Since the 9th Century, the Camino de Santiago has been one of the most famous pilgrimages in the world – but all those footsteps may have been in vain.
Bones which have long been believed to belong to Saint James the Great, one of Jesus Christ’s Twelve Apostles, are held at the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela in North-West Spain.
But a new study claims that the saint’s actual cranium may have been wrongly attributed to Saint James the Less – another of Christ’s disciples who is also venerated in the cathedral.
It casts into question the validity of Saint James the Great’s official remains. According to the New Testament, the first man, who was also known as James, son of Zebedee, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, and is the patron saint of Spain. The Bible claims that he was beheaded with a sword on the order of Herod Agrippa I, king of Judea, in AD44. James the Less, who was also one of Christ’s Twelve, is believed to have been stoned and beaten to death in AD62. The Spanish cathedral is believed to hold both men’s remains, but if the new study is correct, those of James the Less should be re-attributed to James the Great, whilst the validity of the latter’s official relics would be cast into doubt. Fernando Serrulla, head of forensic anthropology at the Institute of Legal Medicine of Galicia, claims that the cranium attributed to James the Less shows signs consistent with beheading, whilst there are no signs on the skull attributed to St James the Less of ‘blows or stoning’, El Pais reported.
