buried in the scene of his toils and miracles. A Spanish order of knighthood, that of St. Jago de Compostella, takes its name from this notion.
The old romancer, Abdias Babylonius, who is so rich in stories about Andrew, has much to tell about James, and enters at great length into the details of his crucifixion; crowning the whole with the idle story, that when he was led to death, his accuser, Josiah, a Pharisee, suddenly repenting, begged his forgiveness and professed his faith in Christ,—for which he also was beheaded along with him, after being baptized by James in some water that was handed to him by the executioner, in a calabash. (Abd. Babylon. Hist. Apost. IV. § 9.)
From the time of this event, there occurs no mention whatever
of any act of James, until the commemoration of the occasion of
his exit; and even this tragic circumstance is mentioned so briefly,
that nothing can be learned but the mere fact and manner of his
death. On the occasion fully described above, in the life of Peter,
Herod Agrippa I. seized this apostle, and at once put him to
death by the executioner's sword. The particular grounds, on
which this act of bloody cruelty was justified by the tyrant and
his friends, are wholly unknown. Probably there was a pretence
at a set accusation of some crime, which would make the act
appear less atrocious at the time, than appears from Luke's silence
as to the grounds of the proceeding. The remarkable prominence
of James, however, was enough to offer a motive to the popularity-seeking
Agrippa, whose main object, being to "please the
Jews," led him to seize those who had most displeased them, by
laboring for the advancement of the Nazarene heresy. And that
this actually was his governing principle in selecting his victims,
is made further apparent by the circumstance that Peter, the great
chief of the band, was next marked for destruction. Though no
particular acts of James are recorded as having made him prominently
obnoxious to the Jews, yet there is every reason to believe,
that the exalted ardor and now chastened ambition of this Son of
Thunder, had made him often the bold assaulter of sophistry
and hypocrisy,—a heroism which at once sealed his doom, and
crowned him with the glory of THE APOSTOLIC PROTO-*MARTYR.
