The Legends of St. James the Greater [citation needed]
Because I'm doing the Camino de Santiago next spring, I've been reading stuff about St. James the Greater, because the stories around him are why the Camino exists in the first place.
And, oh my god, they're Something Else. Because nearly everything I read is either 1. extremely unlikely 2. kinda wince-inducing. at best.
I want to make it clear: I don't think it matters, at this point, how much of his post-Biblical legends are factually true, in regards to walking the Camino. People have been making sincere pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela for so long that bits of him might as well be there, yeah? It's became a sacred place devoted to one of the first of Jesus' apostles whether his actual bones are there or not. Also, quite frankly, many of the legends aren't any more or less believable than anything in the Gospels themselves. Disclaimer over.
Things that were recorded soon enough after they supposedly happened that they are the likeliest to be true:
He was one of the first apostles of Jesus, along with his brother John. The two brothers (plus Peter) were witnesses to some of the more notable parts of Jesus' life and ministry. He was also the first apostle to be martyred; beheaded by sword on the order of Herod in 44 AD. (His beheading is in Acts 12:2, just one sentence: "He [Herod] had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword.")
After that...things get...weird.
Legend has it that he traveled all the way to what is modern-day Spain to preach the Gospel there, and that after he came back to Jerusalem and was beheaded, his body was miraculously taken by angels and set in a boat that washed up on the coast of Spain. During a wedding. Which spooked a horse and rider. Who fell into the ocean. And then emerged miraculously unharmed and covered in scallop shells...and that's part of why scallop shells are symbols of St. James and pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Yeah, okay.
"Oh thank God, I'm not lost." And yes, lots of people get some variation of this as a tattoo. (I know I probably will, ahaha.)
(That all said: there's an Armenian Apostolic Cathedral in Jerusalem that claims to have his head. So maybe the angels only took the rest of him. Who knows? Not me.)
At some point his relics were moved to the location of what is now Santiago de Compostela by some disciples of his (from his earlier visit to Spain? I think?), and the fact that the relics were there was revealed to a hermit by a field of stars in 814. He reported this to a bishop, who told the local king, who built a chapel on that site and is said to be the first pilgrim to Santiago. The chapel became a church in 829, the church was burned down by the Moors in 997, and in 1075 the king started building a cathedral there (it was finished in 1211). In the 900's pilgrims started arriving from all over Europe, and once the cathedral got started their numbers increased dramatically. Both St. Francis of Assisi and Margery Kempe did pilgrimages to Santiago, for instance. Margery did it multiple times, bless her.
But here's the thing: somehow nobody noticed the whole "his body is in Spain" thing until that hermit? And just coincidentally, this was a time when the Catholic church was trying to stamp out the remnants of a particularly popular heresy that had started in Spain. Just saying.
But wait, there's more!
Another thing that was happening in the 800's and for, y'know, a LONG time after (seriously it went on from 711 to 1492); was Christians and Muslim Moors fighting over Spain.
The Christians of Spain named St. James as their patron and protector, in part due his miraculous help in a battle that, uh, never actually happened. The date of the battle is given as 843 or 844, but somehow was never recorded until 300 years later. (Are you sensing a theme here, because I am.)
St. James is therefore sometimes portrayed as Santiago Matamoros, aka St. James the Moor-Slayer. A lot of medieval imagery of him portrays him on horseback, slaughtering people. 😬 Many of the old churches along the Camino include this portrayal--and some of those churches were originally mosques. Oof.
CAN IT GET WORSE? YES.
Look, I'm just going to copy/paste from the wikipedia page on this one: "The iconography of James Matamoros was used in the Spanish colonization of the Americas as a rival force to the indigenous gods, and protector of Spaniards from the indigenous peoples of the Americas. He was depicted as a conquistador."
I mean, thankfully; I won't run into much of that in Spain. But...euggghh.
Anyway.
I kinda feel bad for the actual James, who was just a fisherman working with his dad and brother before becoming one of Jesus' close friends. James was just A Guy! The other apostles apparently found him and his brother kind of annoying! He sometimes had a bad temper! The stories about him in the Gospels just make him sound so human.
There are two common portrayals of our man James all over the Camino: St. James the Moor-Slayer, and St. James as a pilgrim, wearing a floppy hat and robe and holding a walking stick. Much nicer.
Now that's a guy I'd walk across Spain for.
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#OTD in 1916 – Approximately 1,000 copies of The Proclamation of the Irish Republic are printed in Liberty Hall in a print office set up by James Connolly.
#OTD in 1916 – Approximately 1,000 copies of The Proclamation of the Irish Republic are printed in Liberty Hall in a print office set up by James Connolly.
The proclamation would be read by Pádraig Pearse outside the General Post Office on Sackville Street (now called O’Connell Street) on Monday 24th April.
The proclamation was printed secretly on an old and poorly maintained Wharfedale Stop Cylinder Press in the printing office that had been set up by James Connolly in the basement in the original Liberty Hall in Beresford Place, Dublin.
All seven…
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A sample of the OC/Lidia Cervos thing I was working on last night? All I can think about is--- She can be a better boyfriend than him. <3
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That torque was a problem. Keegan could’ve crumbled it, right there, left it in nothing but dust upon the bed. Lidia would never have to wear the damn collar again, never have to bear the shackles of a man who treated her like shit.
And well—Pissing that bastard off was her favorite brand of foreplay. Her hand brushed up to the side of her neck, fingers dancing along the metal contraption, as it crumbled beneath her touch. Her lips continued their work, sucking and nibbling at the flesh that had been freshly freed. A grin against her skin, when the soft gasp filled the air around her. “I’ll get you something that has a more comfortable fit.” She promised.
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Found in a Book- Another St.James Bazaar Happening :) --George W. Eades
A few years ago, something else happened at the St. James Bazaar that was just amazing and yesterday— it happened again. ( read- Hallmark Moments Around Us This Week)
My husband, Steve, bought a local history book for me and inside was this page from The Canadian in February of 1952. I had never seen something like this, so I was overjoyed with historical happiness.
This was the staff from…
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