Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela (also Saint James of Compostela) is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia. Located in the northwest region of Spain in the province of A Coruña, it is the "European City of Culture" for the year 2000. The city's cathedral is the destination of the important medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St James (in Spanish the Camino de Santiago), which is still walked today. Pop. 92,298 (2004).

The city

The cathedral fronts on the main Plaza of the old and well-preserved city. Across the square is the Pazo de Raxoi (Raxoi's Palace), the town hall and seat of the Galician Xunta, and on the right from the cathedral steps is the Hostal de Los Reyes Católicos, founded in 1492 by the Catholic Kings, Isabela and Fernando, as a pilgrim's hospice (now a parador). The Obradoiro façade of the cathedral, the best known, is depicted on the Spanish euro coins of 1 cent, 2 cents, and 5 cents (€0.01, €0.02, and €0.05).

Santiago also has a fine University which can be seen best from an alcove in the large municipal park in the centre of the city. The University ensures youthful night life. Within the old town there are many narrow winding streets full of historic buildings. The new town all around it has less character though some of the older parts of the new town have some big apartments in them.

Santiago gives its name to one of the four military orders of Spain: Compostela, Calatrava, Alcantara and Montesa.

The prevailing wind from the Atlantic and the surrounding mountains combine to give Santiago some of Europe's highest rainfall: about 66 inches annually.

The etymology of the name Compostela

The popular etymology of the name "Compostela" holds that it comes from Latin campus stellae, i.e. "field of the star", making Santiago de Compostela "St. James in the Field of the Star". This name would come from the belief that the bones of St. James were taken from the Middle East, to Spain. These bones were then buried where a shepherd had spotted a star and a church was eventually built over the bones and later replaced with the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela.

Another etymology is Compositum, i.e. "The well founded", or Composita Tella, meaning "burial ground".

Yet another etymology derives it from "San Jacome Apostol".

Demography

History of the shrine and the pilgrimage

The burial place of St. James

"Santiago" ("Sant' Iago") means "St. James", and the city is supposedly the final resting place of the Apostle Saint James the Great, the brother of John. His remains are said to be beneath the altar in the crypt of the cathedral. According to another theory the actual remains in the crypt belong to Priscillian, an ascetic from Ávila who was beheaded as a heretic at Treves, France, in 385 AD, but was venerated as a martyr in Galicia and other parts of northern Spain.

The legend that St James found his way to the Iberian peninsula, and had preached there is one of a number of early traditions concerning the missionary activities and final resting places of the apostles of Jesus. Although the 1884 Bull of Pope Leo XIII Omnipotens Deus accepted the authenticity of the relics at Compostela, Roman Catholic scholarship has been ambivalent about the question since the 19th century. Not least among the problems with the traditional account is that it includes the miraculous return of James's body to the Iberian peninsula after his biblically attested martyrdom in Jerusalem in about 44 AD (See Acts 12:1-2). The Cathedral authorities at Compostela remain uncommitted as to whether the relics are those of Saint James the Great, while continuing to promote the more general benefits of pilgrimage to the site.

According to a tradition that cannot be traced before the 12th century, the relics were said to have been discovered in 835 by Theodomir, bishop of Iria Flavia in the far northwest of the principality of Asturias. Theodomir was guided to the spot by a star, the legend affirmed, drawing upon a familiar myth-element, hence "Compostela" was given an etymology as a corruption of Campus Stellae, "Plain of the Star."

The establishment of the shrine

As suggested already, it is probably impossible to know whose bones were actually found, and precisely when and how. Perhaps it does not matter. What the history of the pilgrimage requires, but what the meager sources fail to reveal, is how the local Galician cult associated with the saint was transformed into an international cult drawing pilgrims from distant parts of Christendom. At Santiago itself, a building more substantial than the first shrine was begun in 868, but was totally destroyed in 997 by the Moors, who, however, respected the sacred relics. On the reconquest of the city by Bermudo III of Leon (died 1037), the roads that led pilgrims from across northern Spain to the shrine were improved, and the reputation of the shrine spread.

The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

Main article: Way of St. James.

The 1000 year old pilgrimage to the shrine of St James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is known in English as the Way of St. James and in Spanish as the Camino de Santiago. Over 100,000 pilgrims travel to the city each year from points all over Europe.

Pre-Christian legends

As the lowest-lying land on that stretch of coast, the city's site took on added significance. Legends supposed of Celtic origin made it the place where the souls of the dead gathered to follow the Sun across the sea. Those unworthy of going to the Land of the Dead haunted Galicia as the Santa Compaña.

The cathedral

Main article: Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

At the front of the Baroque cathedral, a golden mollusc shell adorns the altar. A steady stream of pilgrims still queue there to kiss the shell, as another sign of homage. The cathedral preserves its original barrel-vaulted cruciform Romanesque interior. Perhaps the chief beauty of the cathedral, however, is the 12th-century Portico de la Gloria, behind the Late Baroque facade. The shafts, tympana and archivolts of the three doorways which open onto the nave and aisles are a mass of strong and nervous sculpture representing the Last Judgment. Faint traces of color remain. The cathedral's facade gains from forming part of an extended architectural composition on the Plaza del Obradoiro, a grand square surrounded by public buildings. The ground rises to the cathedral, which is reached by a magnificent quadruple flight of steps, flanked by statues of David and Solomon. Access to the staircase is through some fine wrought-iron gates, and in the centre, on the level of the Plaza, is the entrance to a Romanesque chapel, the Iglesia Baja ("Lower Church"), constructed under the portico and contemporary with the cathedral. To the north and south, and in a line with the west front, are dependent buildings of the 18th century, grouping well with it. Those to the south contain a light and elegant arcade to the upper windows, and serve as a screen to the late Gothic cloisters, built in 1533 by Fonseca, afterwards archbishop of Toledo. They are said to be the largest in Spain. The north side of the cathedral is in the rich Spanish Baroque style called Churrigueresque.

In the cathedral's Capilla del Relicario ("Chapel of the Reliquary") is a gold crucifix, dated 874, reportedly containing a piece of the True Cross.

Sister cities

Books

Natalino Russo, La via di Santiago, CDA & Vivalda 2006
Sharpe's Rifles

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Santiago de Compostela