Saint James “the Son of Alphaeus” the Apostle, a.k.a.: James the Lesser (i.e., the shorter or the younger):
James the son of Alphaeus was one of the twelve apostles chosen and invested (ordained) by Jesus(Mark 3:14).
James the Lesser was born in Capernaum, and his mother, Mary was the Mary who went to Jesus’ grave on Easter morning and found the stone rolled away, and the tomb empty.
He may have been the brother of Matthew the Evangelist (the author of the Gospel of Matthew; a.k.a.: Levi the son of Alphaeus) however Alphaeus was a very common name and they may not have been brothers. In Hebrew alphaeus means rivers of living water or changing and it was a common name in biblical times and nowhere in the Gospels or in the other books of the New Testament are Matthew and James the younger ever identified as brothers.
James the younger is one the more obscure of the apostles of Christ. Nothing else is known about him with any certainty. Some early sources state that James the Lesser journeyed with the apostle Andrew through Judea, Gaza, and Eleutheropolis (in central Israel) and on to Syria.
In Ancient iconography James the younger is sometime depicted holder a fuller’s club (note that fulling wool is a step in woolen cloth making which involves the cleansing of woven cloth to eliminate oils, such as lanolin, and dirt, and other impurities, and to make the fabric shrink by friction and pressure). The work delivers a smooth, tightly finished fabric that is isolating and water repellent.
James the Lesser was the first Bishop of Syria, and that he and Andrew are reported to have done much to established the Church in that realm. St James finished his apostolic work in the lower (southern) Egyptian city of Ostrakine, where he was crucified by the pagans.
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