The Apostles were perhaps rather more refined, rather less squat than the patriarchs and prophets supporting Saint Anne under the north porch, but their quality as works of art was less striking.  They resembled the Christ, Whom they escorted with decent duty:  it was honest work, phlegmatic sculpture, so to speak.

They held the instruments of their death with placid propriety, like soldiers presenting arms.

On the right hand stood Saint Peter, holding the cross on which he was bound head downwards; Saint Andrew, with a Latin cross, however, and not the X-shaped cross to which he was nailed; then Saint Philip, Saint Thomas, Saint Matthew, Saint Simon, all armed with the sword, though Saint Philip was crucified and stoned, Saint Thomas pierced with a lance, and Saint Simon sawn asunder.

To the left were Saint Paul, substituted for Saint Matthias, chosen to succeed Judas; he carried a sword; Saint John, bearing his Gospel; Saint James the Great, with a sword; Saint James the Less, with a fuller’s club; Saint Bartholomew, with the knife that served to flay him, and Saint Jude with a book.

Perched on twisted columns, they trampled under their feet—­bare, in token of their apostleship—­the executioners of their martyrdom.  They had long flowing hair, and forked beards cut into two points, excepting Saint John, who was beardless, and Saint Paul, who, tradition says, was bald; and they were all dressed alike in cloaks hanging in formal curves.  Saint James the Great was alone distinguished by a tunic sprinkled with shells, like that of the pilgrims who were wont to visit him at Compostella in one of the huge sanctuaries erected in his honour in Mediaeval times.

He was the patron Saint of Spain; but did he really ever preach in those lands, as Saint Jerome and Saint Isidor assert, and the Toledo Breviary?  Some doubt it.  At any rate his story, as related by Durand of Mende, in the thirteenth century, was as follows:  Being sent into Spain to convert the idolaters, he failed, and returned to Jerusalem, where he was beheaded by Herod.  His body was subsequently carried to Spain, and his remains performed such miracles as he had never wrought in his lifetime.

“Indeed,” reflected Durtal, “we have singularly little information with regard to the Apostles.  They appear, for the most part, only incidentally in the Gospels; and excepting a few—­Saint Peter, Saint John, and Saint Paul—­whose figures are more or less definite, they float past like shades, lost, veiled as it were, in the halo of glory shed about Him by Jesus Christ.  And after His death they vanish into thin air, and their very existence is only sketched in a few vague legends.

“Take Saint Thomas, the Treasure of God, as Saint Bridget calls him:  where was he born?  We are not told.  What were the circumstances and reasons of his call?  None knows.  In what lands did he preach the new faith?  Here disputes begin.  Some report him among the Medes, the Parthians, the Persians, in Ethiopia, in Hindustan.  He is commonly represented with a cubit-measure and a square, for it is said that he built a church at Meliapore; for which reason he was taken in the Middle Ages as the patron Saint of architects and masons.