[Gocamino] Saint James in Rome

[Bridget Highfill]

I remember reading (in Edwin Mullins book on pilgrimage I believe) that St. Rocco supplanted St. James in many road side shrines.  In later years the plague was such an issue that chapels were rededicated, especially in France.  That could account for the similarity with St. James iconography.
  Any insight anyone?
   
  Bridget Highfill
blaroli at aol.com wrote:
  Hello Dale and all,
Yes... there is a Saint James (San Giacomo) Church in the heart of Rome. It is located on the "Corso"  (that popular street that runs from the Vittorio Emmanuele monument to Piazza del Popolo) a couple of blocks before the Piazza. Because of the crowded, narrow, street, and the abundance of other churches nearby, San Giacomo is easy to miss, but if you look above the main door you'll see a very large Santiago shell carved above the entrance.
The church, like all churches in Rome, is full of unheralded and priceless sculptures and paintings, among them a lovely life-size sculpture of Saint James not as a pilgrim, but as an Apostle. The statue looks remarkably like the beautiful Saint James painted by Leonardo in The Last Supper.
The Camino friends in Rome often meet there. 
Nearby, close to the tomb of Augustus, and the reopened Ara Ceolis, there is a church dedicated to a very special pilgrim: Saint Rocco. I love that church.  On August 15 (ferragosto) they have special services which include a procession out in the street in which dogs belonging to parishioners take place.  Saint Rocco (Roque, Roche) was a French pilgrim quasi-mistic, somehow like Saint Francis, who had been a "romero" (pilgrim to Rome) and was arrested and beaten in the Italian countryside by some warring factions of the time on suspicion of being a spy. 
He was near death hovering in a cave when a dog came by, licked his wounds and, for days after, would bring him bread. When San Rocco recovered he became a monk dedicated to the care of lepers and other unfortunates.
On August 15, after Mass, inside of the San Rocco church a little dog standing on a chair gives small bread rolls, wrapped in tissue paper, to the parishioners.  That is unbelievably touching and it always makes me cry.
But, inside the church, there is also a small procession in which an arm, presumably having belonged to  San Rocco, encased in an elaborate silver and jewels "glove", is carried.  I, for one, can't deal with such things, nor do I like the fact that the embalmed body of the late Pope John XXIII is now in full view inside of Saint Peters.
(While I dearly love my church, and have always felt unbelievably lucky to have been born a Catholic, I would be tempted to join the Polish army and invade the Vatican if  plans were made there to exhibit the body of  John Paul II.) 

There are statues and paintings of Saint James all over Rome, but I don 't remember ever seeing one depicting him as a pilgrim; the ones that I have seen resemble, one way or another, the Saint James in Leonardo's masterpiece.  Besides the statue in Saint Giacomo's, which is striking, the one in Saint Paul's Outside the Walls is particularly beautiful.
Most statues of Saint Rocco do depict him as a pilgrim, with shell, gourd and walking stick, a little dog by his side carrying a piece of bread in his mouth and Saint Rocco showing a leg wound which the dog reportedly licked until it healed.  I wonder whether that dog had a name.

Hugs!

Rosina

 



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