San Giacomo

Description

This Icon is a copy of the Hagiography (Holy Card Printing) that we have made in our Laboratory and we reserve the exclusive rights to reproduce these images, which are protected by copyright.

James the Great[a] (died AD 44) was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. According to the New Testament, he was the second of the apostles to die (after Judas Iscariot), and the first to be martyred. Saint James is the patron saint of Spain and, according to tradition, his remains are held in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.

He is also known as James, son of Zebedee, Saint James the Great, Saint James the Greater, Saint James the Elder, or Saint Jacob.

James was the son of Zebedee and Salome. Salome was a sister of Mary (mother of Jesus) which made James the Great cousin of Jesus. James is styled “the Greater” to distinguish him from the Apostle James “the Less,” with “greater” meaning older or taller, rather than more important. James the Great was the brother of John the Apostle.

James is described as one of the first disciples to join Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels state that James and John were with their father by the seashore when Jesus called them to follow him.

James, along with his brother John and Peter, formed an informal triumvirate among the Twelve Apostles. Jesus allowed them to be the only apostles present at three particular occasions during his public ministry, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, transfiguration of Jesus and agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. James and John (or, in another tradition, their mother) asked Jesus to grant them seats on his right and left in his glory. Jesus rebuked them, asking if they were ready to drink from the cup he was going to drink from and saying the honor was not even for him to grant. The other apostles were annoyed with them. James and his brother wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan town, but were rebuked by Jesus.

The Acts of the Apostles records that “Herod the king” (usually identified with Herod Agrippa) had James executed by the sword.[1] Nixon suggests that this may have been caused by James’s fiery temper,[10] in which he and his brother earned the nickname Boanerges or “Sons of Thunder”. F. F. Bruce contrasts this story to that of the Liberation of Saint Peter, and writes that the proposition that “James should die while Peter should escape” is a “mystery of divine providence”.