The Camino de Santiago during the story
In the ninth century, King Alfonso II of Asturias commands to build a sepulcher in the place where the remains of Santiago had been discovered, one of the apostles, helping with this at the beginning of the pilgrimages.
A century later, the news of the finding of the tomb of the apostle Santiago in Galicia, expanded from Europe, pushing to come from all parts of the continent to thousands of pilgrims.
A personality with power that invested in a remarkable way to the prosperity of this new tradition was Carlomagno. This was in charge of ensuring all the roads and invested his life to fight against the Muslim Army.
Reusing old roads of Roman origin and commercial routes, increasing in number from this century of pilgrimages, importantly helping both the nobility and the clergy, hospitals, building bridges and hospices.
The first pilgrim to perform this journey can be said that it was the Asturian king Alfonso II, starting the exit by Oviedo, to see if the finding was real and if that was that way to worship. With this, the first official jacobean path is formed, known as primitive.
THE MODERN AGE
In the sixteenth century the Camino de Santiago will suffer a serious crisis. With the Protestant reform and religion wars in the German and France territories, the number of pilgrims decreased.
With the war between the imperial Spain of Carlos V and France, this situation is maintained, and still worsens during the reign of Felipe II, with the closure of borders to avoid the entry of Lutheran thought into their kingdoms.
In May 1589, given the fear that Francis Drake’s English Atacaran Compostela, the archbishop John of Sanclemente ordered the concealment of the body of the apostle in the presbytery of the cathedral. The exact place where it was hidden would not be known for centuries, until 1879, the second discovery of the apostolic remains.
The Inquisition also constitutes a problem in the XVI, because they accused foreigners and even Jacobean pilgrims, espionage. After the celebration of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) the Catholic Church becomes stronger ideologically, with the exaltation of the cult of the Virgin and the Saints.
Baroque religiosity with its counter -reformist spirit will allow pilgrimages along the Camino de Santiago to grow again, in the seventeenth century, especially during the holy years;although on the route in addition to the authentic pilgrims there would also be others who were not really but simple interested in taking advantage of the alms that people gave them.
The French Revolution of 1789 and the War of several European powers against France caused the number of pilgrims to be reduced again at the end of the 18th century.
The Camino de Santiago in the contemporary era (19th and 20th centuries)
Spanish and Portuguese would keep the way alive, in a few decades of very few visits, which even affected the saints. But this began to change from the second discovery of the Santiago body, in 1879, with the papal statement of the finding of the apostolic remains, affirmed in the Bula Deus Omnipotens (1884), and with the celebration of an extraordinary holy year in 1885.
The Camino de Santiago will experience a reactivation at the end of the 19th and early twentieth centuries, especially thanks to the pastoral action of the Archbishops Payá and Martín de Herrera. But the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) that supposed the division into two of society caused it to lose interest in pilgrimages, in addition to a Europe immersed in two world wars and the subsequent "Cold War"
In the 50s and 60s of the twentieth century, recovery began to recover, when the Jacobeas associations of Paris (1950) and Estella (1963) were founded, and with the celebration of the saints of 1965 and 1971.
The final impulse will arrive from 1982 with the pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II and his Europeanist speech on the main altar of the Cathedral of Santiago.
NOWADAYS
Faced with a globalized world, the experience of the pilgrimage to Santiago is unique.
The beginnings of the 21st century are marked by a global conception of thought and economy, the development of digital technology, the threat of jihadist terrorism, an increasing concern for the environment and the appearance in 2008 of a global economic crisis thathas hardened the social situation.
Given this situation and the search for new enriching experiences, traditional pilgrimage to Santiago is a radical change in behavior, an alternative of human and universal values in the face of an increasingly globalized world, and also alienating and competitive.
Jacobean pilgrimage is an experience on the one hand, spiritual and ecumenical, but also open to knowledge, friendship and mutual understanding.
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