ON ST. JAMES THE YOUNGER, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR UNDER THE ICONOCLASTS.
ABOUT THE YEAR 824.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
St. James the Younger, Bishop and Confessor under the Iconoclasts.
§ I. His praises from St. Theodore the Studite and the Menaea: his cult on this day.
[1] The persecution stirred up by Leo the Armenian against the orthodox venerators of images we have both touched on elsewhere and set out on the 12th of this month at the Acts of St. Theophanes. Breaking out afresh from time to time for new causes, it sent many crowned with Martyrdom to heaven, and brought to more the title of glorious confession: among whom death bravely met amid the hardships of exiles and prisons made them differ little or nothing from the Martyrs, except that it was bloodless. James, younger in respect of others, Such a one the Greek Church venerates both on this day and on the 24th of March, James, and called him the Younger after the usage of that age, to distinguish him from other most celebrated Saints of the same name, for instance from James of Alphaeus and James the Brother of the Lord, Apostles, from James of Nisibis, who is commemorated on the 15th of July, and James Intercisus, on the 27th of November, both very well known to the whole Catholic Church. Indeed, Theophanes also in his chronology at the year of Christ 460 mentions a certain James the Wonderworker, whom the Emperor Leo the Great designated, together with Bardas the monk and St. Simeon Stylites, to examine the case of Timothy Aelurus, wickedly intruded into the Patriarchate of Antioch: but whether this man was enrolled among the Saints after death we do not know, and it might seem to someone that he is the one whom we listed with the title of the Great and the Ascetic on the 4th of March among those passed over.
[2] The James called the Younger in respect of these, of whom we have begun to treat, had indeed, so far as we know, no writer of his life, to set it forth in order from beginning to end: he is praised by St. Theodore the Studite, yet he had an outstanding praiser of his virtues in Theodore the Studite, who, spending another year in prisons, employed excellently the leisure which the solitude of that deathly place gave, partly in celebrating the praises of Confessors and Martyrs, partly in consoling or strengthening the orthodox: whence he also wrote many excellent letters, of which, and of others written before and after, an excellent volume still exists in the manuscripts of our College of Clermont at Paris: would that it might some day come to light. Meanwhile the fragments that exist in the Annals of Cardinal Baronius, who made excellent use of them, rendered for him in part into Latin by Jacques Sirmond, soften that longing somewhat: and above all the one that could concern this James: for there is brought forward at the year 818, number 25, the letter which he wrote in reply to Hypatius, who announced the death of James, as being letter 100 of book 2 in the Colonna Codex; and it is as follows.
[3] Not without grief, Son, have we received the falling asleep of James, Confessor of Christ and our beloved brother: nor yet without joy: for the perfection of his monastic life, the former from spiritual affection (for what was he if not a son, and such a son, to whom I on account of my sins did not merit to be called even a son?), the latter for the sake of hope; not only our own, of whom he was to have been, as a member, a sacred adornment, but also of the whole Church. For what? What sort of man do you judge him? Not a Confessor? Not a Martyr? Not a Saint? From his first years he toiled in the labors of the ascetic life, lawfully subject and obedient: fighting manfully against the motions of the mind, guarding his body uncorrupt by the afflictions with which he restrained it and brought it into servitude: eating without display; so sleeping, while he was still in health, that he rapt those who saw him into wonder; cultivating retirement for the most part as far as he could, and reflecting upon himself, and rising thence to the divine love. And lest anyone think that this is invented by me to please those who hear, God is witness, and John, who was his Tutor, from whom I had the explanation of what I did not know.
