Religion_St_James

The pilgrim in the Middle Ages shared with the modern tourist a conviction that certain places and certain objects possess unusual spiritual power and that one was a better person for visiting them. Precisely how one came to be bettered may have been clearer to the mediaeval mind than it is to the traveller of the 20th century, since the benefits gained could then be attributed to the direct influence of God.

Places and objects acted, in effect, as divine go-betweens in a quest for personal salvation. They held out a link with an authority superior to man's, and by extension they came to be invested with magic powers of their own. It was well known that the surest way of getting God to listen was to go to them on a pilgrimage and ask.

The people of the Middle Ages had a passion for religious relics; we have a passion for historical relics-ruined temples, preserved cities, objects laid out in museums, bits of yesterday.

The Middle Ages themselves have become a part of our own store of relics. The 20th-century visitor to the Parthenon or Persepolis, through the kick he receives from being there, is attributing to these places a numinous and healing power.

This behaviour is not in essence different from the power that the mediaeval pilgrim attributed to the relics of the Roman martyrs or a fragment of the Holy Cross. We today, call that power Art, they a thousand years ago called it God.

In the mediaeval era the faith in relics was the product of a universal lack of faith in contemporary life, and of a consequent expectation of the destruction to come. This lack of confidence in today, with its accompanying vision of Hell tomorrow, led to the search for an ideal only to be found in the imagined perfection of the past.

The only spiritual nourishment which made an absurd and nasty world bearable was to be obtained from the from ancient relics, these dry springs which proved that divine favor had once been received and was now withdrawn:

So the pilgrim journeyed in order to pay the prescribed respect out of duty, out of love, out of fear or out of a drive towards self improvement or superiority, but always as a means of averting the daily grind and of going on a journey. Travel became synonymous with an abdication into the past. It still is.

Why did they do it? Devotion, of course; but devotion to precisely what? Clearly the overwhelming majority of pilgrims to Santiago in the Middle Ages would never have undertaken so long and hazardous a journey far from home but for a spirit of genuine piety.

Equally clearly, their piety was a form of after life insurance against the promise of eternal damnation. This was preached relentlessly by a mediaeval church obsessed by the imminence of the Second Coming and the Day of judgement, and it was preached no less eloquently the sculptors and painters who decorated the churches in which those sermons were heard.

The simple illiterate man in the Middle Ages had no choice. From the day he learned to use his eyes and ears to the day he died he was indoctrinated with the urgency of obtaining divine forgiveness and the purification of his soul, and the surest means by which such a thing could be obtained was by contact with the saints, who could intercede on his behalf If the Saints were martyrs, so much the better; if they were martyred apostles, then better still.

Hence the morbid mediaeval cult of holy relics. Hence, too, the pre-eminence of the three pilgrimages in the Middle Ages. The one to Jerusalem. that to Rome. and the one to Santiago de Compostela and the tomb of St James the Apostle.

Santiago became the most popular object of pilgrimage of the three in the later Middle Ages, and engendered an intensity of devotion that was maintained over the entire period of the entrenchment and growth of Christianity and Christian art in Europe, from the 10th to the 18th century.

Through out those centuries which saw the formation of Europe socially and culturally, this was the pilgrimage of Everyman; and because it enjoyed this role the route to Santiago became a principal high-road of Christian teaching, Christian institutions and Christian art. Perhaps there was an-other reason for the hold it had on the popular imagination. Santiago, far away under the mists and Atlantic skies of Galicia, all woods and water in a Celtic landscape ofmenhirs and lost gods, exerted an appeal that was infinitely pre Christian.

The pale arm of the Milky Way stretched out and pointed the way to the edge of the known world where the sun went down: to Cape Finisterre (from the Latin firns terra-the end of the earth). Historians who have studied the iconography of the pilgrim route have speculated on the meaning of the floral motif that recurs in mediaeval churches all along the way, as to whether it might in origin be, not a flower, but a sun image of Celtic origin from our dim past.

