History behind the Camino de Santiago

The Camino de Santiago, or “The way of Saint James”, is a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela that is over one thousand years old. Established after the burial site of Saint James was discovered, it became a highly influential and extremely popular pilgrimage, reaching its peak during the medieval period. 

Christian belief is that Saint James was the Apostle who was assigned the task of evangelizing the Iberian Peninsula. Seventh and eighth century documents tell us that he spent a number of years preaching there before returning to Jerusalem and becoming the first martyred apostle, beheaded by Herod Agrippa I in 44 AD. 

After his martyrdom, it was commonly believed that his followers carried his body to the coast and put it into a stone boat. Angels guided the boat, and the wind carried the boat to land on the coast of Northern Spain. Queen Lupa, who was queen of the region, provided the means to draw his body from the shore to a marble burial tomb, where his body lay forgotten until the 9th century. 

In 814 AD, Pelagius, a hermit living in the region of Galicia where Saint James was buried, received a vision where he saw a field of stars. Those stars led him to an ancient tomb with three bodies. He immediately notified the local bishop, Theodomir, who declared by revelation that it was the burial site of Saint James and two of his followers. Theodomir then reported his findings to King Alphonso II, who made the first pilgrimage to the site and declared Saint James the patron saint of Spain. 

A small village named Campus de la Stella (Field of Stars or Compostela) and a monastery were established on the site, and as news of the discovery spread, pilgrims started to trickle in. These pilgrimages resulted in many miracles, which resulted in many more pilgrims, which resulted in many more miracles. Thus, the Camino de Santiago quickly grew in popularity and became a well established route over the next few centuries, even becoming a prescribed penance by the Church for certain sins. 

For medieval pilgrims, the Camino started at your doorstep and was only halfway finished upon arriving in Santiago de Compostela. The pilgrim was nearly always undertaking the journey for serious religious reasons - often to seek forgiveness for certain sins or to ask for Saint James’ intercession in some matter. Many dynamics of the Camino are, of course, different today than they were for the medieval pilgrim. But many aspects remain fundamentally the same. The Camino is still typically a very long walk, and the pilgrim still must rely on others and seek support for food, lodging, and direction. According to a poll, most pilgrims are taking the pilgrimage for “spiritual” reasons - perhaps just a more obscured way of saying to seek God, but I believe, at its core, it is seeking God nonetheless. And, thankfully, the infrastructure of the Middle Ages along the popular Camino routes still exist, and is in fact growing rapidly. 

The prominence of the pilgrimage declined after the Middle Ages, but it has seen a massive, dare I say miraculous, resurgence within the last 50 years. In 1972, the Pilgrims Office of the Cathedral of Santiago recorded a total of 67 pilgrims who walked to Santiago. In 1980 that number had increased to 209; in 1990 to 4,918, and in the year 2000 to 55,044. In 2023, over 449,000 pilgrims walked to Santiago. God is certainly at work!