Legend,” by the blessed James, Bishop of Genoa and member of the order of Dominic, who was born at Varazze or Voragio in almost the same year that Thomas was born at Aquino, and whose “Legenda Aurea,” written about the middle of the thirteenth century, was more popular history than the Bible itself, and more generally consulted as authority.  The decorators of the thirteenth century got their motives quite outside the Bible, in sources that James of Genoa compiled into a volume almost as fascinating as the “Fioretti of Saint Francis.”

According to the “Golden Legend” and the tradition accepted in Jerusalem by pilgrims and crusaders, Mary’s family connection was large.  It appears that her mother Anne was three times married, and by each husband had a daughter Mary, so that there were three Marys, half-sisters.

Joachim-Anne- Cleophas- -Salome

Joseph-Mary Alpheus-Mary Mary-Zebedee

Christ   James       Joseph  Simon  Jude       James        John
the Minor   the                       the Major    the Evangelist
Apostle     Just                      St. Iago of Compostella

Simon and Jude were, therefore, nephews of Mary and cousins of Christ, whose lives were evidence of the truth not merely of Scripture, but specially of the private and family distinction of their aunt, the Virgin Mother of Christ.  They were selected, rather than their brothers, or cousins James and John, for the conspicuous honour of standing opposite Peter and Paul, doubtless by reason of some merit of their own, but perhaps also because in art the two counted as one, and therefore the one window offered two witnesses, which allowed the artist to insert a grisaille in place of another legendary window to complete the chapel on their right.  According to Viollet-le-Duc, the grisaille in this position regulates the light and so completes the effect.

If custom prescribed a general rule for the central chapel, it seems to have left great freedom in the windows near by.  At Chartres the curved projection that contains the next two windows was not a chapel, but only a window-bay, for the sake of the windows, and, if the artists aimed at pleasing the Virgin, they would put their best work there.  At Bourges in the same relative place are three of the best windows in the building:—­the Prodigal Son, the New Alliance and the Good Samaritan; all of them full of life, story, and colour, with little reference to a worship or a saint.  At Chartres the choice is still more striking, and the windows are also the best in the building, after the twelfth-century glass of the west front.  The first, which comes next to Blanche’s grisaille in the central chapel, is given to another nephew of Mary and apostle of Christ, Saint James the Major, whose life is recorded in the proper Bible Dictionaries, with a terminal remark as follows:—­

For legends respecting his death and his connections with Spain, see the Roman Breviary, in which the healing of a paralytic and the conversion of Hermogenes are attributed to him, and where it is asserted that he preached the Gospel in Spain, and that his remains were translated to Compostella ...  As there is no shadow of foundation for any of the legends here referred to, we pass them by without further notice.  Even Baronius shows himself ashamed of them....