[4] And these things are as it were a rough specimen of his ascetic discipline. and his outstanding confession for the images: But in his confession, how many and how great things? He was made a spectacle to Angels and men. O strong
and his dear heart. He entered the arena as an intrepid and fearless soldier of God. On this side and that, the ministers tore his back, arms, and chest with blows; they drew blood, they cut into his flesh, they left the Saint prostrate on the ground, uttering no savage cry at all, but fulfilling a perfect martyrdom for God — and this for Christ the Son of God, and our God: for to fight for his sacred image is itself to suffer martyrdom. Let the meek hear and be glad; let the lovers of the martyrs exult and rejoice; let the devil be confounded, let the throng of iconoclasts fall. By the works of both, according to the divine command, recognize both. For these attacked not only him, but many of our people and of those not our own (rather, they too are our own; And patience through the remaining life: for we are all one Body in Christ Jesus, who is the head of all) alike harassed, killed, did to death by starvation, and whatever else accords with these: but he, from those intolerable wounds, loosed in all his limbs and made lifeless, both subjected his body to the most bitter pains of surgical treatment, and, broken thereby, dragged out his life to the end as one dying daily, and that with thanksgiving, and that with humility.
[5] But if, as you write, he also foretold his own death; this very thing followed from his contests. And because you added that there was a very great concourse at the funeral, even of men illustrious in every kind; this too makes for the witness of my discourse. Carried out to burial with a great concourse of all, For such a concourse would not have been made to a man obscure according to the flesh, except by the will of God. He therefore has gone to heaven, and has been added to his fellow-soldiers, and the choir of the earlier Confessors and Martyrs has been increased, whence there is joy in heaven and gladness of mind: by whose prayers may we be saved, Brothers; and may he himself obtain the worthy reward of his service. Blessed, moreover, and truly pious, are those who came together; truly lovers of the Martyrs, whose portion be with him whom they carried out. Concerning his venerable Relics, as I wrote about the Canon, I shall do, if it pleases God. Greet one another with a holy kiss: for this must be read to all the Brothers. The Lord Archbishop, the Proto-presbyter, the Oeconomus, and the other Brothers greet you. The Lord be with you. Amen.
[6] So he; from whose close we gather that this letter was written by St. Theodore under Michael the Stammerer, after the death of Leo the Armenian, when he had returned from exile by permission of Michael the Stammerer; who perhaps was then staying with St. Nicephorus the Patriarch and other chief ministers of the Church of Constantinople in the monastery of Bonus, for the sake either of counsel or of mutual consolation. Of counsel indeed, while it was still hoped that the Emperor could be induced by the consent of the Orthodox to the restoration of the Images: of consolation, after that matter began to be held among things desperate; when Theodore kept himself in his monastery of St. Crescens in such a way that he still went often to the Patriarch, and also sent frequent letters to his Studites at Constantinople: whose monastery that Hypatius was then perhaps ruling in place of the absent Theodore. Certainly that very great concourse to the funeral of James of men illustrious in every kind persuades us that he died nowhere else than at Constantinople, the royal city: and that he soon began to be venerated as a Saint: and that therefore Theodore, being consulted, as he indicates here, about placing the Relics honorably, he begins to be venerated as a Saint. also composed and arranged the Canons of the Office to be celebrated in his honor: which we think are the same as those now read printed in the great Menaea, and soon to be brought forward by us in Latin: for first it pleases us to bring forward the eulogy of the Saint as we found it in that Synaxarion, written in the tenth century by order of the Emperor Basil the Younger, which we received from a manuscript of the monastery of Grottaferrata in Latium; and it is of this kind.
[7] The Memory of St. James the Younger, made Bishop. St. James from his tender years chose the solitary life, suited to exercise: and having become a monk, by fasts, Eulogy from the Menologion of the Emperor Basil. vigils and other afflictions, and above all by meditations on the sacred Scriptures and continual prayers to God, he purified his soul: after which he was raised to the Episcopal dignity. But the times were those of impious men, who had made war on the sacred images: by whom he was much pressed to deny the veneration of the sacred and venerable images. But since he would not obey them, he underwent many trials, having suffered intolerable exiles, and hunger and thirst and other hardships, which they strove to devise against him. Then, worn down by many torments and various afflictions, he gave up his blessed soul into the hands of God: for whom, having contended nobly even unto death, he obtained the heavenly kingdom, and exults with him for all eternity. There is another Menologion, rendered into Latin by Sirleto, in which an abridgment of the former eulogy is contained in these words: Likewise the commemoration of St. James. He, instructed from boyhood in the monastic exercise, applying himself to fasts and vigils and the meditation of the divine letters, and of Sirleto, obtained the dignity of the Episcopate. And when in the times of the heretics who attacked the holy images he had suffered many trials and persecutions, afterwards afflicted with hunger and thirst, he gave up his spirit to God in torments.