We know that for pilgrims reaching Santiago in the Middle Ages it was as obligatory to venture on to the chapel of Nuestra Senora at Finisterre, the last finger of land crooked into the ocean. One explanation for this is that, there may have been a earlier journey to heaven, more mystical and of far earlier provenance than the church could have expected to acknowledge. The myth then must go back to earlier times and that the first pilgrims may have traveled the camino to Cap Fimsterre even before the birth of Christ going as supplicants to some forgotten god.

After the death of Christ the disciples dispersed to different parts of the then known world, to spread the Gospel as they had been bidden. Saint James went to Spain, we are told, where he spent a couple of years evangelising, though apparently without a great deal of success. He then returned to Jerusalem but was beheaded by Herod shortly afterwards, in AD 44. Immediately following his martyrdom, however, his followers are said to have taken his body to Jaffa, on the coast, where a ship was miraculously waiting for them and they set off back to Spain.

They landed in Iria flavia on the coast of Galicia, some twenty kilometers from what is now Santiago de Compostela, after a Journey which is purported to have taken only a week, thereby providing proof of angelic assistance. Saint James's body was then buried in a tomb on a hillside, along and forgotten for the next 750 years. The story is considerably more complicated than this but these are the bare bones.

Early in the ninth century Pelagius, a hermit living in that part of Spain, had a vision (which he subsequently reported to Theodomir, bishop of Ira Flavia) in which he saw a very large bright star, surrounded by a ring of smaller ones, shining over a deserted spot in the hills. The matter was investigated and a tomb found there containing three bodies.

They were immediately identified as those of Saint James and two of his followers and when Alfonso II, King of the Asturias (791-824), went there he declared Saint James the patron saint of Spain. He built a church and a small monastery over the tomb in the saints honor, around which a town grew up. It was known as campus de Ia stella or campus steliae later shortened to compostela. This is one explanation of the origin of the name. Another is that it derives from the Latin componere (to bury), as a Roman cemetery or early Christian necropolis is known to have existed under the site of the present day cathedral in Santiago - and where the remains of Saint James are still believed to be housed today.

News of the discovery soon spread. It was encouraged to do so, moreover, both by Archbishop Gelmirez and the cathedral authorities, who were anxious to promote the town as a pilgrimage centre, thus attracting money to the area, and by the monks of Cluny, who saw in it the opportunity to assist the Spanish church in their long struggle against the Moors. Both factions were also helped by the fact that the Turks had seized the Holy Sepulchre in 1078, thus putting a stop to pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

The vast majority of those who walk The Way of St James are not experienced walkers at all. Many have never done any serious walking in their lives and many will never do serious walking again, for here, as in the past, walking is a means of transport, a means to an end, rather than an activity for its own sake.

Most long-distance footpaths also avoid not only large towns but even quite small villages as well; the Way of Saint James, on the other hand, because of its historic origins and the need for shelter, deliberately seeks them out.

Pilgrims have been travelling to Santiago de Compostela on foot or horseback for over a thousand years. (The Bishop of Le Puy, who went there in AD 950, was one of the first). Some say the cult of the spiritual traveller along the path existed even earlier as the way led to Cape Finisterre the end of the known world.

Its 800 kilometers from the Saint Jean Pied de Port in the foothills of the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in the western reaches of Galicia have changed little in that time. For although sections of it have now become modern tarred roads and many of the "hospitals" and other accommodation set-up by religious orders along the way to minister to the needs of pilgrims have long since disappeared, the camino , as it is known in Spain, still passes through the same villages, crosses the same rivers, visits the same chapels, churches, cathedrals and other monuments as did the path taken by our predecessors in centuries gone by.

At the height of its popularity in the eleventh and twelfth centuries over half a million people a year are said to have made the pilgrimage from different parts of Europe, the majority of them from France.

The high point of the pilgrimage occurred between the years 1000 and l500 but although numbers dwindled after that, due to the Reformation and other, political, factors, the stream of pilgrims making the trudge westwards to the far reaches of Galiciain north-west Spain never completely dried up and in the late twentieth century is making something of a comeback.

