Introductions and translations by Josh Parks.
About the Text
Nota bene: The thirteenth-century stories translated below concern themes of sin, death, and punishment; the second story (Book 3.62) in particular describes a scene of severe self-harm.
The first story (Book 2.19) introduces a moneylender whose act of pilgrimage proves a failure. Despite the moneylender’s devotion to St. James, which includes an expensive pilgrimage to Compostela, his behavior remains greedy and selfish. When sickness drives him to the point of death, he appeals to St. James for mercy by pointing to his acts of devotion. But James responds that his sins still stand between him and salvation. James returns the money that the moneylender spent on the pilgrimage, even though he refuses it, and then James disappears. This story suggests that pilgrimages were not always straightforward acts of asceticism; for the rich they could also be luxurious displays of wealth. But this expensive kind of devotion, the narrator concludes, cannot undo the sins of greed and usury.
In the second story (Book 3.62), we see St. James watching out for the fate of even the most inexperienced and unworthy pilgrim. Gerard embarks on his pilgrimage on a whim, and the devil takes advantage of his ignorance by impersonating St. James and urging him to injure and then kill himself. Gerard’s companions flee and leave him for dead. But as the demons carry Gerard’s soul past a church, the real St. James intervenes and appeals to the Virgin Mary on Gerard’s behalf. Mary rules that his soul must be returned to his body, and the man awakens, safe but severely scarred from his ordeal. He then joins a monastery out of gratitude to the Lord and spends the rest of his life there. This story portrays pilgrimage as a place of spiritual warfare, where demons and saints battle over pilgrims’ souls, often with severe bodily consequences for the pilgrims themselves.
These stories were compiled by the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach. While he is best known for the Dialogus miraculorum (Dialogue on Miracles, c. early 1220s), he also produced a collection known as the Libri VIII miraculorum (Eight Books of Miracles, c. 1225). It is from this latter collection that the following stories are drawn. The fundamental plot of 3.62 is not unique to Caesarius; it appears in different versions in other medieval miracle collections, including the Liber Sancti Jacobi.
Translation: Book 2.19
Of a moneylender, to whom St. James returned money when he died.
A certain moneylender lived in the city of Trier. One day, he was moved to visit the dwelling of St. James in Compostela. He spent five pounds of silver and lived luxuriously on his journey, and when he was back home, he did not give anything to the poor. Having returned home, he turned to moneylending as before.
After several years, he grew gravely ill, and since he feared to die, he frequently prayed to St. James, recalling his pilgrimages, works, and monetary gifts to him in his memory. “St. James the Apostle,” he said, “remember how I spent five pounds in your service.”
And when he had disturbed the apostle with these words, the blessed apostle appeared to him, stood before him, and said, “I am the apostle James, whose dwelling you visited with your money.”
Thrilled to hear this, the moneylender began to cry out and said with tears, “St. James the Apostle, help me!” He repeated this over and over.
The apostle answered him: “Your sins stand in your way. I worked on your behalf as much as I could, and I achieved nothing. The demons bring many terrible accusations before the highest judge of things that you did. Justice has been weighed, and you have been judged deserving of eternal punishment. Look, I have in my hand the five pounds that you spent in my service. I give them back to you.”
But the moneylender shouted, “My lord, my lord, I don’t want to take them back!” The apostle wrapped the money in a little cloth, put it on the moneylender’s head, and disappeared. The moral of this story is that it is not possible to please God or his saints with costly alms that come from bad money. This story was told to me by a certain devout priest who said that he had come to know it accurately.
Translation: Book 3.62
The example of a pilgrim seduced to death by the devil, whose soul holy Mary, by the prayers of St. James, ordered to return to his body.
Lord Hugh of Damas, the abbot [of Cluny],1 used to tell the story of a certain brother in his monastery. This brother’s name was Gerard, and when he was still a layman, he desired to hurry to the dwelling of St. James. And so he prepared the things necessary for the journey under the light of the day on which the journey was to be undertaken, while his concubine slept, defeated by the pleasures of the flesh.
And when he had gone a little way on the journey with his companions, the old enemy—the one who sometimes transfigures himself into an angel of light—desired to deceive him. This very enemy appeared to the pilgrim in the likeness of St. James and said to him, “You must know that because of the evil deeds you have done you will not be able to attain salvation unless you do what I am going to tell you. First, cut off your [genitals] and then kill yourself, and by doing this you will have an eternal reward.”
The man thought that he was really St. James the Apostle, and when he ordered him to do these things, he seized a piece of iron and cut off his [genitals]. And after that he wounded himself mortally by dragging it across his throat. When his companions heard that he was near death and saw him expelling his last breath—so that they saw him soaked in blood—they abandoned him and, frightened, fled with haste, lest someone think that they had killed him for the desire of money or some other reason.
Once the man had died, the devil took the soul of the one he had deceived, and he and his followers were more than a little delighted at their prize. But by the will of God, while they were passing near the church of St. Peter, St. James the Apostle came up to them with St. Peter and said to the group of demons, “Why have you taken the soul of my pilgrim?”
And when they had inflicted whatever evil they could on him and he had reached his end, St. James said to them, “You should know truly that you will not rejoice any more for his destruction, for under [the illusion of] hope for me you have led this ignorant one to death by the snare of your deceptions. And that which he has done in obedience to me, he has done earnestly. But if you fight against this, let us go to the judgment of the holy mother Mary.”
So they came to the holy mother of God, and when they asked what would please her, Mary herself, the virgin full of piety, judged that the soul ought to return to the body so that he could be purged of the evil deeds he had done through penance. And so this was done: by the merits of holy Mary, Peter, and James, the soul returned to the body.
It is said that the man, remembering, found himself safe and with only a bruise remaining to show where his neck had been cut. But his reproductive organs, which he had cut off himself, had not been restored to him, and nothing remained there other than a downward-facing hole through which he urinated. Therefore he left death behind as if he was waking from sleep, not forgetful of these benefits which divine mercy bestowed on him according to the saving intercession of the glorious virgin Mary and the apostles.
When he had been raised from the dead, he lifted his hands and his soul to the heavens of the Lord, and he praised the Lord and his saints for their great benefit to him. But when he had made his pilgrimage to St. James and then reached the aforementioned monastery of Damas [i.e., Cluny], he became a monk there, and he lived many days afterward to the end of his life devoted to the service of the Lord and his mother and his saints.
Notes
1 “Dominus Hugo abbas Damiacensis“: In this case, Damiacensis seems to refer not to a location (such as Damietta in Egypt) but rather to the House of Damas, a French aristocratic family to which Hugh, abbot of Cluny, belonged.
References
Caesarius of Heisterbach. Die Fragmente der Libri VIII Miraculorum des Caesarius von Heisterbach. Edited by Aloys Meister. Rome 1901. For these specific stories, see Book 2.19, p. 92-93 and Book 3.62, p. 185-87.
Ruins of Heisterbach Abbey, pictured around 1900 (image via Library of Congress).