A brief overview of the Camino

Mystery, legend and colourful myths are all part of the history of the Camino.

El Camino de Santiago, in English “The Way of Saint James,” is the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where legend has it that the remains of Jesus’s apostle Saint James the Elder lie. The Camino has existed as a Christian pilgrimage for well over 1,000 years, and there is evidence of a pre-Christian route as well. Throughout the medieval period it was one of the three most important Christian pilgrimages undertaken. Indeed, it was only these pilgrimages—to Jerusalem, to Rome, and to Santiago de Compostela—which could result in a plenary indulgence, which frees a person from the penance due for sins.

Christian legend has it that when the Apostles divided the known world into missionary zones, the Iberian peninsula fell to James. Seventh and eighth century documents suggest that he spent a number of years preaching there before returning to Jerusalem, where in the year 44 AD he was beheaded by Herod Agrippa I. After his martyrdom, popular belief relates that his followers carried his body to the coast and put it into a stone boat, which was guided by angels and carried by the wind beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) to land near Finisterre, at Padrón, in northern Spain.

According to the official history of the pilgrimage, the body of Saint James the Apostle, son of Zebedee and brother of John the Evangelist, was discovered by a shepherd named Pelayo in a field in Galicia during the reign of King Alfonso II, back in the 9th century. The Apostle gives the route its name: Camino de Santiago means the Way of Saint James; Santiago or Sant Iago meaning Saint James.

Saint James had died some 800 years earlier and according to legend transported to Galicia (to the town of Iria Flavia, today’s Padron, on the Camino Portugues) by two disciples in a boat led by angels. Somehow his body was then buried in a field not far from there; where it would be discovered a few centuries later.

Informed about this important discovery, King Alfonso II had a small chapel built in this holy place and would later commission a larger temple to attract pilgrims from all over the world, competing with other important religious centres of pilgrimage such as Jerusalem and Rome. Of course at this point in time, religious buildings across Europe were busy competing for the best relics, as a way of attracting pilgrims, and the relics of Saint James would transform Santiago de Compostela into one of the world’s most important pilgrimage destinations.

Apart from the obvious religious aspect, the discovery and the development of the pilgrimage route was also vital from a political point of view, as a big influx of faithful Christians travelling across Northern Iberia, settling along the way and creating strong cultural links with the rest of Europe, was a very powerful tool to keep the Moors away.

However there is also an interesting pre-history of the Camino as it seems the ‘way’ might have had attracted pilgrims even earlier than the 8th century, as a route that followed the Milky Way all the way to Fisterra (Finis Terrae). Finisterre was believed to be the end of the world, and a magical place where the living could get closest to the land of the death, to the ‘other world’.

Taken from

https://americanpilgrims.org/history-of-the-cam…

https://caminoways.com/the-history-of-the-camin…Lue lisää