Curiosities of Christian History Prior to the Reformation

by James Paterson

ST. JAMES AT COMPOSTELLA.

Another legend relates that a German noble, with his wife and son, made a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, and while lodging at an inn at Tolosa, where the host had a beautiful daughter, she fell in love with the youth, but he refused to listen to her. She then, out of revenge, hid her father’s silver cup in the youth’s wallet, and next morning, on discovering the loss, he was pursued, accused before a judge, and condemned to be hanged. The afflicted parents prayed at the altar of St. Jago or James, and thirty days after, on returning and seeing their son on the gibbet, he suddenly spoke to them, and said he had been very comfortable, for the blessed apostle James had been at his side. The parents at once hastened to the judge to inform him, and he was sitting at dinner. On hearing their report, however, he mocked them, and said their son was as much alive as the fowls in that dish on the table, pointing to the dish; but he had scarcely uttered the words when the fowls rose up full feathered in the dish, and the cock began to crow, to the great admiration of the judge and his officers. Then the judge rose and went to the gibbet, and released the youth and gave him up to his parents, and the fowls were placed under the protection of the church, in the precincts of which they lived, and a long line of progeny after them, as a standing testimony of the miracle then wrought.

MIRACLES OF ST. JAMES THE GREAT.

When the apostle James the Great had founded the faith in Spain, he returned to Judæa, and preached and worked miracles for many years. Once a sorcerer, named Hermogenes, set himself up against the apostle to compete with him, and sent his pupil Philetus to dispute with James. The pupil, on returning and confessing his defeat, was bound with spells by Hermogenes, who dared James to deliver him. James sent his cloak to Philetus’s servant, and this set him free. Hermogenes, being then enraged, caused both James and Philetus to be bound in fetters by demons and brought to him. But a company of angels seized on the demons, and punished them until they went and brought Hermogenes himself bound. On James declining to punish him, the sorcerer felt he was defeated, and cast his books into the sea, and became a disciple of James. At James’s death his body was privately carried away for fear of the Jews, and put on board a ship which was miraculously directed to Spain. During the journey they touched at Galicia; and Queen Lupa, coming to the shore, found that the body had become enclosed with wax. She brought some wild bulls, and harnessed them to the car to tear it asunder; but the bulls were docile as lambs, and drew the body straight into her palace, whereon she was confounded and became a Christian, and built a church to receive the body. St. James is the patron saint of Spain as well as of Galicia; and the church of Compostella, which is dedicated to him, is a shrine visited by pilgrims from all quarters. In some of the pictures St. James is represented sitting on a milk-white horse, encouraging the Spaniards to fight and defeat the Moors.

ST. JAMES OF COMPOSTELLA AND THE SCALLOP-SHELL.

The following is the origin of the emblem of the scallop-shell at Compostella. When the body of the saint was being miraculously conveyed in a ship without sails or oars from Joppa to Galicia, it passed the village of Bouzas, on the coast of Portugal, on the day that a marriage had been celebrated there. The bridegroom, along with his friends, was amusing himself on horseback on the sands, when suddenly his horse grew restless and plunged into the sea. Thereupon the miraculous ship stopped in its voyage, and presently the bridegroom emerged, horse and man, close beside it. The saint’s disciples on board informed the astonished rider who it was who saved him from a watery grave, and explained to him the Christian religion. He was converted and baptised forthwith. The ship then resumed its voyage, and the knight went galloping back over the sea to rejoin his astonished friends. He told what had happened, and they also were converted, and he baptised his bride with his own hands. It was noticed that when the knight emerged from the sea, both his dress and the trappings of his horse were covered with scallop-shells, and the Galicians ever afterwards took the scallop-shell as the sign of St. James. Those shells were forbidden by the Pope, under the pain of excommunication, to be sold to pilgrims at any other place than the city of Santiago.

PORTRAITS OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL.

Lord Lindsay, in his “Christian Art,” says that St. Peter was generally represented in ancient art as blessing and St. Paul as preaching,—the former with white hair and beard, the hair sometimes plaited in three distinct partitions; the latter with a lofty and partially bald brow and long, high nose, as characteristic of the man of genius and the thorough gentleman, as the former is of the warm-hearted, frank, impetuous manly fisherman. The likenesses may be correct; they were current at least in the days of Eusebius in the fourth century, who speaks of their portraits as then of some antiquity. A portrait of St. Paul was said to have come down by tradition from his own time, and to have existed in the days of St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostom, a little later in the same century. The painter Giotto invariably adhered to these traditional types. After his time the heads of living models were often painted for the imaginary apostles.

DEATHS OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL.