St. James (Son of Zebedee)

St. James the Greater, son of Zebedee, was a Galilean fisherman called by Jesus along with his brother John while they were mending their nets by the Sea of Galilee. Leaving their father and their boat, the brothers followed Christ, who gave them the nickname Boanerges, "sons of thunder," a hint of their fiery zeal — it was they who wished to call down fire on an unwelcoming Samaritan town, and their mother who asked that they sit at Jesus' right and left in his kingdom. With Peter and John, James belonged to the inner circle of the Twelve. He was one of the three witnesses of the raising of Jairus's daughter, of the Transfiguration of the Lord on the mountain, and of the agony in the garden of Gethsemane. The Lord's answer to his ambition — "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" — was fulfilled to the letter: James became the first of the apostles to die for Christ, beheaded in Jerusalem by order of King Herod Agrippa I around the year 44, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. According to a tradition cherished in Spain, James preached the Gospel on the Iberian peninsula before his martyrdom, and after his death his remains were carried by his disciples to the far northwest of Spain. The historical evidence for the Spanish mission is late and debated, and it is honestly acknowledged as tradition rather than established history; but the tomb venerated as his at Compostela, identified in the ninth century, became one of the great spiritual centers of Christendom. Santiago de Compostela grew into the third great pilgrimage destination of the medieval world, after Jerusalem and Rome, and the Camino de Santiago — the Way of St. James, marked by the pilgrim's scallop shell — still draws hundreds of thousands of walkers each year to the apostle's shrine in the cathedral there. In Holy Years, when his feast falls on a Sunday, pilgrims may enter through the cathedral's Holy Door. The Church celebrates his feast on July 25, and he is venerated as the patron of Spain and of pilgrims.