Several thousand people walk the Way every year, whether from the Pyrenees, from different parts of France or from even further afield: it is not uncommon, even nowadays, to meet Swiss, German, Belgian or Dutch pilgrims, for example, who have set out from home to make the entire journey on foot. Most parts of the walker's route are also accessible to those riding mountain (though not touring) bikes.

The Cathedral authorities in Santiago maintain a register of pilgrims and in 1991 recorded a total of 7274 travelling on foot, bicycle or horseback (compared with 5760 in 1989, the year of the Pope's August visit there, and 4918 in 1990).

The walk takes about a month and there are a number of refuges set up to accommodate the genuine pilgrim not the tourist. Some of these are in old monasteries, inns and seminaries others are provided by the villages along the way. Some are in grand establishments like the old Augustine abbey of Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees or the 12 centaury seminary at Puerto Reina

By the way if you do complete the walk all the way and can provide proof, you are entitled to three free meals for three days! at the magnificent Hotel de los Reyes at Santiago apply to the cathedral authorities.

Since ancient times men had followed the route of the sun to the west. At night, a stream of stars in the sky pointed in the same direction, the Milky Way, also known as St. James' Way or the Pilgrim's Way, since it was the way to follow for people on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. From the 9th century, pilgrims walked the roads of Europe on foot: in the 12th century, a figure of five-hundred thousand is estimated, and in the year 1999 five and a half million people arrived in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. Throughout history, the aim of the journey was to visit the tomb of St. James the Great, one of the twelve apostles of Christ, who tradition believes to be entombed in the cathedral of our country's capital. Today, reasons for the pilgrimage are varied, from spiritual to artistic, but the Way continues to be a powerful cultural melting-pot for the lands of Europe.

In October 2002 Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) announced that a first century stone ossuary had been discovered that is believed to have held the bones of St. James, the brother of Jesus, also known as "James the Just." The ossuary carries an inscription that says, in Aramaic, "James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."

The announcement set of a flurry of stories in the media speculating on whether the ossuary is genuine and what implications it has for our understanding of Jesus and his family. It wasn't long before some Evangelicals were trumpeting the artifact as a disproof of Catholic doctrine. It wasn't long after that before some scholars began to raise questions about the box.

An ossuary is a container used to hold the bones of a dead person. Historically, ossuaries tend to be used in areas with high populations and little burial space since they require much less space than a grave of the familiar kind. After death, the body is reposed in a tomb until it decays (not long in the absence of modern embalming). Afterwards, the family disinters the bones, cleans them, and re-inters them in an ossuary for long-term burial.

Ossuaries were used all over the ancient world, from Rome to Greece to Palestine-wherever burial space was at a premium. They are still used in some places, including Greece, where metal ossuaries are used.

Though use of ossuaries was at variance with traditional Jewish burial customs, cemetery space was at such a premium around first century Jerusalem that stone, box-like ossuaries were widely used there between 20 B.C. and A.D. 70, when the Romans sacked the city and in so doing substantially reduced the population.

The recently announced ossuary was in the possession of a private collector in Israel who did not wish to be identified. By early November, however, his identity had become public: He is a fifty-one year old engineer from Tel Aviv named Oded Golan. According to him, he didn't want his name revealed simply because he is a private person, though some have speculated that there was another reason: He may not legally own the box.

In 1978 Israel passed a law that made new archaeological discoveries the property of the state. Depending on when and how Golan came into possession of the box, he might not be its proper owner. According to him, he acquired the box sometime in the 1970s-before 1976-though individuals from the Israeli Antiquities Authority have questioned several antiquities dealers in the Old City to investigate whether the box was purchased more recently.

According to Golan, he did not realize the significance of the box until recently, when it was examined by Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne, a paleographer or expert in ancient writing, who recognized the potential connection to the family of Christ.

