Until the revival of its fortunes in the 1980s, most people living in the English-speaking world had never heard of the Camino de Santiago, nor would they have been especially likely to have known who “Santiago” was. Christians would have recognized the name in English as that of one of the Twelve Apostles, but that’s about it.
For more than a thousand years, the Camino de Santiago been Europe’s most venerable pilgrimage route, carrying pilgrims to the cathedral that tradition maintains is the final earthly resting place of the Apostle St. James the Greater. In the Middle Ages, only Jerusalem and Rome surpassed Compostela in importance as pilgrimage destinations. Tens of thousands of pilgrims each year braved dangerous sea crossings, treacherous mountain passes, wolves, bandits, and the recurring threats of famine and plague, on a journey from which there was no guarantee they would return home safely.
Its popularity began to wane from the 15th century onwards. The Protestant schism sundered the unity of European Christendom. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and other Protestant leaders denounced the practice of pilgrimages. Further historical upheavals provoked by the Wars of Religion in France and the skepticism that followed Enlightenment led to a sharp decline in the number of pilgrims making their way to the tomb of St. James.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, the route had largely been forgotten, and only a handful pilgrims walked the route each year. Now, in the first third of the 21st century, it is once again Europe’s most popular pilgrimage route, with over 300,000 pilgrims making their way across the north of Spain on foot or by bicycle each year. Many thousands more arrive by car, bus and train.
So, how did the relics of St. James end up in Spain?
According to an ancient tradition, after the events of Pentecost the Apostles divided up the known world, intending to go forth and “preach the Gospel to all nations” as Christ had commanded. The task of evangelizing the inhabitants of Roman Hispania, at the westernmost edge of the Empire, fell to St. James. And so he set sail in the company of seven other disciples. They laboured for several years, preaching in some of the principal cities of the province, including Braga (in modern Portugal), Iria Flavia (today Padrón, Spain) and Cesaraugusta (Zaragoza, Spain).
Eventually, disheartened and weary after years of frustrating labour that had resulted in the baptism of only a small number of converts, they resolved to depart Hispania and return to Jerusalem.
Another ancient Spanish tradition holds that before their departure, the disheartened St. James and his companions were praying on the bank of the Ebro River in Cesaraugusta for a sign that their efforts to bring the Faith to the peoples of Hispania had not been in vain when they were astonished to find before them the Blessed Virgin Mary, bi-located from Jerusalem where she was still living at the time.
For more than a thousand years, the Camino de Santiago been Europe’s most venerable pilgrimage route, carrying pilgrims to the cathedral that tradition maintains is the final earthly resting place of the Apostle St. James the Greater.
Accompanied by a group of angels bearing a small pillar made of jasper, she assured him that the seeds sown by his preaching would indeed bear fruit in time. She instructed him to build a small temple on the site, leaving behind the small column when she vanished. This he did, as well as appointing several of the recent converts to care for the small Christian community they had founded there, before returning to Jerusalem.
This church is today the great basilica of La Virgen del Pilar (Our Lady of the Pillar) in Zaragoza, Spain, where the faithful still venerate the pillar the Blessed Virgin brought St. James.
The martyrdom of St. James and the Translation of his relics to Spain
Once back in Jerusalem, James soon received the palm of martyrdom, decapitated by order of King Herod Agrippa I:
About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. (Acts 12:1-2)
Recovering his head and body, his companions decided to set sail for Hispania once more from the port of Joppa (in modern-day Tel Aviv), there to bury their teacher and then continue the work he had begun. (Later pious legends from the Middle Ages tell the story of a journey by sea that, guided by the hand of God, took the disciples only seven days despite travelling in a boat that had neither sail nor rudder, and was even made of stone!) Landing at the city of Iria Flavia (modern day Padrón) on the western coast, they made their way inland, searching for a suitable place to bury their master.
It turned out not to be an easy task. The disciples had to overcome a number of obstacles, including the opposition of a local pagan noblewoman (in some accounts, a queen) named Lupa, or Atia, who at one point sought to have them killed, before herself being converted and finally allowing them to lay St. James to rest, possibly even donating her own tomb. Two of the disciples, Athanasius and Theodore, stayed behind to watch over the tomb and minister to the small Christian community that grew up around it, while the other five eventually returned once more to Jerusalem.
The loss and rediscovery of the tomb of St. James
The vicissitudes of time and history—the decline of Roman power in the Peninsula, the successive waves of barbarian tribes invading the after the Empire’s collapse, the birth of Visigoth kingdom of Spain, and its eventual destruction at the hands of the Muslim invaders in AD 711—took their toll, and memory of the tomb was lost for nearly seven hundred years.
Then, in AD 813, a Christian hermit living in the region, Pelayo, appeared before Bishop Teodomiro of Iria Flavia with a remarkable tale. He reported having been drawn to a small hill in the forest where he lived by the sound of heavenly voices singing and the appearance of a brilliant star illuminating the exact spot where the tomb of St. James had for centuries lay hidden. Teodomiro wasted no time in journeying to the spot himself and confirming the tomb’s existence, before in turn communicating the discovery to King Alfonso II of Asturias.
