An early Christmas present – Anthony Alcock has translated the Coptic text of the Martyrdom of James the Persian into English for us all. This is here:
- James the Persian (PDF)
This martyr was put to death by having 28 bits of him cut off with a saw. I was tempted to head this post “James the Hacked-off”!
So who was he? Well, luckily, Tito Orlandi did an article in the Coptic Encyclopedia on him, and this is online here. James was a Persian martyr of the late 4th century. The account of his martyrdom – which is probably as historically reliable as most such texts, i.e. not at all – seems to exist in a number of versions; this translation is from the Bohairic Coptic text, published in the CSCO from a manuscript of the 10th century. Apparently a discussion of the various texts can be found in P. Devos, “Le dossier hagiographique de S. Jacques l’Intercis.”
Analecta Bollandiana 71 (1953):157-210; but this I have not seen.
The end of the text, tho, is more interesting historically. It contains a description of how the remains of St James the Persian arrived in Egypt. Orlandi describes this as composed in the 5th century.
Many thanks to Dr Alcock for his generosity!
It seems the link to the Coptic Encyclopedia isn’t working…
Working OK now…?
No :/ The link redirects to outlook.dev.worldpay.com/owa/redir.aspx?SURL=6B….
I assume it should be this link? http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/ref/collection/cce/id/1073
Fixed – thanks!
Well, our Coptic Church does call him “the mangled”…so “hacked-off” wouldn’t have been “untraditional” 😉
Interesting. … although of course “hacked off” has a more common meaning of “annoyed”! 🙂