Twelve: Jacobus Major

James the Greater

by Camillo Rusconi

1715-18

 

 

In early medieval Europe saints' cults did not simply happen: they were made. Perhaps that statement is too sweeping. I would a little refine and qualify it if we were to say that:~

 

....small-scale, local and popular cults might be transformed - if influential people were persuaded, that it was in their interests, to show devotion to one - or several - saints' shrines.

 

 

In western Francia the shrines of St. Martin at Tours, St. Denys near Paris, and St. Remigius at Rheims mattered to the Merovingians and the Carolingians in ways that the shrines of other saints did not. This was partly because the clergy who were the guardians of these shrines had taught their rulers that certain directions and forms of devotion were expected of kings who hoped to live long, father children, defeat their enemies, win land and booty, attract followers and perhaps above all be remembered and partly, because kings looked to holy protectors, saintly companions, all the more readily when these saints were, in a sense - theirs- and no one else's.

 

The cult of a saint could, thus, be influential in moulding a kingdom.

 

When in the sixth century king Leovigild made Toledo his capital city it was under royal influence that a new cult was promoted. It is clear that the cult of Sta Leocadia mattered to the later Visigothic kings, though it is hard to find words in which to say why it did so which will carry meaning and conviction to a twentieth-century understanding.

 

Being protected by Leocadia, showing reciprocal devotion for Leocadia -- more jealous protection than she showed for anyone else, more lavish devotion than anyone else could show for her -- were two sorts of activity which were inseparable from other sorts of kingly activity which took place in Toledo: legislating, striking coin, presiding over church councils, commissioning sculptors and goldsmiths to fashion wonderful works of art -- to name just some of the things we happen to know about.

 

Like many rulers of Spain before and since, Leovigild wanted to persuade his nominal subjects that Spain was one country, ruled by one king, from one place, under one law. Leocadia's was a royal cult in a royal city. She could make a king more imposing, perhaps more powerful.

 

Extract sourced from Saint James' Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmirez

of Santiago de Compostela. 

R.A. Fletcher 1984 

 

 

 

 

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