From the tomb of Santiago / St. James on my first visit: I was surprised by how intensely spiritual my visit to Santiago Cathedral was for me after my first camino. My companion, Fr. Jim, and I had decided to go our separate ways in the morning to have some quiet time to reflect on our time together and to digest some of our reflections. The Portico of Glory was closed off, and the façade of the cathedral was covered in scaffolding I was able to embrace St. James’ statue from behind, according to the custom, and make my way to the tomb. Afterwards, I sat contemplatively in the cathedral remembering everyone in prayer, one last time, whom I had been praying for over the two weeks, all of them together, and there were a lot of them. I experienced an incredible high, shared with so many who had made their ways and arrived with us.
I met up with Fr. Jim in time to attend Mass together, and we were lucky enough to see the botafumeiro swing. I’m from California, the home of Disney, and the sheer excess of the rite seemed wildly proportionate to the whole experience.
Lunch in one of the gardened squares of Santiago was a treat, before heading off to the Cathedral museum together. I love museums. I can spend days in them quite happily.
Curiously, I don’t remember the last meal I shared with Fr. Jim. Our thoughts must already have been turning to our eminent departure. All I remember of that last evening is the chamomile tea before bed, something I had picked up from Fr. Jim.
The curious low point was St. James’ misplaced tomb.
Exod 13:17-19 – 17 Now, when Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the Philistines’ land, though this was the nearest; for God said: If the people see that they have to fight, they might change their minds and return to Egypt. 18 Instead, God rerouted them toward the Red Sea by way of the wilderness road, and the Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt arrayed for battle. 19 Moses also took Joseph’s bones with him, for Joseph had made the Israelites take a solemn oath, saying, “God will surely take care of you, and you must bring my bones up with you from here.”
For reflection: What do we do with the cult of saints and their bones?
We live in a time that pushes death to the far borders of our consciousness. Cemeteries are now called “memorial parks,” the dead are referred to as “our dearly beloved,” and words such as corpse and cadaver are restricted to crime scenes. Mortuaries swoop in to relieve us of any responsibility for the bodies of “our dearly beloved.” They work hard to prepare the bodies so that if the casket is opened viewers will comment how well the mortician made the person look “alive.” This is done to honor the dead.
We may have lost touch with how enveloping death was for our ancestors, and how intimately they cared for the bodies of family and friends. Those bodies were laid out, bathed, dressed and wrapped by family members on the very tables, often enough, on which they had been born. The men of the family then carried their deceased to the church on their shoulders. Churchyards, themselves, were places of burial that parishioners progressed through on their way to weekly worship, vividly reminded of their mortality. Church buildings reflected a deep intimacy with death, containing tombs of saints and bishops, the nobility and the noteworthy.
As no one is getting out alive, their comfort level with death seems healthier and more honest to me than the modern avoidance of the subject. Which is not to say that they didn’t develop some interesting, even macabre, practices.
Some in the very early church desired to celebrate the liturgy over the site of a saint’s burial place, preferable a martyr’s where possible, and perhaps even using the casket as the altar. St. Jerome had quite a heated argument with Vigilantius, a priest from Aquitania who, according to Jerome, thought of the remains of the saints “as worthless fragments of dust.” Jerome asked, “Is the bishop of Rome erring when he sacrifices to the Lord over the revered bones of the dead men, Peter and Paul…judging their catacombs acceptable to serve as an altar for Christ?” The practice of locating altars over these burial sites was both common, though occasionally questioned.
By the end of the fourth century, as saints and martyrs tombs became too inconvenient, the practice of moving, or “translating,” the tombs of saints to the crypts of churches, under their altars, had become quite established. If the whole body wasn’t available, it seemed acceptable to obtain just a part of it.
If people had a deep devotion to a saint, or were coming on pilgrimage from faraway places to venerate the saint, it was desirable to have the most intimate experience possible. Saints’ bones were encased in lavishly decorated caskets, and their body parts encapsulated in fantastical reliquaries. These repositories were brought out for reverencing, and even respectful touching and kissing. People were hungry for an encounter, including physical contact with, the holy. Living with their intimacy with dying, they were not nearly as put off by the macabre aspects of this veneration as we might be.
Inevitably, as we humans are responsible for these encounters, there was fakery and abuse, and debates about practices and the integrity of things. The ancients had their share of skeptics of the cult of saints and their body parts. Saints Augustine and Gregory, for example, spoke out against fake relics.
Guibert of Nobert, Abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, too, was deeply offended that monks of Saint-Medards had claimed to have a tooth of the Lord, lost by Jesus at the age of nine in the normal course of childhood. Guibert thought this was preposterous. Among other arguments, he asked who, exactly, was going to gather up parts of the boy Jesus, “since no one at that time thought anything more of Him than of any of any one of the same age who was living then?” He was distressed that monks of Constantinople and Angers, both, claimed to have the head of St. John the Baptist. Perhaps one was from his childhood? St. Firmimus’ body was to be found both at the Church of Amiens and the monastery of St. Denis, both with attestations, one from a bishop, the other from an abbot. As for the bodies of saints, Guibert argued, the place for them is in their tombs, joining with Pope Gregory in denouncing those who held up the bodies of the saints in order to receive offerings.[1] You can see that it was a spirited time.
So how might a modern person enter into the ancient world’s practices seeking any grace at all? It might begin with our own preference for physical contact. An email is efficient, and a text message even more so, but when you want to have a rich moment, neither can match up to a phone call. FaceTime and Zoom have upped our ability to enter into deeper contact. Nothing, however, beats being in someone’s actual presence. We travel great distance to be with family and friends because a handshake, a hug, and face-to-face conversations are ever so much more satisfying. Intimacy enriches our contact, enlivens our relationships, and nourishes our hearts.
Something similar can happen when we stand in the very presence of the holy. There is a different level of engagement that summons a richer inner response from us, and enable something more profound, if we’ll let it.
The site of Santiago’s Cathedral has been sanctified by the holy intentions of the millennia of pilgrims whose feet have blessed the place with the sanctity of their sandals’ dust, gathered over hundreds and, perhaps, thousands of miles. You are now a part of this. Yet there still are the bones, a memory of a man who walked with Jesus…as have you. Bathe in the moment.
[1] Guibert of Nogent, De Pignoribus Sanctorum.