[8] Similar things are had both in the Anthology of the Greeks compiled by Antonio Arcudio, and in the very Menaea of the Greeks from which that was taken: in which in the first place this eulogy is set down with such a distich
Θύτης πεφυκὼς Ἰάκωβος Κυρίου, Πτέρνῃ δρακοντα πτερνοτρώκτην ἀισχύνει.
James, made the Priest of his Lord, Crushes with his heel the serpent that bites at the heels.
or (to render word for word) confounds. In the same Menaea the whole Ecclesiastical Office of that day is filled with canticles and odes containing his praise and virtues. Of these the first ode at Vespers is of this kind: Odes from the Greek Menaea: You fled the tumult of the world in quiet, wholly blessed without disturbance: you guarded your mind, lest it should be deceived by the waves and confusions of this life and be allowed to wander; but that it should tend upward, and with uplifted desire cast its gaze upon the heavenly Lord and benefactor of all, O James, worthy of all blessedness. The second. Outside the assault of the world, O Father, you completed your life, free from every passion, fortified by the protection of divine grace, shining against the troops of demons with easy exercise and divine splendor. Rejoice and exult with the Angels, whose ways and manner of living you possessed under Christ, the King and Lord of all. At Matins the odes begin thus: You received the illumination of your Lord, O James, in your soul, and despised the murky deceits of the world, and received a glory such as is not in the world. You took up the Cross upon your shoulders, imitating Christ crucified, O Saint of God, and, having prudently taken up the solitary life, you tamed the passions by continence. And after the memory of the Martyrs and other Saints has been read, the seventh ode begins thus: You endured, O Father, many persecutions brought upon you with severe trials: you overcame the assailants of the sacred images, as a most just zealot: illumining all who look toward the truth, you sing, James: Blessed art thou, God of our Fathers, etc.
§ II. The cult of St. James on the 24th of March: his Episcopate: whether of Catania?
[9] These and similar things the Greeks have in the Odes, whose author we suspect to have been St. Theodore the Studite, It is uncertain of what see he was Bishop, without any mention of the episcopal rank, which he nowhere mentions in his letter either, much less names the See to which he had been ordained: and since it is not expressed elsewhere either, it becomes probable that his ordination fell at the beginnings of Leo the Armenian in such a way that he was entangled in the whirlwind of the persecutions before he was in ecclesiastical cares; and that, broken by it and remaining weak thereafter even when the persecution ceased, healed after a fashion of his wounds, he preferred to remain in his monastery, from which he had been taken, and lived and died in it not as a Bishop but as a monk; the office having perhaps been transferred to another who had bodily strength also equal to the burden. Now as regards the 24th day of March, on that day Molanus in the additions to Usuard, citing the Greeks, celebrates the holy Father and Confessor James the Bishop. And indeed the Greeks repeat his memory on that day in the printed Menaea; without any further eulogy, it is true, but with a hexameter signifying that he was then buried: which we have said elsewhere is an indication that his chief cult was then in that church for whose use that metrical Calendar was compiled: and a distich is added
Λύπας ἐνέγκων σῆς χάριν σκιᾶς, Λύγε, Βίου σκιώδους Ιάκωβος ἡρπάγη
Having suffered the sorrows of a shadowy life, O God, James has seized the grace of your shadow.
where there seems to be an allusion to the dark cave chosen for his asceticism, or to the time of persecution and of the heresy prevailing even under Michael.
