The Church of St. James the Apostle rises along the access road to the castle of Geraci Siculo; the factory, very austere in its external stone face, has a single-nave layout, with two deep side chapels; it can be traced back to the 15th century, although in 1984 heavy reworking altered its spatial configuration, with the abolition of the roofing vaults and the covering of the walls with stone blocks.
Among the artistic evidence still in situ, a piece of fresco from the second half of the 15th century depicting St. Philip of Agira remains at the entrance to the Chapel of St. James. The saint, known as the “spirits hunter”, whose cult was conveyed to Sicily by the ancient Basilian monasteries, è depicted in the act of blessing, wearing a red-colored pre-Tridentine chasuble and pallium, and bearing in his left hand his proper iconographic attributes, namely ropes for binding demons; the figure, almost in a frontal position, stands out against a background divided into panels of green and black, containing the inscription St. Ph(ilipp)u d’Archir(ò) and bordered above by a band of geometric tracery.
In the same chapel è is kept the wooden simulacrum of the titular saint of the church, whose shape è was clearly deduced from the marble statue contained in the’ancona of the church of St. Bartholomew, also in Geraci; the sculpture, subjected over time to various repaintings, dates back to the mid-16th century.
The large altarpiece on the main altar, depicting the Immaculate Conception with Saints Francis, James the Apostle, Clare and John the Evangelist at her feet, should also be mentioned, which, as can be deduced from the signature, è was painted in 1657 by the painter Giuseppe Tomasi da Tortorici.
To the late Gothic culture belongs the valuable wooden crucifix found near the castle and now also kept in the church; the work, referable to a Sicilian-Valenetian sculptor, è can be dated to the midà of the 15th century and shows an elongated silhouette, slightly bent to the left, with a flowing pleated skirt loincloth, from which the face is detached, which instead reveals a serene expression, closer to humanistic sensibility.