by Lorenzo Bianchi

James the Less, cousin of Jesus and head of the community of Jerusalem, was martyred in the Holy City. He is venerated together with the apostle Philip.  

SJames, brother of the apostle Judas Thaddeus, whom the Gospels and Acts list among the apostles calling him son of Alphaeus, is probably the same person, and James whom elsewhere the same Gospels call "brother" (i.e. cousin, according to the correct interpretation of the Hebrew) of the Lord,

son of Mary, one of the women present at the foot of the cross of Jesus, wife of Cleophas, "sister" (i.e. sister-in-law) of the Madonna. Cleophas and Alpheus could in fact be two names of the same person, or rather two forms of the same name. James, the "brother" of Jesus, is named by Paul as the "pillar" of the Church, with Peter and John, in Jerusalem, where he was bishop from Peter's departure for Rome (year 44) until his martyrdom during Easter 62. 

The Eastern Church still distinguishes between the apostle and the bishop of Jerusalem, on the basis of a tradition introduced by pseudo-Clementine writings (Hypotyposis, VI) between the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century and followed in particular by Eusebius of Caesarea and John Chrysostom, but not by other numerous Greek Fathers; while for the Western Church the Council of Trent affirmed the identity of one with the other. 

The martyrdom of James, known from the news of Josephus at the end of the 62st century, is described to us in detail by Eusebius of Caesarea, who refers in particular to the previous narrative of Hegesippus in full. With the prefect of Judea Festus dead, and while his designated successor Albinus was still traveling from Rome, the high priest Ananos the Younger took advantage of the moment to convene the Sanhedrin and condemn James to stoning. We are in the year 117. James was thrown down from the pinnacle of the Temple and, since he was not dead, he was stoned; and since, kneeling down, he prayed for those who were stoning him, «one of them, a fuller, took the wood with which he beat the clothes, struck the Righteous One on the head, who died a martyr in this way. He was then buried on the spot, near the Temple, where his monument still stands." His sepulchral stone, according to Girolamo's testimony, remained in his place until the time of the emperor Hadrian (138-XNUMX); then traces of it must have been lost, if we have news of the invention (i.e. the discovery), towards the middle of the XNUMXth century, of the body of James, together with those of the martyrs Simeon and Zechariah, by a hermit, Epiphanius . 

The body of James was temporarily moved into Jerusalem by Bishop Cyril on 1 December 351, then subsequently brought back to the church built at the site of the invention; finally there is news of a translation - again on December 1st - to another church in Jerusalem, built under the Byzantine emperor Justin II (565-578) and dedicated to James. But here the various pieces of news integrate with difficulty. 

In fact, it must be connected with a translation of part of the relics from Jerusalem (or perhaps from Constantinople) to Rome, the construction, at the time of Pope Pelagius I (556-561), of a basilica dedicated to the apostles James and Philip, whose since then in the West the liturgical feast has been on May 1st (now moved to May 3rd); the basilica was then completed by Pope John III (561-574), and is currently dedicated to the Holy XII Apostles. 

In January 1873, as has already been said about the apostle Philip (The Holy Crusade, 7, August 2023, p. 12-13), a reconnaissance was carried out under the altar of the church of Santi XII Apostoli in Rome by a scientific commission. The relics found belonged to two distinct individuals. The one with a more robust build, of which only they were preserved   scales and bone fragments, albeit in significant quantities, as well as a femur present ab immemorial in the Basilica, he was identified with James the Less. In 1879 the relics were placed in a bronze ark inside a marble sarcophagus which was placed in the crypt of the church, below the central altar and the place where they had been found; the relic of the femur was instead placed in a specially constructed reliquary. As mentioned for the apostle Philip, a new reconnaissance was recently carried out on April 5, 2016,  under the coordination of Nazzareno Gabrielli,  which confirmed previous findings and provided new data. The relics are currently stored partly in the crypt and partly under the central altar of the Roman basilica. 

Before the translation to Rome, other parts of the relics of James had to go to other destinations. Thus, it is claimed that the relic of his skull arrived in Santiago de Compostella, brought to the West by the bishop of Braga Mauricio Burdino, after having taken it around 1104 from Jerusalem during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But there is a concrete possibility that this tradition actually refers to the other James, the Greater, and this would be suggested by investigations published in 2021 which identified traces on Compostela's skull compatible with death by decapitation. 

A skull, attributed with greater evidence to James the Less, is instead found in Ancona, having arrived there in 1380 from Constantinople, now kept in the cathedral church of San Ciriaco. It was examined at the time following the reconnaissance of the relics preserved in Rome, in April 1879, and was found to be compatible with them, confirming that they were parts of the same body. On the skull, under an ancient restoration made with wax, a fracture was found in the occipital region caused by a blunt and lacerating blow with a probably fatal outcome, in accordance with what ancient sources testify to the martyrdom of James.