But, much earlier than the last date, this miracle of St James had become connected with the town of San Domingo de la Calzada, one of the stations on the way to Compostella,[193] some hours east of Burgos. Roig, the Valencian poet, on arriving there in the course of his pilgrimage, tells the tale briefly, with two roasted fowls, cock and hen: Lo Libre de les Dones e de Conçells, 1460, as printed by Briz from the edition of 1735, p. 42, Book 2, vv. 135-183. Lucio Marineo, whose work, De las cosas memorables de España, appeared in 1530, had been at San Domingo, and is able to make some addition to the miracle of the cock. Up to the revivification, his account agrees very well with the Spanish ballad. A roast cock and hen are lying before the mayor, and when he expresses his incredulity, they jump from the dish on to the table, in feathers whiter than snow. After the pilgrims had set out a second time on their way to Compostella, to return thanks to St James, the mayor returned to his house with the priests and all the people, and took the cock and hen to the church, where they lived seven years, and then died, leaving behind them a pair of the same snowy whiteness, who in turn, after seven years, left their successors, and so on to Marineo's day; and though of the infinite number of pilgrims who resorted to the tomb each took away a feather, the plumage was always full, and Marineo speaks as an eye-witness. (Edition of 1539, fol. xliii.) Dr Andrew Borde gives nearly the same account as Marineo, in the First Book of the Introduction of Knowledge, 1544, p. 202 ff, ed. Furnivall.[194]
Early in the sixteenth century the subject was treated in at least two miracle-plays, for which it is very well adapted: Un miracolo di tre Pellegrini, printed at Florence early in the sixteenth century, D'Ancona, Sacre Rappresentazioni, III, 465; Ludus Sancti Jacobi, fragment de mystère provençale, Camille Arnaud, 1858.[195]
Nicolas Bertrand, before referred to, speaks of the miracle as depicted in churches and chapels of St James. It was, for example, painted by Pietro Antonio of Foligno, in the fifteenth century, in SS. Antonio e Jacopo at Assisi, and by Pisanello in the old church of the Tempio at Florence, and, in the next century, by Palmezzano in S. Biagio di S. Girolamo at Forlì, and by Lo Spagna in a small chapel or tribune dedicated to St James, about four miles from Spoleto, on the way to Foligno. The same legend is painted on one of the lower windows of St Ouen, and again on a window of St Vincent, at Rouen. Many more cases might, no doubt, be easily collected.[196]
It is not at all surprising that a miracle performed at San Domingo de la Calzada should, in the course of time, be at that place attributed to the patron of the locality; and we actually find Luis de la Vega, in a life of this San Domingo published at Burgos in 1606, repeating Marineo's story, very nearly, with a substitution of Dominic for James.[197] More than this, this author claims for this saint, who, saving reverence, is decidedly minorum gentium, the merit and glory of delivering a captive from the Moors, wherein he, or tradition, makes free again with St James's rightful honors. The Moor, when told that the captive will some day be missing, rejoins, If you keep him as close as when I last saw him, he will as soon escape as this roast cock will fly and crow. It is obvious that this anecdote is a simple jumble of two miracles of St James, the freeing of the captives, recounted in Acta Sanctorum, VI Julii, p. 47, § 190f, and the saving the life of the young pilgrim.[198]
The restoration of a roasted fowl to life is also narrated in Acta Sanctorum, I Septembris, p. 529, § 289, as occurring early in the eleventh century (the date assigned to the story of the pilgrims), at the table of St Stephen, the first king of Hungary. St Gunther was sitting with the king while he was dining. The king pressed Gunther to partake of a roast peacock, but Gunther, as he was bound by his rule to do, declined. The king then ordered him to eat. Gunther bent his head and implored the divine mercy; the bird flew up from the dish; the king no longer persisted. The author of the article, without questioning the reality of the miracle, well remarks that there seems to be something wrong in the story, since it is impossible that the holy king should have commanded the saint to break his vow.
But the prime circumstances in the legend, the resuscitation of the cock, does not belong in the eleventh century, where Vincent and others have put it, but in the first, where it is put by the English and Scandinavian ballads. A French romance somewhat older than Vincent, Ogier le Danois, agrees with the later English ballad in making the occasion to be the visit of the Wise Men to Herod. Herod will not believe what they say,
'Se cis capon que ci m'est en présant
N'en est plumeus com il estoit devant,
Et se redrece à la perche en cantant.'
vv 11621-23.
And what he exacts is performed for his conviction.[199] Nevertheless, as we shall now see, the true epoch of the event is not the Nativity, but the Passion.
The ultimate source of the miracle of the reanimated cock is an interpolation in two late Greek manuscripts of the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus: Thilo, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, p. cxxix f; Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, p. 269, note 3. After Judas had tried to induce the Jews to take back the thirty pieces, he went to his house to hang himself, and found his wife sitting there, and a cock roasting on a spit before the coals. He said to his wife, Get me a rope, for I mean to hang myself, as I deserve. His wife said to him, Why do you say such things? And Judas said to her, Know in truth that I have betrayed my master Jesus to evil-doers, who will put him to death. But he will rise on the third day, and woe to us. His wife said, Do not talk so nor believe it; for this cock that is roasting before the coals will as soon crow as Jesus rise again as you say. And even while she was speaking the words, the cock flapped his wings and crew thrice. Then Judas was still more persuaded, and straightway made a noose of the rope and hanged himself.[200]