Camino De Santiago

El Camino de Santiago, The Way of St. James, is an ancient pilgrimage leading to a shrine in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where the remains of St. James are reputed to be interred. Pilgrims from all over Western Europe and parts of the rest of the world have followed a labyrinth of pathways that end in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia in Northwestern Spain. Today, Santiago de Compostela is easily reached using an automobile or other means of public transportation, but in the spirit and tradition established over centuries, most who embark on a person pilgrimage choose to walk or ride a bicycle. Many have religious or at least spiritual reasons for making this trek while others are motivated differently.

One can legitimately question the reasons for undertaking a trek of this magnitude, but there are other more fundamental questions that rose to my mind as we planned and executed our journey. Who in the world was St. James? Is he in fact interred in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela? Is there historical evidence that he was ever in Spain or Portugal? How and why did the pilgrimages begin?

For the uninitiated, those who don’t identify with Christian religion or reject it entirely, those who may have once believed and then strayed, or those who are true believers who just feel confused, an enigma is the identification of “James.” After all, it is the reputed resting place for his remains that is the objective of Camino de Santiago. A true Pilgrim may be informed or at least knowledgeable, or may not need or want to know, seeking reward or redemption for other reasons. The Pilgrim who isn’t really one at all and who is just out walking the trail because it’s being done may have little interest in the origins of James, interested only in the walk without the religious baggage. Others, like me, who are here for obscure reasons spiritual or not might want more.

As we all know, Mary was a virgin who gave birth immaculately, that is without all that nasty business that the rest of us were subjected to in order to be born. But, the synoptic gospels, i.e., Mathew, Mark, and Luke, tell us that Jesus had brothers, James, Joses, Simon, Jude, and unidentified sisters, a detail that seems at first blush to challenge the idea that a phallus wasn’t invoked as part of his birth. Over the centuries, Christianity has done contortions to find an answer. At one extreme are those, such as the Ebionites, an early CE Jewish Christian sect, who argue that Jesus and his brothers were all the biological offspring of Joseph and Mary. A middle ground, one that has become a common Protestant argument, is that the brothers are half siblings, conceived after Mary gave birth to Jesus. In other words, Mary gave birth to Jesus without the help of Joseph and his member, but then had sexual relations with Joseph that produced the siblings. Both of these arguments are anathema to those who believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Another theory is that Joseph fathered the siblings in a previous marriage, and thus they are step-brothers and sisters of Jesus. This remains the official position of the Eastern Orthodox Church. And, still another theory, the one adopted by the Catholic Church, is that both Joseph and Mary were life long virgins, neither ever afflicted with the lust that has brought about the downfall of mankind and, in the 20th century, the near downfall of the Catholic Church. In this scenario, Jesus was born immaculately, neither Joseph nor Mary were tainted by fornication, and the siblings were all the product of a different Mary, the wife of Clopus and sister to Mary, mother of Jesus, and thus the siblings are not actual brothers and sisters but cousins.

This all amounts to a rather long winded but incredibly interesting exploration of one potential James that has drawn us to this expedition. But, alas, James, the brother, the half brother, the step-brother, or the cousin of Jesus, isn’t the focus of Camino de Santiago. Or is he? This James is considered to be the first Jewish Bishop of Jerusalem, he was never one of the apostles, and he was murdered in either 62 or 69 CE. He is known as James the Just but apparently never ventured into Portugal or Spain. But, ambiguity abounds as will be seen below.

There are two other possibilities, both wrapped in obfuscation created by language, the passage of time, and myth upon myth both named James, and both among the twelve apostles of Jesus. James the Less, a denotation indicating someone younger or shorter not necessarily less significant, was one of them. According to Jerome, an historian and religious scholar who lived during the fourth century CE, James the Less was the son of Mary, the wife of Alphaeus, and the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus. Thus, this James would have been a true cousin of Jesus if Jerome’s theory is accepted, but there is considerable debate that remains unsettled, some arguing that consistent references to this James as the “brother” of Jesus should be taken literally, an hypothesis that would make this James the same as James the Just.

