St. James the Greater

James, son of Zebedee, was born in Galilee in the late first century BC, likely in or around Bethsaida, a fishing community on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. His mother was named Mary, and his brother was John the Evangelist, with whom he would share both a vocation and a notable temperament that earned them the nickname Boanerges, or 'sons of thunder' (Mark 3:17). The family business was fishing, and James worked alongside his father and brother in the family trade before his life was redirected by an encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. By most accounts, James was a relatively young man when he left his nets to follow the Galilean rabbi who was gathering disciples along the lakeshore.

James was among the first disciples Jesus called, and he quickly became part of the inner circle. Along with his brother John and the brothers Peter and Andrew, he was permitted to witness moments the other apostles were not, including the raising of Jairus's daughter, the Transfiguration on the mountain, and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. This closeness suggests a particular trust between Jesus and the sons of Zebedee, even if the Gospels also record their mother once asking that they sit at Jesus' right and left in his kingdom, an ambitious request that prompted the other disciples' indignation (Matthew 20:20-28). After the Resurrection and Ascension, James emerged as a leader in the early Christian community in Jerusalem, and Paul, writing in the 50s AD, specifically named him alongside Peter and John as a 'pillar' of the church (Galatians 2:9).

Tradition holds that James preached the Gospel in the Iberian Peninsula, an early mission later elaborated in medieval Spanish legends. Whether or not the historical details can be verified, the devotion took deep root, and the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain became, by the early Middle Ages, the great pilgrimage destination of Western Europe. According to the Acts of the Apostles, James was executed by the sword under the authority of King Herod Agrippa I around 44 AD, making him the first of the twelve apostles to be martyred. Catholic tradition further holds that his relics were later translated to Spain, and the tomb at Compostela has drawn pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago for more than a thousand years.

James's legacy is unusually broad. He is the patron of Spain, of pilgrims, and of laborers, including fishermen, and his feast day on July 25 is a solemnity in the Roman calendar. The pilgrimage to Compostela was one of the three great medieval Christian journeys, alongside Rome and Jerusalem, and it remains popular today, with hundreds of thousands of walkers arriving on foot each year. The shell, traditionally associated with him, became a universal emblem of pilgrimage itself. In art, James is often shown as a pilgrim with a staff and shell, or as a knight, the 'Moorslayer,' a later Spanish iconographic development. Theological and historical details about him are fewer than for Peter or Paul, but the small body of scriptural references has been enough to make his name perhaps the most-trodden saintly name in all of Christendom.