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The Ways of St James: from the tomb in Galicia to the four routes of France
Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The Ways of St James: from the tomb in Galicia to the four routes of France

14 min read

Tomb recognised c. 820-830; first known pilgrim (Godescalc of Le Puy) in 950-951; Book of Saint James and its four roads c. 1140-1150; peak in the 12th-13th centuries, decline from the 16th to the 18th century; World Heritage inscription in 1993 (Spain) and 1998 (France)

Around 820-830, a bishop in Galicia recognises in a Roman tomb that of the apostle James, and a pilgrimage is born which, from the 10th to the 13th century, draws the whole of Europe over the passes of Roncevaux and the Somport, with its hospitals, its scallop shells and the Book of Saint James, which around 1140 describes four roads across France. The four routes — Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy, Arles — and their Spanish continuation are followed here, with what historians (Péricard-Méa, Gicquel, Mollaret, Rucquoi) say about them today.

A tomb in Galicia

It all begins with a Roman tomb in Galicia. Around 820-830, in the reign of Alfonso II, king of Asturias, the bishop of Iria Flavia, Theodemir, recognises in a small funerary building of the Roman period, which contains three bodies, the tomb of the apostle James the Greater, brother of John, beheaded in Jerusalem around 44 on the orders of Herod Agrippa, and of two disciples. The king has a church built on the spot; Alfonso III replaces it in 899 with a larger basilica. The first texts that mention the discovery, in 829, 844 and 854, say nothing of how it came about; one has to wait until 1077 to read the story everyone knows: a hermit named Pelagius alerted by lights in the sky, the bishop hurrying to the place, the sepulchre found. The name Compostela, which legend derives from campus stellae, the field of the star, probably comes from compostum, the burial ground.

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