Saint James the Less

Thirdly, the faithful ordinarily called him the Brother of the Lord: the Apostle Saint Paul, writing to the Galatians, tells them: 'Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother.' It is not that he was the son of the Blessed Virgin, as the impious Helvidius had the effrontery to say: for this adorable Mother having remained perpetually a virgin, according to the faith of the Church, she could not have had any other son than the one she conceived by the sole operation of the Holy Spirit. Nor is it that he was the son of Saint Joseph by another woman, as some other authors have written: for it is the common sentiment of the faithful that Saint Joseph was a virgin when he married Our Lady, and that he preserved the flower of his virginity until his death. Moreover, the Evangelists teach us that Saint James was the son of a Mary who followed Our Lord, and who was present on Calvary at his crucifixion: living at the same time as the Blessed Virgin, she could not have been the wife of Saint Joseph. Saint James is therefore called the Brother of the Lord, according to the manner of speaking of the Hebrews, because he was his close relative and his cousin, his mother being the niece of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, and a first cousin of the Blessed Virgin.

He had three brothers, whom the Gospel mentions and who are also called Brothers of Jesus Christ, namely: Joseph, Simon, and Jude, the last of whom is among the number of the twelve Apostles, and, in his canonical Epistle, calls himself the brother of James, considering himself more honored by this quality than people of the world are by their greatest alliances; as for Joseph, brother of James, it is probably this Joseph, otherwise called Barsabas, and also surnamed the Just, who was proposed, along with Saint Matthias, to fill the place of the traitor Judas. However, it seems that the name of Brother of the Lord belonged especially to Saint James, and that it was the name by which he was distinguished from the other Apostles, as can be seen in the oldest authors, and even in the historian Josephus, cited by Eusebius; perhaps because he was the eldest of his cousins; that his signal piety made him more conformed to the life and holiness of the Savior; or finally, that he resembled him, it is said, perfectly in face; indeed, the faithful went expressly to Jerusalem to see him: in looking at him, they believed they were still seeing Him who had ascended into heaven, and who was no longer visible among men.

Hegesippu Hégésippe Early Christian historian, primary source on the life of James. s, a very ancient author of whom we have already spoken, says that this apostle was sanctified from his mother's womb. This is a privilege that Holy Scripture attributes to Jeremiah and to Saint John the Baptist, and God could also have granted it to Saint James; and it is probable that this author, who lived immediately after the Apostles, and whom the Roman Martyrology praises for his holiness and for the sincerity with which he wrote the History of the Church, would not have put forward this fact had it not been the common belief of the faithful. According to this same author, James never ate anything that had had life. He drank only water, he used neither perfumes nor baths, although this was very common in his time; he prayed so assiduously that he had developed calluses on his knees. Saint Epiphanius assures us that he remained a virgin all his life, and Saint Jerome, along with several other ecclesiastical writers, proposes him as a model of innocence, holiness, and penance, which inspired admiration in both angels and men.

The Holy Text tells us nothing of him in particular since Our Lord called him into His company. Only, according to a certain book of Gospels used by the Nazarenes, which Saint Jerome, who translated it from Greek into Latin, calls *according to the Hebrews*, on the evening of the Last Supper, after having drunk the chalice of the Lord, Saint James declared that he would not eat until the Son of Man had risen; this is why Our Lord appeared to him on the very day of His resurrection, and, having asked him for bread, He blessed it, broke it, and presented it to him, saying: "Do not hesitate any longer, my brother, to eat, because the Son of Man has risen." But this apparition cannot be the one Saint Paul speaks of when writing to the Corinthians, since he places it only after the apparition to more than five hundred disciples, which did not happen on the very day of the Resurrection, but several days later.

After the descent of the Holy Spirit, when the number of the faithful had multiplied in Jerusalem, Saint Peter, by hi saint Pierre First pope, present at the death and funeral of the Virgin Mary. s authority and with the advice of the other apostles, established Saint James as bishop of that city, where his virtue had made him the object of universal respect, as Hegesippus, Eusebius, and Saint Jerome teach us. The letter attributed to Pope Saint Anacletus says that the ceremony of ordination was performed by Saint Peter, assisted by Saint James the Greater and Saint John, his brother; this is why, subsequently, the Church ordained that a bishop should only be consecrated by three bishops. The Popes, however, can dispense with this law, and they have often done so when they have sent bishops to bring the faith to distant lands. It even seems quite manifest that, when the Apostles ordained bishops in the course of their preaching, they were not always assisted by two other bishops.

