medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. July) is the feast day of:
1) 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
http://tinyurl.com/lhfeld
On the south side of the cathedral is another twelfth-century onamental entrance, the Puerta de las Platerias ('Goldsmiths' Entrance'):
http://tinyurl.com/n3gd3b
Inside, 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://tinyurl.com/md65e9
http://www.galinor.es/santiago/fotos/sepulcro.jpg
The Paradoxplace main page on the cathedral has some good views of its surviving medieval sculptures:
http://tinyurl.com/lupc76
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://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/8/84/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://www.bolognatourguide.com/foto/san-giacomo.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://www.flickr.com/photos/vince_nick/26553897/sizes/o/
The interior is largely baroque (with Renaissance chapels). But here's a late medieval 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 Glos):
http://www.john.wilkes.dial.pipex.com/wester.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/6xlo6h
http://tinyurl.com/m3slj8
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
2) Cucufas (?). We first hear about C. (also Cucuphas; in French, Cucufa, Cucuphat; in Spanish, Cucufate; in Catalan, Cugat or Cougat; in Occitan, Couat) at Prudentius, _Peristephanon_ 4.33-34, where in a catalogue of martyrs he follows a lengthier treatment of St. Felix of Gerona and shares a strophe with St. Paul of Narbonne and with today's St. Genesius of Arles. All Prudentius says of him is _Barchinon claro Cucufate freta / surget_ ('Barcelona, trusting to famous Cucufas, rises up'; line 33 is alluded to in the phrasing of the first line of C.'s Mozarabic hymn _Barchinon laeto Cucufate vernans_). C.'s cult in pre-conquest Iberia is attested by his inclusion in the late seventh- or early eighth-century prayer book from Tarragona now in Verona (Biblioteca capitolare, ms. LXXXIX).
In the eighth century St. Fulrad had relics believed to be C.'s brought to his abbey at Lièpvre (Haut-Rhin) in Alsace. In the earlier ninth century these were at the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris where a legendary Passio (BHL 1997, 1998) was written making C. an African from Scili who accompanied St. Felix of Gerona to Spain, who was martyred at Barcelona during the Great Persecution, and who was laid to rest on this day. The notice of C.'s translation at the end of the Passio has F. bring them directly to Saint-Denis, of which he was also abbot; scholars from the early Bollandists onward tend to think that they only reached Saint-Denis under abbot Hilduin (reigned, 814-841), when a full monastic Office was written for him there. C. enjoyed a cult in greater Paris throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages and beyond, as he did also until the late eighteenth century at Lièpvre.
Seemingly in the ninth century a monastery dedicated to C. was founded on the the reputed site of his martyrdom at today's Sant Cugat del Vallès (in Spanish, San Cugat del Vallés) near Barcelona. The buildings there now are mostly of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some views:
Church:
http://tinyurl.com/knjmop
http://tinyurl.com/nvyfeh
http://tinyurl.com/mbnfwu
http://tinyurl.com/nae8a4
http://tinyurl.com/neh6kl
http://tinyurl.com/mtnwm5
http://tinyurl.com/lt8luo
http://tinyurl.com/m5vvyb
http://tinyurl.com/mc27dd
http://tinyurl.com/m9m439
http://tinyurl.com/kmr8wo
A page of expandable views of the twelfth-century cloister, with carvings by Arnau Gatell:
http://tinyurl.com/l8dfgs
A set of further views:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ainhoap/sets/72157615793053078/
In the view of the monastery, only C.'s head had been translated to Francia; the monastery was in possession of the remainder. Here's his thirteenth-century reliquary shrine from the monastery, now in Barcelona's Museu Diocesà:
http://tinyurl.com/lf3jbx
3) Christopher (?). A saint of this name is recorded for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian martyrology as a martyr of a place called Samon in Lycia. Beyond that, we know nothing about him. An inscription from Nicomedia testifies to the presence there od a monastery dedicated to a St. C. in 452. In the later sixth century a monastery of the same dedication at Taormina is mentioned in the correspondence of pope St. Gregory the Great. C.'s legendary Passio in Latin is at least as old as the eighth century (BHL 1766, 1768). In the Greek and in other "eastern" churches his feast day is 9. May. C. was removed from the General Roman Calendar in its revision promulgated in 1969 but remains in the RM among today's commemorations.
Best,
John Dillon
(James the Great lightly revised from last year's post)
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