The king not only ordered the immediate construction of a chapel on the site but also travelled there as a pilgrim to see for himself the miraculous discovery. Word was also sent to Pope Leo III, who in turn proclaimed the joyful news to the whole of the Christian world.
The pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages
Within a few short years pilgrims from every corner of Christendom began making their way to the shrine. By AD 899, the first church could no longer accommodate the growing crowds of pilgrims and King Alfonso III ordered the construction of a larger, pre-Romanesque building to take the place of the one his father had built seventy years earlier. In 950, the first pilgrimage of which we have clear documentation reached the Apostles’ tomb, led by an archbishop named Gotescalc from Aquitaine in southern France at the head of a large retinue of pilgrims. Santiago de Compostela quickly surpassed both Jerusalem (too far away and too dangerous a journey) and Rome (requiring a crossing through the Alps more difficult than the one over the Pyrenees Mountains) in popularity as a destination for pilgrims from the north and west of Europe.
A 12th century monk of Parthenay-le-Vieux in Poitou, Aymeric Picaud, compiled Europe’s first travel guide by documenting his own pilgrimage to Compostela. Thanks to him our knowledge of the exact route followed by medieval pilgrims followed through France and Spain and the shrines they visited along the way has survived intact. Some of the leading figures of history, including St. Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Aragon, the great Catholic monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and their grandson, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, have made the journey to the tomb of St. James. The allure and popularity of the pilgrimage throughout medieval Europe is difficult to overstate, as is its contribution to the forging of the cultural links between medieval kingdoms that helped shape a common European identity.
For five hundred years, the faithful made their way to Compostela, until the religious upheavals of the 17th and 18th centuries and the scepticism that followed the Enlightenment.
A vast network of monasteries, convents, pilgrims’ hospitals and refuges quickly sprang up along the route to provide for the spiritual and material needs of pilgrims. The steady flow of pilgrim traffic contributed economically and demographically to the repopulation, expansion, and defence of territories wrested from the control of the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula. Along with the pilgrims pouring across the Pyrenees en route to Compostela came craftsmen, merchants, stonemasons and builders, knights, and farmers enticed by the tax exemptions, offers of land and other privileges made by the kings of Aragon, Navarre, Castile, and Leon, who needed skilled craftsmen for their building projects, soldiers for their wars against the Muslim kingdoms, and settlers to repopulate the towns reconquered from them.
Around the same time that the Apostle’s tomb was rediscovered, the idea of making pilgrimages as penance for sin began to spread from Ireland through the western Church. Forgiveness for serious sin, a dissolute life, or even civil crimes could be gained by voluntarily assuming the difficulties involved in such journeys.
For five hundred years, the faithful made their way to Compostela, until the religious upheavals of the 17th and 18th centuries and the scepticism that followed the Enlightenment.
Anyone undertaking the journey this Jubilee Year will not only be immersed in one of Christendom’s most venerable traditions, but will chart a course into the Camino’s future.
By the early 20th century there were seldom more than a few hundred arriving at the cathedral each year, most of them specialists in medieval or Spanish history with an interest in the Camino de Santiago as an historical phenomenon.
Few anticipated the possibility of a rebirth in the post-religious climate of contemporary, secularised Europe.
Truth is stranger than fancy.
Several factors contributed to the kindling of new interest in The Way: the founding of “Friends of the Way” associations in various countries; the pilgrimages of Pope John Paul II; the UNESCO designations of the cathedral, the historic city centre, and finally, the entire pilgrim’s route as World Heritage Sites were three.
From the 1980s onwards, the number of pilgrims making their along the route began to grow steadily. Following the Holy Year of 1993, it exploded and has been growing ever since. Hundreds of thousands of people now walk The Way each year.
In 2019, before the pandemic struck, the Pilgrim’s Office at the cathedral registered the arrival of nearly 350,000 making the journey on foot, by bicycle, or on horseback.
With favourable weather returning and an end to pandemic restrictions already on the horizon in some places, locals, volunteer associations, and businesses along the pilgrim’s route are anxiously awaiting the return of the pilgrims to the Camino, though what long-term changes the pandemic will have provoked remain to be seen.
Anyone undertaking the journey this Jubilee Year will not only be immersed in one of Christendom’s most venerable traditions, but will chart a course into the Camino’s future. Whatever the modern pilgrim’s reasons for hefting a backpack and setting off “over the hills and into Spain,” he or she will be undertaking an unforgettable adventure. When one has made it “over the hills and back again,” he or she will forever be part of a vast pilgrim confraternity spanning more than a thousand years of Christian history.
Curtis Williams is a longtime resident of Spain and veteran leader of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, who is writing a monthly series of articles taking readers on a jaunt to the crossroads of history, legend, and devotion during the Jubilee Year of St James, underway in 2021.
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