Saint Epiphanius reports that Saint James wore a plate or leaf of gold on his head. It was apparently a distinctive mark of episcopal dignity. Polycrates, cited by Eusebius, reports the same thing of Saint John, and some authors say it also of Saint Mark. It is probable that this was done in imitation of the high priest of the Jews.

This is the only external mark that ecclesiastical history tells us was worn by bishops in the first centuries; and even then, it does not appear to have been very widely used. The reason is that the ministers of the Gospel, being sought out by the pagans with a kind of fury, took care not to distinguish themselves outwardly from the rest of the Christians.

This ordination of Saint James gave him new credit, not only among the faithful, but also in the company of the other Apostles. Thus, when Saint Peter was delivered by an angel from the prisons of Herod, he immediately sent word to him. Likewise, in the council held by the Apostles concerning the observance of legal ceremonies, to which the newly baptized Jews wanted to oblige the Gentiles who were converting, he gave his opinion second, immediately after Saint Peter; and his advice carried so much weight that, without further deliberation, it was resolved to issue a decree in accordance with what he had said. Saint Paul speaks of him wit h great ho Saint Paul Apostle cited regarding original sin and the priesthood. nor in the Epistle to the Galatians, especially in the second chapter, where, joining him with Saint Peter and Saint John, he calls all three the pillars of the Church.

This holy Apostle, living thus in Jerusalem and exercising there the office of bishop and pastor of the people of God, obtained marvelous results and drew many Jews every day to the knowledge of Jesus Christ through the examples of his holy life and the brilliance of his preaching. Ananus, who w as the Ananus Sadducean high priest responsible for the death of James. n high priest, a proud, turbulent, and cruel man, and of the sect of the Sadducees, could no longer suffer these conquests that James was constantly making for Jesus Christ. He took advantage of the interval that elapsed between the death of the Roman procurator Festus and the arrival of his successor Albinus to satisfy his hatred against James and some other Christians of standing. He audaciously violated the rights of Roman supremacy and had him appear before the Sanhedrin sanhedrin Jewish religious authority that prosecuted Paul. . After having given him much praise and having reminded him in the most flattering manner of the esteem that all the people had for him, he explained to him: "that as everyone was embracing the sect of the Christians, the temple and the worship of God were going to be entirely abandoned. An Israelite as zealous as James, for the glory of God, ought to prevent such a great evil; persuaded of his justice and his holiness, he did not doubt at all that he would do so with great courage. He therefore begged him, when a crowd of Jews had assembled in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, to ascend to the most prominent place of the Temple, and there, to declare sincerely, before all those present, what he thought of Jesus who had been crucified. It was putting the honor of the synagogue into his hands and abandoning the interests of the law of Moses; but he did not doubt that he would act in this matter as a man of conscience." Saint James, seeing there a beautiful opportunity to preach Jesus Christ, willingly accepted this offer, and, on a day when a large number of inhabitants and foreigners had gathered, he climbed onto the pinnacle of the temple, which was like a landing overlooking the courtyard or the great nave. Then the priests cried out to him: "Just one, whose sentiments we all honor, tell us what you think of Jesus who was crucified." They believed that he would not have the boldness to declare him the Christ and the Messiah; but this Apostle, full of courage, cried out: "Why do you ask me my opinion concerning Jesus, Son of Man? Have I not already declared it an infinite number of times before all those who have wished to have a share in the light of the Gospel? Know that he is seated at the right hand of God, his Father, and that one day he will come from there to judge the living and the dead." This confession filled the faithful with joy; a kind of applause arose among them; but the priests and their partisans, seeing themselves deceived, were filled with fury; they cried out in the assembly that the Just one had himself erred and that he should not be believed; then, climbing precipitously to the place where he was, they threw him down to break his head. He did not die, however, from this fall; but, kneeling down, he began to pray to God for his persecutors, saying: "Lord, forgive them this fault, because they do not know what they are doing." A priest, of the descendants of Rechab, son of Rechabim, hearing this prayer, was so touched by it that he said to these barbarians: "What are you doing? Do you not hear the Just one who is praying for you?" But that did not prevent them from throwing stones at him to stone him; a fuller struck him on the head with the club he used to full fabrics. Thus died Saint James, on the day of Passover, which was the 10th of April in the year 61 of Jesus Christ.

The Jews attributed the destruction of Jerusalem to his unjust death. Ananus put several other Christians to death. The Roman governor highly disapproved of him. King Agrippa did more; he stripped him of the sovereign priesthood.