ST/JD/22
James the Great
- Gender
- None
- Floruit (period)
- Biblical
- Floruit date range
- ? - ?
- Description
- Son of Zebedee, elder brother of St John, and one of the privileged group of disciples present at the Transfiguration and the Agony in Gethsemane. James and John were known as ‘Boanerges’, ‘sons of thunder’, because of their zeal (Mk. 3.17). James was beheaded in A.D. 44 (Acts 12.2). The cult of St James was cultivated by the kings of Asturias (Spain) in the later ninth century, and the church of Santiago de Compostela claimed to possess the relics of St James; pilgrimage to Compostela was one of the most important in medieval Christendom.