The oldest reference to the tomb of St. James is by St. Jerome (331/420): of the Twelve, "...".one went to India, another to Spain, another to Illyricum, another to Greece, so that each one might rest (requiesceret) in the province where he had proclaimed the Gospel and the doctrine" (Commentaries on Isaiah).. One author says of St. James that St. Jerome, ".by stressing that each of the Apostles rests in the Province where he had proclaimed the Gospel, seems to indicate that his sacred body is among us." (Z. Garcia Villada, Ecclesiastical history of Spain).
The death of James is the only one that the New Testament recounts of the holy Apostles: "At that time Herod the king arrested some of the church to mistreat them. He put James, brother of John, to death by the sword. Seeing that he was pleasing to the Jews, he decided to arrest Peter also. Those were the days of the Azimos. When he seized him, he put him in prison and handed him over to four squads of four soldiers to guard him...". After Peter disappeared, Herod "prosecuted the guards and had them executed (Acts 12:1-20)..
Herod Agrippa I (10 B.C./44 A.D.) was a friend, since his youth in Rome and Capri, of Gaius Caligula; this one, after succeeding Tiberius, granted him in 37 the tetrarchies of Philippi and Lysanias and the title of king, and in 40 the tetrarchy of H. Antipas. In 41, being H. Agrippa in Rome, he contributed to the death of Caligula that the new emperor was Claudius, who granted him Samaria and Judea.
By persecuting the Christians and executing James, the king wanted to make himself forgiven for his past among pagans, to attract the elites of Israel and to secure his reign in the capital: he did not show his Judaism outside of Jerusalem "by erecting statues to his daughters in Caesarea, a largely pagan city; nor by minting coins with his image or those of the emperor; it follows that, probably, all Agrippa's concessions to Phariseeism were more a matter of policy than of conviction, in which case such conduct would attest to his true status as a descendant of Herod the Great." (E. Schürer, History of the Jewish people in the time of Jesus).
What became of the Apostle's body?
It would be strange that, if the king had authorized it, St. Luke does not speak of his burial, but he did say, after Stephen's death, that some pious men "...".they buried him and mourned for him" (Acts 8:2)..
In current Roman law, the body of the executed person was disposed of by the authority that had ordered his death, which, in cases of special gravity, used to prohibit burial (Mª Amparo Mateo, Summa supplicia, scenarios, forms and actions of death in Christian martyrdoms.). Since in the trial of Jesus, Pilate had declared his innocence, it made sense for him to authorize his burial ( Jn. 19:38). But H. Agrippa had resolved the arrest, trial and execution of Santiago, he knew the penalties of prohibition of burial - the Roman and Deuteronomy (Deut, 28, 26)-and showed excessive rigor in ordering the execution of the sixteen guards charged with guarding Peter.
Years after the death of James, his brother John recalled the dreaded penalty, suffered by two martyrs of Christ in Jerusalem." And people of the peoples, races, tongues, and nations, shall look upon their dead bodies three days and a half: it is not permitted to bury their bodies" (Rev. 11:7-10)..
If the king forbade the delivery of James' body, would his relatives have given up his ransom and burial, still far from their land, but free from Herodian power and as far as possible from Roman control? Tobit recalled: "sf I saw the corpse of one of my race thrown outside the walls, I buried him; when I heard that the king had reports about me and that he was looking for me to kill me, I was afraid and ran away" (Tob.1:18-20)..
Apostolic catalogs from the 6th to 8th centuries refer to the transfer of the body of St. James, with variations on the destination: Marmárica, tip of Marmárica...; 9th century manuscripts of the From ortuplace it in the tip of the harmonicaThe ancient region with a western finisterre; a manuscript in the Biblioteca Casanatense contains a translatio Sancti Iacobi Apostoli in GalliamIs there evidence of traditions about the burial of the Apostle in the far west and about the early universality in the expansion of the Gospel?
Translation to Spain
The Martyrology of Florus of Lyon (between 808 and 838) refers for the VIII of the Kalends of August (July 25), "...".the birth (for Heaven) of the blessed Apostle James, brother of John the Evangelist, beheaded by King Herod in Jerusalem, as the Acts of the Apostles teach. The sacred bones of this Apostle, transferred to Spain and kept in the last of its confines, that is to say, in front of the British sea, are venerated by the very famous piety of those people.".