James, Joseph, and Jesus were very common names in first century Palestine, and Lemaire estimates that there may have been as many as twenty individuals in Jerusalem who were named James and who had fathers named Joseph and brothers names Jesus. Nevertheless, Lemaire and other experts concluded that it probable the James to whose bones this ossuary held very probably was the one referred to in the New Testament as "the brother of the Lord" (Gal. 1:19).

It is extremely uncommon for brothers to be named in ossuary inscriptions. Of the hundreds of such ossuaries that have been found, only two name a brother as well as the father. The fact that this one does so suggests that the brother was considered very important. It is unlikely that there were other men named James who had fathers named Joseph and who had brothers named Jesus that were so important that they warranted mention on an ossuary.

If there is at present some question as to how Golan got the ossuary, experts seem agreed that the box itself is a first century Palestinian ossuary. It is also agreed that the inscription on the box is ancient.

According to BAR's web site (www.bib-arch.org), "Laboratory tests performed by the Geological Survey of Israel confirm that the box's limestone comes from the Jerusalem area. The patina-a thin sheen or covering that forms on stone and other materials over time-has the cauliflower-type shape known to develop in a cave environment; more importantly, it shows no trace of modern elements." The patina covers the inscription on the box as well, indicating its ancient origin.

What is not agreed is whether the entire inscription dates to the first century. Rochelle Altman, another paleographer, quickly argued that, while the first part of the inscription ("James son of Joseph") dates to the first century, the second part ("brother of Jesus") shows signs of being written by a different hand at a later date, which she estimated to be the third or fourth century ("Final Report on the James Ossuary" at web.israelinsider.com).

If Altman is right that the second part of the inscription was carved in a later century then that would reveal something about the second part's carver: He was identifying the box's occupant as James the Just, for it is very unlikely that any other first century Jesus would be remembered so much later and warrant doing a new inscription. This especially the case after the flowering of Christianity, when any first century Jesus would be assumed to be Jesus of Nazareth unless identified otherwise. In the third or fourth century, when the area was Christian, to carve "brother of Jesus" on the ossuary of a first century James was to identify him as James the Just.

This leaves the question of why the carving would be made. Archaeology didn't exist yet, so archaeological fraud would not have been a motive. However, relics were venerated, and so relic fraud could have been a motive. In fact, that's the only likely immoral motive that is reasonable.

The alternative is to say that the second inscriptionist's motives were moral: He believed that the box belonged to James the Just. In that case, the question would be: How warranted was his belief. If he just found an ossuary that said "James son of Joseph" then, given how common these two names were, it would be unlikely (though by no means impossible) that it held James the Just.

However, it is not at all unreasonable to think that the Jerusalem Christians retained a knowledge of where James was buried, e.g., through veneration at the site. Indeed, St. Jerome, who moved to Bethlehem in the late fourth century, records that substantial knowledge of his gravesite was preserved:

"[James] was buried near the temple from which he had been cast down. His tombstone with its inscription was well known until the siege of Titus [A.D. 70] and the end of Hadrian's reign [A.D. 138]. Some of our writers think he was buried in Mount Olivet, but they are mistaken" (On Illustrious Men 2).

It well could be that in the third or fourth century, a Christian added the second part of the inscription to the first in order to clarify for future pilgrims that this was indeed the ossuary of that James, as had been preserved in local knowledge.

Ultimately, we can't know if the inscription is correct or not. From what is currently known about the box, we don't seem to have alternative means of establishing its accuracy. But given what is publicly known about the ossuary at this point, there is a substantial chance that it is the ossuary of James the Just, even if this could never be proven.

Some non-Catholics were quick to tout the box as evidence against the perpetual virginity of Mary, however this does not follow. The ossuary identifies its James as the son of Joseph and the brother of Jesus, it does not identify him as the son-much less the biological son-of Mary. The only point that Catholic doctrine has defined regarding the "brethren of the Lord" is that they are not biological children of Mary.

What relationship they did have with her is a matter of speculation. They may have been Jesus' adoptive brothers, stepbrothers through Joseph, or-according to one popular theory-cousins.

