The Way to Glory

This statue of St James is part of the eleventh-century Portico of Glory in the cathedral dedicated to him, Catedral Basílica de Santiago de Compostela. It is the work of Master Mateo and is remarkable for the astonishing delicacy of its carving in granite. James is situated at the centre of the pillar (trumeau column) underneath Christ seated in Majesty, greeting those who enter. Pilgrims are invited to see themselves as sharing a history with the biblical prophets, evangelists, and the heavenly host who are depicted in stone all around him.

There are two apostles called James. One of them, later known as James the Great, is a son of Zebedee, and the brother of John—traditionally thought to be the author of the Gospel, the Johannine Letters, and Revelation (the book whose vision of heaven the Portico of Glory evokes). The other is James, son of Alpheus, later known as James the Less.

We know more about James the son of Zebedee. He was a fisherman. He and his brother had a nickname: Boanerges (‘sons of thunder’). James offended King Herod (likely Herod Agrippa I) and was the first disciple to be martyred (Acts 12:2). This was his experience of baptism into the eternal life of Jesus Christ (Mark 10:35–45).

Today, he is best known for being the patron saint of pilgrimage. The camino, or pilgrimage road, to Santiago de Compostela is taken by people of all faiths and none. The scallop shell has become his symbol, reminding sea-going pilgrims that he was also a fisherman.

The pilgrims’ destination is the Romanesque cathedral that houses what are traditionally believed to be the Apostle’s relics. But the Portico of Glory allows St James to tell a greater story. In other examples of Romanesque doorways (e.g. Chartres, Autun, Rouen, Reims) the figure on the central pillar is standing. In Compostella, St James is seated, as though a bishop, for whom the chair (cathedra, in Latin) is the emblem of their teaching office in succession to the Apostles.

James is also holding a pilgrim’s staff, symbolic of leading a pilgrim Church, and a scroll which says, Misit me Dominus, ‘the Lord sent me’: to tell us about heaven.

References

Murray, Peter and Linda Murray (eds). 1996. The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 248–49

This painting is about family life.

The artist is Quinten Massys. He developed his style in Antwerp, where the school of Rogier van der Weyden introduced an air of ‘southern sophistication’, drawn from the latter’s time working in Rome and evident in the painting’s architectural composition.

There is no interest here in historical reconstruction. Well-established custom permitted the artist to dress the first-century Palestinian family of Jesus Christ in the contemporary fashion of prosperous Antwerp.

The Lutheran New Testament scholar and ecumenist Oscar Cullmann once noted that ‘whenever biographical literature shows gaps, legend generally springs up’ (Elliott 2005: 46).

This ‘holy kinship’ painting is a good example.

It takes its lead from the second-century Gospel of James, also known as the Protoevangelium. This document fills in more details of the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus; her parents (Joachim and Anna); her schooling (in the Temple in Jerusalem); and how Joseph came to be betrothed to her. This material is further amplified by chapter 131 of the thirteenth-century Golden Legend, the inspiration of so much holy kinship iconography.

Seated centrally on a raised bench are Anne, Mary, and the Christ child. The husbands look on, segregated from the holy nursery. Joachim and Joseph stand behind their wives. Next to Joseph is Alphaeus who is married to Mary’s sister, Mary Clopas, and Zebedee, standing next to Joachim, is married to Mary’s other sister, Mary Salome.

Mary Clopas’s children are James the Less, Simon, Thaddeus, and Joseph Barsabbas who was not elected when the Apostles’ vote went to Matthias (Acts 1:23–26). Mary Salome’s two sons are, of course, James and John (Matthew 27:56). It is assumed that it is she who approaches Jesus in Matthew’s version of this encounter (Matthew 20:20–28).

This legend, in which many of the Apostles are Jesus’s cousins, is a strong statement about an authentically human dimension of the incarnation and life in the Church. We belong to a family, with all the rivalry and politics that might entail—like the question, ‘Who is the greatest?’.

References

Elliott, J. K. (ed.). 2005. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation Based on M. R. James (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 48–67

Murray, Peter, and Linda Murry (eds). 1996. The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 265–66

Salvador Dalí’s Christ of St John of the Cross is one of the most recognizable paintings in the world.

Dalí was an exponent of Surrealism, which might seem more likely to deconstruct, rather than confirm, Christian faith. For example, The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses, the work of another surrealist artist, Max Ernst, was thought to be blasphemous.

But a more positive reading of this style surely lends itself to the exploration of faith.

St James the Great, brother of his fellow apostle John the Beloved, found his later vocation in nurturing the faith of pilgrims to a remote corner of the Iberian Peninsula. St John of the Cross (1542–91) was born not so very far away, at Fontiveros.

In 1568, John took the title ‘of the cross’ when he joined a branch of the Carmelite Order founded by St Teresa at Avila. At some point during the 1570s he drew a sketch entitled ‘Christ from above’, which inspired Dalí to produce the work we see here.

Dalí’s composition is Johannine in many ways. It captures the mood of the prologue of John’s Gospel, which begins, ‘In the beginning’. It explores the contrast between light and darkness as a metaphor for creation, time, and eternity. It uses the canvas to exploit the evangelist’s spatial language of ‘above’ and ‘below’.

It also draws attention to the Sea of Galilee where so much of the drama of the gospel is played out. Galilee is where the Gospels of Matthew and Mark locate the discussion between Jesus, James, and John, and James and John’s mother, about the way to glory (Matthew 20:20–28; Mark 10:32–45).

Above all, Dalí presents Jesus in the hour of his glory, when he is lifted up from the earth. And for most of Christian history, St John the beloved disciple has been depicted beside that cross (the cross so vividly imagined by his sixteenth-century namesake), at Jesus’s left-hand side. For in the wake of his mother’s request that he be granted a place at Jesus’s side ‘in his Kingdom’, the Apostle found himself taking up his station at the crucifixion, along with the Blessed Virgin Mary, as Jesus entrusted her to his care.

References

Descharnes, Robert, and Gilles Néret. 2022. Dalí: The Paintings (Cologne: Taschen), pp. 434–76