A story at walking pace: the Camino de Santiago de Compostela
Il Santiago's walk of Compostela is one of the most famous and visited pilgrimages in the world. It all began in 825, when Alfonso the Chaste, King of Asturias, went on a pilgrimage to the supposed tomb of the Apostle Saint James the Greater, found by a hermit named Pelagius on Mount Liberon. The place of discovery took the name of Campus Stellae, "field of the star", from which the name Compostela derives.
The Camino was born as burial place of the Apostle Saint James, beheaded in Palestine. According to the Golden Legend, the disciples of St. James they would bring his decapitated body to the Spanish coast on a boat guided by an angel. The visit of Alfonso the Chaste marked the beginning of the pilgrimages, and it was he himself who ordered the construction of the first church. As devotion to the Saint spread, more and more pilgrims crowded the place and one community of Benedictine monks he settled in the Locus Sancti Iacobi.
Today, the roads of the Camino de Santiago cross Spain and France, with different routes of varying length and difficulty, but all declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The most used route is the French Way, which starts from the French Pyrenees and crosses several Spanish regions. The stages of the Camino are indicated by ceramic signs and tiles with a yellow shell, symbol of the discovery of the remains of San Giacomo shipwrecked on the Spanish coast. Some pilgrims travel the Camino on foot, in bicycle or on horseback and it takes about one month to get to Santiago de Compostela.
What it means to do the Camino de Santiago de Compostela
Doing the Camino de Santiago today means undertaking a internal challenge and enriching. In the past, pilgrims set out driven by the desire to atone for sins or express your faith. Today, the pilgrimage has turned into agrowth experience and spiritual strengthening.
The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is one ofthe largest and most famous Catholic shrines of the world. It shows signs of numerous expansion and restoration interventions over the centuries. Every year, thousands of pilgrims of all nationalities come to pray and visit the sanctuary. Anyone who completes the Camino de Santiago has the right to obtain the Compostela, a religious document that certifies the completion of the pilgrimage. The Compostela is a legacy of the medieval era, in which it served as proof of the atonement for the pilgrim's sins.
The symbol par excellence of the Camino de Santiago is the shell, or concha, which identifies pilgrimage throughout the world. Pilgrims completing the Camino had to collect a shell on their beaches of Finisterre, the westernmost point on earth according to the ancient Romans.