James, son of Zebedee

"St. Jacob" and "St James the Great" redirect here. For other uses, see St. Jacob (disambiguation) and St James the Great (disambiguation).
James

Santiago Matamoros the St. James riding in a horse
Apostle and martyr
Born 1st century AD
Bethsaida, Judaea, Roman Empire
Died 44 AD
Jerusalem, Judaea, Roman Empire
Venerated in All Christianity
Canonized Pre-Congregation
Major shrine Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia (Spain), Cathedral of St. James, Jerusalem, Armenian Quarter (Israel)
Feast 25 July (Western Christianity)
30 April (Eastern Christianity)
30 December (Hispanic Church)
Attributes Scallop, Pilgrim's hat
Patronage Places
Acoma Pueblo, Sahuayo, Santiago de Querétaro, Galicia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Guayaquil, Spain, Portugal, etc.
Professions
Veterinarians, equestrians, furriers, tanners, pharmacists

James, son of Zebedee (Hebrew: יַעֲקֹב Yaʿqob, Greek: Ἰάκωβος; died 44 AD) was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, and traditionally considered the first apostle to be martyred. He was a son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of John the Apostle. He is also called James the Greater or James the Great to distinguish him from James, son of Alphaeus and James the Just. James the Greater is the patron saint of Spain and Portugal.

In the New Testament

Saint James the Elder by Rembrandt
He is depicted clothed as a pilgrim; note the scallop shell on his shoulder and his staff and pilgrim's hat beside him.

The son of Zebedee and Salome, James is styled "the Greater" to distinguish him from the Apostle James "the Less", who was probably shorter of stature. We know nothing of St. James's early life. He was the brother of John, the beloved disciple, and probably the elder of the two.[1]

His parents seem to have been people of means. Zebedee, his father, was a fisherman of the Sea of Galilee, who probably lived in or near Bethsaida, perhaps in Capharnaum; and had some boatmen or hired men. Salome, his mother, was one of the pious women who afterwards followed Christ and "ministered unto him of their substance," and his brother John was personally known to the high-priest, and must have had wherewithal to provide for the Mother of Jesus.[1]

It is probable that his brother had not received the technical training of the rabbinical schools; in this sense they were unlearned and without any official position among the Jews. But, according to the social rank of their parents, they must have been men of ordinary education, in the common walks of Jewish life. They had frequent opportunity of coming in contact with Greek life and language, which were already widely spread along the shores of the Galilean Sea.[1]

James is described as one of the first disciples to join Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels state that James and John were with their father by the seashore when Jesus called them to follow him.[Matt. 4:21-22][Mk. 1:19-20] James was one of only three apostles whom Jesus selected to bear witness to his Transfiguration.[2] James and his brother wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan town, but were rebuked by Jesus.[Lk 9:51-6] The Acts of the Apostles records that "Herod the king" (traditionally identified with Herod Agrippa) 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 twelve apostles martyred for his faith. [Acts 12:1-2] Nixon suggests that this may have been caused by James' fiery temper,[3] for which he and his brother earned the nickname Boanerges or "Sons of Thunder".[Mark 3:17] F. F. Bruce contrasts this story to that of the Liberation of Saint Peter, and notes that "James should die while Peter should escape" is a "mystery of divine providence."[4]

The New Testament scholar Dennis MacDonald identifies Castor and Pollux as basis characters for the appearance of James son of Zebedee and his brother John who appear in the narrative by Mark the Evangelist.[5] Macdonald cites the origin of this identification to 1913 when J. Rendel Harris published his work Boanerges,[6] a Greek term for Thunder, the epithet of Zeus father of Pollux in what MacDonald calls a form of early Christian Dioscurism.

Veneration

Statue of St. James the Greater in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran by Camillo Rusconi.

Saint James is the patron saint of Spain and, according to legend, his remains are held in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. (The name Santiago is the local Galician evolution of Vulgar Latin Sanctu Iacobu, "Saint James".) The traditional pilgrimage to the grave of the saint, known as the "Way of St. James", has been the most popular pilgrimage for Western European Catholics from the Early Middle Ages onwards. 215,880 pilgrims registered in 2013 as having completed the final 100 km walk (200 km by bicycle) to Santiago to qualify for a Compostela.[7] When 25 July falls on a Sunday, it is a ″Jubilee″ year, and a special east door is opened for entrance into Santiago Cathedral. Jubilee years fall every 5, 6, and 11 years. In the 2004 Jubilee year, 179,944[8] pilgrims received a Compostela. In 2010 the number had risen to 275,135.[9]

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 30 April in the Orthodox Christian liturgical calendar (for those churches which follow the traditional Julian Calendar, 30 April currently falls on 13 May of the modern Gregorian Calendar).

Spain

Santiago Matamoros (Saint James the Moor-slayer).

