medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. July) is the feast day of:
James the Great (d. ca. 42). J. and his brother John, the sons of Zebedee, were Galilean fisherman along with Simon Peter. They are prominent in gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry and are always given early in lists of the Twelve Apostles. According to Acts 12:1-2, J. was martyred on the orders of Herod Agrippa I (reigned 41-44). The legend that he had evangelized parts of Spain is at least as old as the seventh century. In the early ninth century J.'s sepulchre was "discovered" in Galicia at what is now Santiago de Compostela. As is evidenced by its mention in the Martyrology of Florus of Lyon (808-830), word of this event spread quickly. By the tenth century people from abroad were making pilgrimages to his shrine and J. was on his way to becoming a patron saint of pilgrims. He is frequently represented in art with a pilgrim's hat and staff, often too with the seashell that was the special badge of those returning from Compostela.
J.'s cathedral at Compostela was begun in 1075. Behind its baroque facade is a very impressive late twelfth-century main entrance, the Portico de la Gloria, whose numerous statues are the work of Santiago de Compostela's famous Maestro Mateo:
http://tinyurl.com/6ayf9y
Mateo's stone choir for the cathedral is said to have followed in around 1200. Demolished in the seventeenth century, it has been partly re-created in the cathedral museum using surviving pieces. See:
http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue11/reviews/gerrard.htm
and, for a virtual presentation, this website:
http://www.fbarrie.org/fundacion/webcoro/historia/historia.htm
And here's J.'s sepulchre in the crypt:
http://www.galinor.es/santiago/fotos/sepulcro.jpg
In 1084 a donation was made to a hospital at today's Altopascio (LU) in Tuscany, on a major pilgrim route to Rome. It is not known whether the hospital were then already named for J., but it certainly was in the twelfth century, when it became the headquarters of a group of hospitalers of St. James who founded dependencies along major pilgrim routes (including one in Paris founded in 1180 whose modern successor church is still known as Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas [= Altopascio]). In 1239 Gregory IX recognized them as a protective order, the Brothers of St. James of Altopascio, guided by the rule of the parallel order of St. John of Jerusalem. Because some were sword-bearing and because their chief symbol was a tau cross, they became known as the Knights of the Tau. They were suppressed in 1587. Their church of San Jacopo Maggiore at Altopascio, rebuilt in the nineteenth century, preserves its twelfth-century facade and late thirteenth-century belltower:
http://tinyurl.com/hybqu
http://www.mondimedievali.net/pre-testi/images/guerz01b.jpg
Another Italian dedication to J. from the twelfth century is the much rebuilt church of San Giacomo Maggiore at Gavi (AL) in Piedmont, whose portal is worth a look:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Gavi_2.JPG
Here's a view of the originally late eleventh- or twelfth-century église St.-Jacques at Le Pouget (Hérault):
http://tinyurl.com/5dsl7w
Better known, probably, is the church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna, an Augustinian foundation begun in 1267 and restored in 1915.
An Italian-language account of it is here:
http://web.tiscali.it/agostiniani/chiesa.html
San Giacomo Maggiore's late thirteenth-century facade (porch altered, sixteenth century):
http://web.tiscali.it/agostiniani/giacomo1.jpg
http://www.gagliardino.it/gallery/bologna/dsc03141
Rear view, with attached chiesetta di Santa Cecilia backed up onto a portion of the twelfth-century city wall:
http://tinyurl.com/rdkru
The interior is largely baroque (with Renaissance chapels). But here's a "gothic" fresco of J. in the chapel of Sts. Cosmas and Damian:
http://web.tiscali.it/agostiniani/giacomo.jpg
Some views of the thirteenth- to fifteenth-century church of St James the Great at Westerleigh (South Gloucestershire):
http://members.aol.com/chcrawler/wstrlgh.htm
http://www.john.wilkes.dial.pipex.com/wester.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/6xlo6h
J. is not always represented as a pilgrim. Here's a late-thirteenth century fresco of him from the circle of the apostles on the ceiling of the baptistery of Parma:
http://www.cattedrale.parma.it/Img/voltabatt/61-giacomoM_Z.jpg
But, of course, he often is. Herewith two late fifteenth-century sculptural instances, on French and the other Spanish, both in New York in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
http://tinyurl.com/5s9cmu
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/08/eusi/ho_69.88.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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