The oldest writing that expressly speaks of the body of St. James in Galicia is the letter of Alfonso III, in the year 906; messengers from Tours had requested the mediation of the bishop of Iria so that the king would buy them a crown, and asked for information about the tomb of the Apostle.
The king wrote to them: "Be very certain that we have the tomb of Santiago Boanerges, the one beheaded by Herod, in Archis Marmoricis, in the province of Galicia. Governed by the hand of the Lord, as is referred to in many true stories, he was carried in a ship thither, where his body was buried.../...As you have asked what distance there is from the Ocean to the Sepulchre or in what place it is situated, know that from the sea to the place where, governed by the Lord, the ship arrived, a place called Bisria, to the ancient seat Iriense, church of St. Eulalia, there are ten miles and then, to his glorious sepulchre, there are twelve miles."(Juan J. Cebrián Franco. The accounts of the transfer of the remains of the Apostle Santiago to Compostela).
The remains of the Apostle had to be kept hidden: Christianity was not recognized as religio licita In the 5th century, the Suevi attacked Christian monuments in Galicia; with Leovigild, a new persecution; after the conversion of Recaredo - between 586 and 587 - and before the year 612, the De ortu et obitu patrum of St. Isidore of Seville, speaks of St. James, his preaching in Spain and his burial.
The Islamic invasion of 711 would once again plunge Spain into insecurity. But, during and after the persecutions, memories of the ancient tomb next to which their ancestors had been buried must have persisted in Christian families.
The mausoleum of Santiago
In two medieval documents (Traslatio of Gembloux, and Codex Calixtinus), it is said that, in order to bury the body of the Apostle in Galicia, his friends asked a matron for a temple dedicated to an idol; in reality, a mausoleum of the lady Atia dedicated to her granddaughter Viria, as recorded on the tombstone reused as an altar of a primitive Jacobean cult.
After initial refusal, the lady gave part of the mausoleum for the burial of the Apostle; it was a rectangular edicule like those dated in Rome of the first century, measuring 6.41 by 4.69 meters, with two floors: the upper one, where the tombstone was found, and the crypt, to which one descended from the upper room. Two friends of the Apostle, Athanasius and Theodore (Breviary of Évora and Codex Calixtinus).
Professor Enrique Alarcón considers that the inscription on the tombstone -DMS-, with a pagan reading D(iis) M(anibus) S(acrum), was susceptible to a Christian version: D(eo) M(aximo) S(acrum). And in the inscription on the stone that closes the fenestella on the north wall of the sarcophagus, translated from the Greek by Athanasius Martyr, discovered the Hebrew spelling YacobThe following inscription is the result: IMMORTAL MARTYR SANTIAGO.
In the year 829, Alfonso II declared that ".the garments of this Blessed Apostle, that is, his most holy body, have been revealed in our time. Having heard this, I went with the magnates of our palace to pray and venerate, with great devotion and supplications, so precious a treasure, and to proclaim him Patron and Lord of all Spain.". The Chronicon Iriense relates that, after the sepulchre of Santiago was revealed to the bishop of Iria Teodomiro, he communicated it to King Alfonso.
The bishop had to rely on a venerable local tradition and verify the existence of clear vestiges that accredited the identity of the saint.
The region where the mausoleum was located had the oldest Christian roots in the kingdom."In the 6th century there were 134 rural localities in Swabian Gallaecia with churches assigned to 13 dioceses, 5 of which were in the territory surrounding the tomb, corresponding to present-day Galicia, while in the rest of the extensive strip of land that forms the Cantabrian coast - the present-day Basque Country, Cantabria and Asturias - not a single episcopal see existed during the entire Visigothic period...(José Orlandis, Algunas consideraciones en torno a los orígenes cristianos en España). What is known about the past of the site has been found more from archaeological discoveries than from ancient documents. It was next to a road mansion of the Roman Empire, 20 km north of Iria and 260 meters above sea level. Around the mausoleum, Alfonso II dedicated to the Apostle the first basilica, with stone masonry and mud mortar, of a nave of 20 meters by 8, and instituted, within the scope of three miles around the tombThe new church was given a seigniory in favor of the new church. A monastery was consecrated next to the basilica so that its monks could guarantee permanent worship there. On May 6, 899, a new basilica was consecrated, measuring 24 x 14 meters, with three naves, built on the initiative of Alfonso III who, in 910, made a pilgrimage to Compostela.
