Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend. Transl. Granger
Ryan and Helmut Ripperger. New York: Arno Press, 1969. Pp. 368-73.
This apostle James is called James the son of Zebedee,
or James the brother of John, or Boanerges, which means the Son of Thunder,
or James the Greater. He is the son of Zebedee not only in the flesh, but
in the meaning of the name. Zebedee means giving or given, and the blessed
James gave himself to Christ by his martyrdom, and was given to us by God
as a spiritual patron.... He is called the son of thunder because of the
sonority of his preaching which terrified the wicked, aroused the slothful,
and won the admiration of all by its loudness....
James is called the Greater, as the other James is called the Less, firstly,
by reason of his calling, because he was called earlier by Christ; secondly,
because of his intimacy with Christ, for Our Lord seems to have held this
James in closer friendship than the other, admitting him to His secrets,
as when he was present at the raising of the daughter of Jairus and at
the Transfiguration; thirdly, by reason of his passion because he was the
first of the apostles to be put to death. Thus as he is called Greater
because he received the grace of the apostolate earlier, so he is called
Greater because he was earlier summoned to the glory of eternity....
...after the apostle's death, his disciples, in fear of
the Jews, placed his body in a boat at night, embarked with him, although
the boat had neither rudder not steersman, and set sail, trusting to the
providence of God to determine the place of his burial. And the angels
guided the boat to the shores of Galicia in Spain, where there was a queen
whose name was Lupa, a name which means she-wolf, and which she well deserved
by her life.
The disciples laid the body of the apostle on a great stone, which immediately
softened as if it were wax, and shaped itself into a sarcophagus fitted
to his body. The disciples went to Queen Lupa and said to her: "Our
Lord Jesus Christ sends thee the body of His disciple, that thou mayest
welcome in death him whom thou wouldst not welcome alive!" And they
narrated to her the miracle whereby they had come thither without a rudder
nor a steersman, and besought her to appoint a place for the burial of
the saint.
Then, as John Beleth relates, she guilefully sent them to the king of Spain,
a most cruel man, with the pretext of seeking his permission for the saint's
burial; and the king arrested them and threw them into prison. But in the
night, when he had gone to rest, an angel opened the prison doors and set
them free. As soon as he learned this, the king sent soldiers in pursuit
of them; but just as these soldiers were crossing a bridge, the bridge
collapsed and the soldiers were drowned. At this report, the king feared
for himself and his people, and repented. He sent other men to search for
James's disciples, and to say to them that if they would return, he would
refuse them nothing that they asked. They therefore went back, and converted
the whole city to the faith of Christ.
Then they returned to Lupa, to make known to her the kings's assent. The
queen was sore distraught at these tidings, and answered: "I have
oxen in a mountain place. Take them and yoke them, and carry your master's
body whither you will, and build him a tomb!" All this she said in
wolfish cunning, for she knew that the oxen were really untamed and savage
bulls, and thus she thought that they could not be yoked or harnessed,
or if they were harnessed, they would run away, and destroy the car and
throw the body to the ground, and kill the disciples.
But no guile avails against God. The disciples, unaware of the queen's
ruse, went up into the mountain, where first they encountered a dragon
which belched fire; but they held a cross before him, and he was cloven
asunder. Then they made the sign of the cross over the bulls, and they
became as meek as lambs, allowed themselves to be yoked, and although no
man guide them, they drew the saint's body, with the stone in which it
was laid, straight into the middle of the queen's palace. Seeing this,
the queen was dismayed, believed in Christ, transformed her palace into
a church of Saint James, and endowed it munificently. And she passed the
rest of her life in doing good works.