James the Apostle Icon: Trajectories in Hispanic Literature (12th-16th Centuries)

LIDIA RAQUEL MIRANDA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 14° Congreso Mundial de Semiótica; 2019

IASS/AIS

After Jesus Christ death and resurrection, the apostles assumed the conscience and conviction of the Christian mission and the authentic development of Church began. Peter, Paul, John and James soon stood out, among others, as bearers of the evangelical message in early Christianity. But how and with what symbolic characteristics did James the Apostle become the saint of Spain? The answer is not simple, but we shall try to find it through a trace of James images and their connotations in some Hispanic medieval works (of Castile and Mexico). We are persuaded that the process of religious symbol building was codified in Middle Ages in response to the need for cultural resistance against the Muslim invasion and other manifestations of otherness. The aim of this work is to offer a diachronic reading of the saint´s iconography from its Hebrew origins to its literary representation in the 16th century in Spanish works. Although the evolution of Jacobean imaginary did not end in that century, we have limited our research to that period with the objective of deepening the imaginistic aspects that define the medieval conceptions around James figure. We aim to show the several meaning of icon James -apostle, patron, pilgrim and warrior (Matamoros and Mataindios)- but also that all of them have had a political connotation that exceeds religious needs with the objective of consolidating Hispanic identity in opposition to different models of otherness (pagans, Muslims, Jews, other European nations, and Amerindians).