became Jaume, in western Iberia it became "Iago", from Hebrew Ya'akov, which when prefixed with "Sant" became "Santiago" in Portugal and Galicia; "Tiago" is also spelled "Diego", which is also the Spanish name of Saint Didacus of Alcalá.
James' emblem was the
scallopA scallop is a marine bivalve mollusk of the family Pectinidae. Scallops are a cosmopolitan family, found in all of the world's oceans. Many scallops are highly prized as a food source...
shell (or "cockle shell"), and pilgrims to his shrine often wore that symbol on their hats or clothes. The French for a scallop is
coquille St. Jacques, which means "cockle (or mollusk) of St James". The German word for a scallop is
Jakobsmuschel, which means "mussel (or clam) of St. James"; the
DutchDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
word is
Jacobsschelp, meaning "shell of St James".
Military Order
The military Order of Santiago or
caballeros santiaguistas was founded to fight the Moors and later membership became a precious honour. People like
Diego VelázquezDiego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
longed for the royal favour that allowed to put on their clothes the red
cross of St JamesThe Cross of St. James is similar to a Cross flory fitchy and is formed by a cross flory, where the lower part is fashioned as a sword blade - making this a cross of a warrior...
(a cross fleury fitchy, with lower part fashioned as the blade of a sword blade).
Kongo
Saint James had a special place in the
Central AfricaCentral Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
n
Kingdom of KongoThe Kingdom of Kongo was an African kingdom located in west central Africa in what are now northern Angola, Cabinda, the Republic of the Congo, and the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
because of his association with the founding of Christianity in the country in the late 15th century. Portuguese sailors and diplomats brought the saint to Kongo when they first reached the country in 1483. When King
Afonso I of KongoMvemba a Nzinga or Nzinga Mbemba , also known as King Afonso I, was a ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo in the first half of the 16th century. He reigned over the Kongo Empire from 1509 to late 1542 or 1543.-Pre-reign career:...
whose Kongo name was Mvemba a Nzinga, the second Christian king, was facing a rival, his brother Mpanzu a Kitima, in battle, he reported that a vision of Saint James and the Heavenly Host appeared in the sky, frightened Mpanzu a Kitima's soldiers, and gave Afonso the victory. As a result, he declared that Saint James' feast day (25 July) be celebrated as a national holiday.
Over the years, Saint James day became the central holiday of Kongo. Taxes were collected on that day, and men eligible for military duty were required to appear armed. There were usually regional celebrations as well as one at the capital. In some cases, Kongolese slaves carried the celebration to the New World, and there are still celebrations of Saint James Day in Haiti and Puerto Rico.
See also
- Cross of St James
The Cross of St. James is similar to a Cross flory fitchy and is formed by a cross flory, where the lower part is fashioned as a sword blade - making this a cross of a warrior...
- Hörnli
Hörnli mountain, altitude 1133 meters, coordinates 47/22/16/N - 8/56/16/E, is located on the territory of the community of Fischenthal, in the Zürcher Oberland, in the eastern part of canton of Zürich, in Switzerland....
- Saint Peter of Rates
- Way of St. James
The Way of St. James or St. James' Way is the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried....
External links