Galego | English

Non fiction

As peregrinacións xacobeas

By Francisco Fernández del Riego

About this book

This book explores the meaning and continuation of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The city developed due to these roads. Through those routes people from all ends of Christianity come to our region, people of all places and creeds. In this book we find a detailed synthesis of the creation of the city of Santiago, how the pilgrimage road was born, its different stages, lives of pilgrims, and the social and cultural universe it created. The book includes an introduction by language specialist and expert on this topic Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz and photographs by Xurxo Lobato.

Book fragment

The man who gave way to pilgrimage to the land’s end of Romania –where popular Latin was spoken in its fields- was called Iacobus. He was also called Boanerges, which means “son of the throne”, maybe because of his passionate character. The belief in his preaching in Hispania came from far. It was gathered in the book De ortu et ovitu Patum by Isidore from Seville in the 8th century.

The Jews killed him by the sword and after he was killed, the beheaded body of Santiago was brought in the middle of the night by his disciples from Jerusalem. He was taken to the sea shore, to a place where a boat without sails and rudder was moored. They brought him on board and guided by an angel the disciples set sail for Galicia.