The other possibility is James the Great, the offspring of Zebedee and Salome, members of a family of Jewish fishermen on the Sea of Galilea. Salome, not the one of the famous seven veils, was also a sister of Mary, mother of Jesus, which also made this James and Jesus cousins. He is known variously as Saint James the Great, James, son of Zebedee, Saint James the Elder, Saint Jacob, James the Apostle, or Santiago which translates from Spanish to James. He was one of the twelve apostles. He was also a brother of John, another apostle. It is this James whose remains are reputed to rest in Santiago de Compostela.

There is scant historical evidence that supports the claim that James the Great actually ever went to Portugal, but anecdotal evidence abounds. According to the legends, St. James is believed to have traveled to Padrón in Spain to proselytize, though why he would have picked this place over all the other possible destinations in the world is impossible to know. Centuries later, the tradition of the “Way of St. James” was recorded in the Codex Calixtinus, a 12th century collection of sermons, reports of miracles, liturgical texts, polyphonoic musical pieces, and descriptions of the pilgrimage routes.

According to the legend, James preached in Spain but returned to Jerusalem where he was beheaded on order of Herod Agrippa. His followers, Athanasius and Theodorus, retrieved his body and took it to Jaffa where they found a miraculous stone ship that they used to transport the remains to Iria Flavia, the modern municipality of Padrón. There, they approached the local pagan queen, Loba, for permission to bury the body and a series of events followed that included confrontations between the disciples and her dragons and wild bulls. Loba, finally convinced, converted to Christianity and provided help. Eventually, the body was interred where it remained for hundreds of years unnoticed and unmarked.

In the early ninth century, a hermit named Pelagius saw strange lights and was drawn to the place of burial. He immediately reported this to Theodemar of Ira, the local bishop, who was led by a star to the place of burial. The remains of James were somehow exhumed and identified, although exactly how that might have occurred is left unexplained. As one possibility, “Compostela” may thus be seen as a corruption of the latin “Campus Stellae,” or “field of stars.” But, curiously enough it happened that there was a Roman cemetery located at the exact same spot. Another theory, therefore, is that Compostela is derived from the Latin word for cemetery, cometerium. That being so, it is difficult to imagine how a hermit and his bishop were able to distinguish the remains of those interred in the Roman cemetery from the remains of James the Greater, a detail left to those with inquiring minds who may want to question.  Regardless, the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela was thus created and has become the third most visited Christian site after Rome and Jerusalem.

In 844, according to various legends, a famous battle occurred in which a small Christian army led by King Romiro I of Asturias and a larger Moorish army led by Abderrahman I, emir of Granada, battled one another near Clavijo. Just when the Christian army was about to vanquished, a horseman on a white stallion appeared and began slaying the Moors by the thousands, beheading them handily and causing a rout. The horseman, of course, was St. James and the legends of St. James the Moor Slayer were born. The Vatican has yet to formally accept the any of the legends in spite of an earlier Bull that accepted the authenticity of the relics. Nonetheless, pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela from all over Europe have occurred for hundreds of years. As might be expected, the routes are many reflecting the diverse origins of pilgrims from all over Europe. It has become politically and perhaps religiously impolite to emphasize St. James as a “slayer,” but the images can be found in many places along the various pilgrim routes.

Just when one might think the mystery of whose remains might be found in the cathedral has been solved, we learn of the existence of a reliquary bust of James Alphaeus, or James the Lesser, that is purported to contain his head. As noted earlier, James the Lesser died in 62 CE. His death was violent, and there are slightly different accounts of how it occurred. One is that he was thrust from the top of the temple by pharisees and then stoned or perhaps cudgeled to death. Another is that he was sentenced to death by stoning. There are no accounts of him being beheaded, and all accounts seem to corroborate that he died as a result of a blow to the head.