Since the IX century, after the arrival of Teodomiro and Alfonso II and their companions, pilgrims had begun to arrive, initially Hispanics, but soon Franks, Germanic and from more distant regions. Saints would come, such as Dominic of Guzman, Francis of Assisi, Isabella of Portugal or John Paul II; kings, such as Louis VII of France, Alfonso IX or the Catholic Monarchs; prelates, such as William of Rheims, William II of Bordeaux or Godfrey of Nantes; and a multitude of people, remembered in the chronicles or anonymous.
In the summer of 997 Almanzor and his troops found Compostela deserted, as the bishop had advised the people to take refuge near the river Tambre; that saint (Pedro de Mezonzo, 930/1003), around the year 1000, completed the Salve Regina Mater.
The first Compostela Holy Year
Diego Peláez, promoted by Sancho II as prelate of Iria, in view of the increase of pilgrims, began, in 1075, the project and construction of a cathedral with 50 stonemasons and the Masters Bernardo, Roberto and Esteban. Urban II transferred the episcopal see from Iria to Compostela (bull Veterum synodalium 1095), elevated to metropolitan by Calixtus II (1120); this Pope granted Diego Gelmirez the archiepiscopal dignity and authorized the celebration of the first Compostelan Holy Year (1121). It was Gelmirez who promoted the Compostela HistoryIn one of them, as the apostolic aedicule prevented the faithful from seeing the altar, Gelmirez decided to dismantle the upper oratory and cover the space with a floor on which the main altar was placed. The consecration of the Romanesque cathedral would take place, during the pontificate of Pedro Muñiz, on April 3, 1211, with the assistance of King Fernando II.
Climbing up to the main facade today is the Portico of GloryIts vestibule, 17 meters wide by 4.50 meters deep, is embellished by the masterpiece of Romanesque sculpture: a magnificent image of Christ presiding over the triumphant and militant Churches; below, the seated image of St. James holding a crosier and cartouche: misit me Dominus. The Magistrum Matheum signed in 1188 on the central arcade as director of the works carried out since before 1168. It was flanked by two towers that constitute the lower body of the two current baroque towers: on the South tower In the 17th century, José de la Peña raised its new body and, in the 18th century, Fernando de Casas raised a new tower and completed the imposing façade of the Obradoiro.
The The Platerías is the only façade that remains entirely Romanesque; in it, with a wealth of images, the Master Esteban tried to represent the humility of the Incarnation and the glorious Resurrection of Christ. To the right of the Platerias rises the Berenguela or Clock TowerThe upper one rises above the 14th century gothic cube, due to the mastery of Domingo de Andrade (1676/1680). QuintanaIn its subsoil lay the old cemetery, adjacent to the place where the body of the Apostle rests. In the Romanesque wall opens the Holy Door during the Holy Years (where July 25th falls on Sunday). The facade and the square of the Azabachería - it was called in the Middle Ages Paradise- occupy the north atrium of the cathedral, where the path most traveled by medieval pilgrims ended. On a pedestal, an image symbolizes the Faith; under the image of the pilgrim Apostle, there are images of Alfonso III and Ordoño II.
During Francis Drake's attack on Coruña in 1589, fearing his invasion of Compostela, Archbishop Juan de Sanclemente (1587/1602) authorized the relics to be hidden outside the tomb.
In the XIX century, during the development of some works in the pavement of the main altar, an ossuary with human bones was found in the subsoil, which seemed to be the relics hidden in the XVI century. After the investigations, reports and classification of relics, on March 12, 1883, the archbishop Miguel Payá declared their authenticity and decided to elevate what was found to Leon XIII. By means of the Bula Deus Omnipotens On November 1, 1884, the Pope confirmed the declaration of the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela and proclaimed 1885 as an Extraordinary Holy Year.
The excavations carried out in the cathedral between 1946 and 1959 led to the discovery of a necropolis with tombs from the Roman period (1st to 4th centuries) and from the Swabian-Visigothic period (5th to 7th centuries). Where history did not record a human population, the work of archaeologists did.
*In memoriam
