Jude, Saint

   Also called Thaddaeus or Labbaeus, "the brother of James," and whose name sometimes appears as Judas, and in one instance it is added in parenthesis, "not Iscariot." St. Jude was an Apostle of our Lord and wrote the Epistle which bears his name. He is sometimes called the Jeremiah of the New Testament, as he wrote to the Church in "solemn and rugged language of present perils and coming storms." The object of his Epistle is to contend earnestly for pure Christian doctrine, and it is he who has given us that stirring text which is adopted as a motto by all true and loyal Churchmen, viz.: "that ye should earnestly contend for the Faith which was once delivered to the Saints." He is said to have been married and to have left descendants who were summoned before the Emperor Domitian as confessors for Christ's sake. St. Jude is commemorated on the double Festival of St. Simon and St. Jude, observed on October 28th. It may be that the union of these two names is intended to be an illustration of that unity of the Faith for which the Epistle of St. Jude so strongly contends, as these two Apostles ministered and suffered together, (See SIMON, ST.) The Collect for the Day embodies this idea. In ecclesiastical art St. Jude is variously represented, as having a boat in his hand; a boat hook; a carpenter's square; a ship with sails in his hand; carrying loaves or a fish; with a club; with an inverted cross; with a medallion of our Saviour on his breast or in his hand; with a halbert; as a child with a boat in his hand.