According to ancient local tradition, on 2 January AD 40, the Virgin Mary appeared to James on the bank of the Ebro River at Caesaraugusta, while he was preaching the Gospel in 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 Pillar, in Zaragoza, Spain. Following that apparition, St. James returned to Judea, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in the year 44.[10][11]

The 12th-century Historia Compostellana commissioned by bishop 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 his disciples carried his body by sea to Iberia, where they landed at Padrón on the coast of Galicia, and took it inland for burial at Santiago de Compostela.

The Codex Calixtinus promotes the pilgrimage to Santiago.

The translation of his relics from Judea to Galicia in the northwest of Iberia was effected, in legend, by a series of miraculous 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 Flavia in Iberia, where a massive rock closed around his relics, which were later removed to Compostela.

An even later tradition states that he miraculously appeared to fight for the Christian army during the legendary (fictional) battle of Clavijo, and was henceforth called Matamoros (Moor-slayer). ¡Santiago, y cierra, España! ("St. James and strike for Spain") was the traditional battle cry of medieval Spanish (Christian) armies. Cervantes has Don Quixote explaining that "the great knight of the russet cross was given by God to Spain as patron and protector".[12]

A similar miracle is related about San Millán. The possibility that a cult of James was instituted to supplant the Galician cult of Priscillian (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;[10] it is not the traditional Roman Catholic view. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908, however, states:

Although the tradition that James founded an apostolic see in Iberia was current in the year 700, no certain mention of such tradition is to be found in the genuine writings of early writers nor in the early councils; the first certain mention we find in the ninth century, in Notker, a monk of St. Gall (Martyrologia, 25 July), Walafrid Strabo (Poema de XII Apostoli), and others.
17th-century interpretation of Saint James as the Moor-killer from the Peruvian school of Cuzco. The pilgrim hat has become a Panama hat and his mantle is that of his military order.

The tradition was not unanimously admitted afterwards, while numerous modern scholars, following Louis Duchesne and T. E. Kendrick,[13] reject it. (According to Kendrick, even if one admits the existence of miracles, James' presence in Spain is impossible.) The Bollandists however defended it (their Acta Sanctorum, 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. Saturnin at Toulouse; 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 Bull of Pope Leo XIII, 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[Acts 12:1-2] in AD 44. According to the tradition of the early Church, he had not yet left Jerusalem at this time.[14] St Paul, however, in his Epistle to the Romans written after AD 44, expressed his intention to avoid "building on someone else's foundation",[Rom. 15:20] by visiting Spain[Rom. 15:23-24], 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 II (791-842) and of bishop Theodemir of Iria. These traditions were the basis for the pilgrimage route that began to be established in the 9th century, and the shrine dedicated to James at Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia in Spain, became the most famous pilgrimage site in the Christian world. The Way of St. James is a tree of routes that cross Western Europe and arrive at Santiago through Northern Spain. Eventually James became the patron saint of Spain.

The English name "James" comes from Italian "Giacomo", a variant of "Giacobo" derived from Iacobus (Jacob) 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 יַעֲקֹב, 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 scallop 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 Dutch word is Jacobsschelp, meaning "shell of St. James".

The military Order of Santiago, named after James, was founded in Spain in the 12th century to fight the Moors. Later, as in other orders of chivalry, the membership became a mark of honor.

Kongo

The Cross of Saint James, the symbol of the Order of Santiago; the hilt is surmounted with a scallop.

James had a special place in the Central African Kingdom of Kongo 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 Kongo 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.

Latter-day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) teaches that James has been resurrected and that in 1829 he—along with the resurrected Peter and the translated John—visited Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and restored the priesthood authority with apostolic succession to earth.[15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Camerlynck, Achille. "St. James the Greater." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 16 Jan. 2014
  2. ↑ Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36.
  3. ↑ R. E. Nixon, "Boanerges," in J. D. Douglas (ed.), The New Bible Dictionary (London: The Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1963), 1354.
  4. ↑ F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Book of the Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 251.
  5. ↑ Dennis MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Yale University Press, 2000, pp 24-32.
  6. ↑ J. Rendel Harris, Boanerges, Cambridge University Press, 1913, pp 1-4.
  7. ↑ La Peregrinación a Santiago en 2013
  8. ↑ Archicompostela.org
  9. ↑ La Peregrinación a Santiago en 2010
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chadwick, Henry (1976), Priscillian of Avila, Oxford University Press
  11. ↑ Fletcher, Richard A. (1984), Saint James's Catapult : The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela, Oxford University Press
  12. ↑ Don Quixote, 2nd section, chapter 58
  13. ↑ "Saint James in Spain", London, 1960
  14. ↑ Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, VI; Apollonius, quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History V.xviii)
  15. ↑ Doctrine and Covenants 27:12.

External links

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