(5TH CENT.)
[Authority for his life, a fragmentary life of uncertain date,
published by Bollandus.]
James, of Asiatic origin, and a soldier, was one of the first disciples
of S. Honoratus in his monastic settlement at Lerins. When S. Honoratus
was appointed Archbishop of Arles, he called James to be the first
Bishop of the Tarantaise, the valleys of the Isère and Arc, of which
Moutiers is the modern capital, between the Graian and Pennine Alps. S.
James made Centronum, or Moutiers, the seat of the bishopric, and there
he laboured to convert the people still buried in heathenism. Of him is
related a story very similar to that told of other Saints, viz., that
as his monks were cutting down trees in the forest, for the construction
of his cathedral church, a bear killed one of the oxen which drew the
timber. Then the monks fled in consternation to S. James, who went
boldly to the bear and said, "I, James, the servant of Christ, command
thee, cruel beast, to bow thy stubborn neck to the yoke, in place of the
ox thou hast slain." Then the bear was obedient, and drew the timber to
the church.
S. James is also said to have taken an ass's load of pure snow of the
mountain in mid-summer, as a tribute to Gondecar, King of the
Burgundians, having nothing else to offer, when the king had ordered a
tax to be levied on all the produce of the land.