[10] In manuscripts, moreover, at Paris among the Preachers of the stricter observance, he is also recorded on March 24, and in the Mazarin library, there is a eulogy of the same at the aforesaid 24th day, which we copied at Paris, and it is of this kind: The Memory of the holy Father James, who, having taken up the ascetic life from his tender years, purified himself by fasts and other troublesome labors: who, from the time that he was promoted to the Episcopal throne, endured many persecutions, and while he advanced steadfastly in pursuing the iconoclasts, gave up his spirit to God. Nor did the cult of this holy Confessor stop among the Greeks alone: it passed also into the East. as also among the Syrians. For in the Arabic-Egyptian Martyrology, which Gratia Simonius, a student of the Maronite College at Rome, made Latin for us, on this 21st day is noted the Memory of the holy Father James the monk, and again on the 24th the Memory of the Father James the Confessor: of whom accordingly seems to be understood the precatory formula prefixed to the Offices for the month of March in the manner of a Calendar; where between Cyril and Nicon the Innocents we find Blessed James to be invoked.
[11] These things being thus set out, we frankly confess that the reliability of Ottavio Gaetani is suspect to us (or of whoever else persuaded him On what foundation did he begin to be called Bishop of Catania? to say that this man, whom the Greeks venerate on this day, was Bishop of Catania in Sicily) when he cites the Greek Anthology as though it read thus in it: Of our holy Father and Confessor James, Bishop of Catania. We hold suspect also Rocco Pirri, citing the Breviary of the Greeks rendered into Latin, and from it these words: James, Martyr and Bishop, instructed from boyhood in the institutes of the monastic life and in sacred letters, presided over the Church of Catania at that time when the impiety of the barbarians was raging against the sacred images; for whose veneration he did not hesitate most steadfastly to undergo exile and innumerable labors and torments, worn out by which he gave back his soul to God. For he cites in the Margin the Menologion of Cardinal Sirleto: that one, surely, of which Henricus Canisius obtained a copy and published it in volume 2 of the Ancient Readings: in which, as we have seen, there is no word about Catania; none about exile and martyrdom: no more than in the Anthology which we have according to the typica of the monks of Jerusalem, of the Studites, and of the Holy Mountain, renewed and enlarged by Arcudio and printed at Rome in the year 1598.
[12] That another Anthology, different from this, had been printed earlier
we do not so far know: as if under Leo the Isaurian, and even if some older one had perhaps come out, and on the authority of some manuscript or other had had the name of the city of Catania expressed, we should rightly doubt whether that reading were sound enough, supported by no other record from which it could be confirmed that anyone of that name was ever Bishop of Catania. What of the fact that those very Sicilian writers who ascribe the Episcopate of Catania to James place St. Severus, of whom we shall treat on the 24th of March, in that See at about the very time at which James would have had to preside there, if he ever presided: Gaetani indeed more obscurely, when he says that St. Severus was renowned before the tyranny of the Saracens, who ruled all Sicily in the year 827: but Rocco Pirri most pointedly, affirming that he presided in the year 812: which year was followed by the reign of Leo the Armenian, reviving iconoclasm, and so by the glorious confession of James, already a Bishop before.
[13] Yet it is no wonder if this was of no concern to Rocco: or afflicted with martyrdom by Constantine Copronymus. because he referred the Episcopate of James to the times of Leo the Isaurian, almost a century earlier, and to the year of Christ 730, following the chronological Index of Ottavio Gaetani in the Idea of the Work on the Sicilian saints: but Gaetani in the work itself changed his opinion and preferred the year 772, which was the 31st of Copronymus. In both places, namely, using bare conjectures which the name of the Iconoclasts offered, he had nothing else besides to follow. And in the Sicilian Martyrology, which he wove into the aforesaid Idea of his work in the year 1617, he nowhere cites either the tablets of the Church of Catania or any native record, as he otherwise does, The feast transferred to the 22nd. but only the Anthology and the Menologion of Sirleto, which make no mention of Catania, as we have seen. So that we ought now in no way to be moved by the fact that the order of the divine office to be recited at Catania, published by order of Innocenzo Massimo, Bishop of Catania, in the year 1628, orders his feast to be celebrated on the 12th of March with a double Office, because the 21st was occupied by St. Beryllus: for it appears that this whole order was formed from the aforesaid Martyrology of Gaetani.