As has often been pointed out, Aramaic had no word for "cousin," so the word for brother was used in its place. This inscription is in Aramaic, and so there would be little surprise if it were being used in that way. In fact, that's what you'd expect.

While the inscription does not establish the brethren of the Lord as biological children of Mary, it does have an impact on which theory may best explain the relationship of the brethren to Jesus. If James "the brother of the Lord" were Jesus' cousin then it would be unlikely for him also to have a father named Joseph. This would diminish the probability of the cousin theory in favor of the idea that this James was a stepbrother or an adoptive brother of Jesus.

The stepbrother hypothesis is, in fact, the earliest one on record. It is endorsed by a document known as the Protoevangelium of James, which dates to the year 120, within sixty years of James' death (A.D. 62). According to the Protoevangelium, Joseph was an elderly widower at the time he was betrothed to Mary. He already had a family and thus was willing to become the guardian of a virgin consecrated to God. The stepbrother hypothesis was the most common explanation of the brethren of the Lord until St. Jerome popularized the cousin hypothesis just before the year 400.

The stepbrother hypothesis is also supported by the fact that Joseph apparently was significantly older than Mary, as he appears to have died before our Lord's public ministry began.

Bottom line: If the ossuary of James bar-Joseph is that of James the brother of the Lord, it sheds light on which of the theories Catholics are permitted to hold is most likely the correct one, but it does nothing to refute Catholic doctrine.

James, who is called the brother of the Lord, surnamed the Just, the son of Joseph by another wife (as some think, but, as appears to me, the son of Mary sister of the mother of our Lord of whom John makes mention in his book), after our Lord's passion at once ordained by the apostles bishop of Jerusalem, wrote a single epistle, which is reckoned among the seven Catholic Epistles and even this is claimed by some to have been published by some one else under his name, and gradually, as time went on, to have gained authority.

"After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem. Many indeed are called James. This one was holy from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with ointment or bathed. He alone had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, since indeed he did not use woolen vestments but linen and went alone into the temple and prayed in behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels' knees."

He says also many other things, too numerous to mention. Josephus also in the 20th book of his Antiquities, and Clement in the 7th of his Outlines mention that on the death of Fetus who reigned over Judea, Albinus was sent by Nero as his successor.

Before he had reached his province, Ananias the high priest, the youthful son of Ananus of the priestly class taking advantage of the state of anarchy, assembled a council and publicly tried to force James to deny that Christ is the son of God. When he refused Ananius ordered him to be stoned. Cast down from a pinnacle of the temple, his legs broken, but still half alive, raising his hands to heaven he said, "Lord forgive them for they know not what they do." Then struck on the head by the club of a fuller such a club as fullers are accustomed to wring out garments with-he died.

This same Josephus records the tradition that this James was of so great sanctity and reputation among the people that the downfall of Jerusalem was believed to be on account of his death. He it is of whom the apostle Paul writes to the Galatians that "No one else of the apostles did I see except James the brother of the Lord" [Gal. 1:19], and shortly after the event the Acts of the apostles bear witness to the matter.

The Gospel also which is called the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and which I have recently translated into Greek and Latin and which also Origen often makes use of, after the account of the resurrection of the Saviour says, "but the Lord, after he had given his grave clothes to the servant of the priest, appeared to James (for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he drank the cup of the Lord until he should see him rising again from among those that sleep)" and again, a little later, it says "'Bring a table and bread,' said the Lord." And immediately it is added, "He brought bread and blessed and brake and gave to James the Just and said to him, 'My brother eat thy bread, for the son of man is risen from among those that sleep.'"

And so he ruled the Church of Jerusalem thirty years, that is until the seventh year of Nero, and was buried near the temple from which he had been cast down. His tombstone with its inscription was well known until the siege of Titus and the end of Hadrian's reign. Some of our writers think he was buried in Mount Olivet, but they are mistaken. --St. Jerome, On Illustrious Men 2