He was buried in Jerusalem, but there are certain medieval documents, the exact nature of which are obscure, that claim that in 1108, nearly two centuries after Pelagius found the remains of James the Greater, a Portuguese bishop, Maricio Burdino, also known as the antipope Gregory VIII, brought the head of James Alphaeus back to Iberia. It was seized by Queen Urraca who then reigned over Galicia, Castilla, and León, who delivered it to Diego Gelmírez, the acting archbishop of Compostela, who then placed it into a golden chest. The mystery deepens. There are quite a few questions, to be sure, among them why Maricio Burdino chose to bring only the head of James Alphaeus. After all, this James was not beheaded which means that Maricio Burdino or his agent had to not only exhume the remains but behead it, a gruesome act hard to understand or accept. But, then we know that an arm of St. Xavier was removed from his remains and taken to Rome some two hundred years after his body was exhumed and returned to Goa. It may all be in tradition of share and share alike when it came to relics.

In any event, in the latter part of the 19th century, the remains of James Alphaeus were examined by three professors who concluded that they were from three different persons, a conclusion that bolstered the legend that James the Greater and two of his companions were buried in the cathedral. A century later, a further forensic examination occurred, this one under the auspices of Forensic Anthropology at the University of Florida. The examination occurred in the cathedral under rather strict limitations. This time, it was concluded that one of two hypotheses might be possible: one, the skull did not belong to James the Lesser, and two, the skull “may be” that of James the Greater. Of course, these conclusions assume the legitimacy of the lore that got either James to Iberia in the first place.

My sources for all of this are varied, contradictory, confusing, and full of hypotheses, myth, and legend. See https://aleteia.org/2021/10/25/two-jameses-and-a-confusion-of-relics-in-compostela; https://journals.upress.ufl.edu/fa/article/view/1557/2094#:~:text=1)%20That%20the%20remains%20do,600%20and%20800%C2%B0C; https://www.trevorhuxham.com/2018/10/santiago-compostela-legends.html; or https://aleteia.org/2021/10/25/two-jameses-and-a-confusion-of-relics-in-compostela. But, there is the Codex Calixtinus, attributed to Pope Calixtus II but more likely compiled by the French scholar Aymeric Picaud, that contains extensive materials intended as advice for those seeking the Way of St. James. There are five books believed to have been separate at one time and likely originating in the 12th century. Eventually, they were combined into a sort of encyclopedia, the Liber Sancti Jacobi. There are multiple copies of the work but the Codex Calixtinus, the most famous manuscript that contains the Liber sancti Jacobi, was  held for centuries in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and only discovered and examined in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As noted earlier, the Way of St. James as a holy pilgrimage became inextricably connected to the conflict with Islam, St. James becoming known and celebrated as Santiago Matamoros or Saint James the Moor Slayer. There are numerous representations of St. James along the routes leading to Santiago de Compostela that show him in full battle regalia. For a time, St. James was the patron saint of Spain, and his iconography was used by the Spanish against indigenous peoples as the Americas were being colonized. There remains a statue of Santiago Matamoros in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

There are other powerful symbols encountered on any of the routes commonly used and recognized. The scallop is one, found on or near markers that point the way toward Santiago de Compostela. There are numerous explanations, all steeped in mystery and myth. One is that the body of St.  James was miraculously washed ashore covered in a protective coat of scallop shells. Another, apparently reflected in the Codex Calixtinus, is that a scallop shell was given to reward the successful pilgrim upon reaching the Cathedral. The cross of St. James, a sword bisected by a fleur-de-lys is another powerful symbol, this one still in use and clearly associated with the wars between the Christians and Moors. The Botafumeira, among the largest incense burners in the world, can be found in the Cathedral where it is used on special occasions such as the birthday of St. James. The yellow arrow, wide sombrero hats, wooden staffs are all seen frequently and are associated with the millions who have made this pilgrimage.

My own conclusions are that there are certainly bones to be found in the cathedral, but they are not those of either James or any James for that matter. My spirits, nonetheless, for the trek have not been dampened. I have never been inspired by the possibility that I might meet St. James or his aura. After all. So, I embark with my companions, my wife and my daughter, for the chance to experience a trek that many have taken for their own reasons, content that my reasons are at least as good as the ones they may have possessed or believed in. My reward includes my fascinating exploration of St. James. John Brierley’s Camino Portugués was interesting and helpful in some respects. His forward is a reflection of a deeply religious man which I am not. But, he included this quote from Kabir, an Indian mystic poet revered in modern India: