According to ancient local tradition, on 2 January of the year AD 40, the Virgin Mary appeared to James on the bank of the Ebro River at Caesaraugusta, while he was preaching the Gospel in Spain. She supposedly appeared upon a pillar, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, and that pillar is conserved and venerated within the present Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, in Zaragoza, Spain. Following that apparition, St James returned to Judea, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in the year 44.
The translation of his relics from Judea to Galicia in the northwest of Iberia was effected, in legend, by a series of miraculous happenings: decapitated in Jerusalem with a sword by Herod Agrippa himself, his body was taken up by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat to Iria Flavia in Spain, where a massive rock closed around his relics, which were later removed to Compostela. The 12th-century "Historia Compostellana" gives a summary of the legend of St James as it was believed at Compostela. Two ideas are central to it: first, that St James preached the gospel in Spain as well as in the Holy Land; second, that after his martyrdom at the hands of Herod Agrippa I his disciples carried his body by sea to Spain, where they landed at Padrón on the coast of Galicia, and took it inland for burial at Santiago de Compostela.
The authenticity of the sacred relics of Compostela was asserted in the Bull of Pope Leo XIII, "Omnipotens Deus," of 1 November 1884.
The tradition at Compostela placed the discovery of the relics of the saint in the time of king Alfonso II (791–842) and of bishop Theodemir of Iria. These traditions were the basis for the pilgrimage route that began to be established in the 9th century, and the shrine dedicated to James at Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia in Spain, became the most famous pilgrimage site in the Christian world. St James's Way is a tree of routes that cross Western Europe and arrive at Santiago through Northern Spain. Eventually James became the patron saint of Spain.
The name "James" in English comes from "Iacobus" (Jacob) in Latin. In eastern Spain, Jacobus became "Jacome" or "Jaime"; in Catalunya, it became Jaume, in western Spain it became "Iago", and Portugal and Galicia it was Tiago. "Saint James" ("Sanctus Jacobus") became "Sant' Iago", which was abbreviated to "Santiago". James's emblem was the scallop shell (or "cockle shell"), and pilgrims to his shrine often wore that symbol on their hats or clothes.
Saint James
Saint James could mean any of the following:
In "transportation",
In the United States:
In the United Kingdom:
Other nations:
Vampire squid
The Vampire squid ("Vampyroteuthis infernalis", 'vampire squid from hell') is a small, deep-sea cephalopod. It can be found throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world.
It has special filaments it can retract; because of this, it has been placed in its own order: "Vampyromorphida" (formerly "Vampyromorpha"). It is similar to both squid and octopus. It is the only surviving member of its order. It was first described and mistakenly identified as an octopus in 1903.
The vampire squid can grow to about 30 cm (1 foot) in total length. It is no threat to humans. Its 15 cm (6 inch) gelatinous body varies in color between velvety jet-black and pale reddish, depending on location and lighting conditions. A webbing of skin connects its eight arms, each lined with rows of fleshy spines or "cirri". The inside of this "cloak" is black. Only the distal half (farthest from the body) of the arms have suckers. Its limpid, globular eyes—which appear red or blue, also depending on lighting—are proportionately the largest in the animal kingdom at 2.5 cm (1 inch) in diameter.
Mature adults have a pair of ear-like fins. These fins stand out from the lateral sides of the mantle. They serve as the adult's primary means of propulsion (moving around): Vampire Squid are said to "fly" through the water by way of flapping their fins. Their powerful beak-like jaws are as white as ivory. Within the webbing are two pouches. These pouches hide the tactile "velar filaments". The filaments are analogous to a true squid's tentacles, extending well past the arms, however, they are a different arm pair than the squid's tentacles. Instead, the filaments are the same pair that were lost by the ancestral octopuses.
The Vampire Squid is covered entirely in light-producing organs called photophores. The animal has great control over the organs. It is capable of producing disorienting flashes of light for fractions of a second to several minutes in duration. The intensity and size of the photophores can also be varied. Appearing as small white discs, the photophores are larger and more complex at the tips of the arms and at the base of the two fins. They are absent from the underside of the caped arms. Two larger white areas on top of the head were initially believed to be photophores too, but have turned out to be photoreceptors.
The chromatophores (pigment organs) common to most cephalopods are poorly developed in Vampire Squid. While this means the animal is not capable of changing its skin colour in the dramatic fashion of shallow-dwelling cephalopods, such trickery is not needed at the pitch black depths in which it lives.
The Vampire Squid is an extreme example of a deep-sea cephalopod. People think it lives at aphotic (lightless) depths from 600–900 metres (2,000-3,000 feet) or more. Within this region of the world's oceans is a discrete habitat known as the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ). Within the OMZ oxygen saturation is too low to support aerobic metabolism in most higher organisms. Nonetheless, the Vampire Squid is able to live normally in the OMZ at oxygen saturations as low as 3%; something no other cephalopod—and few other animals—can do.
In order to cope with life in this habitat, vampire squid have developed several radical adaptations. Of all deep-sea cephalopods, their metabolic rate is the lowest. Their blue blood hemocyanin binds and transports oxygen most efficiently, aided by gills with especially large surface area. The animals have weak musculature but maintain agility and buoyancy with little effort thanks to sophisticated statocysts (balancing organs akin to a human's inner ear) and ammonium-rich gelatinous tissues closely matching the density of the surrounding seawater.
At the shallower end of the Vampire Squid's vertical range, the view from below is like the sky at twilight: The highly sensitive eyes of deepwater dwellers are able to distinguish the silhouettes of other animals moving overhead. To combat this, the vampire squid generates its own bluish light (bioluminescence) in a strategy called counterillumination: The light diffuses the animal's silhouette, effectively "cloaking" its presence from the watchful eyes below. Its own large eyes detect even the faintest of gleams. A pair of photoreceptors are located on top of its head, perhaps alerting the animal to movements above.
Like other deep-sea cephalopods, Vampire Squid have no ink sacs. If threatened, instead of ink, a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light is ejected from the arm tips. This luminous barrage, which may last nearly 10 minutes, is presumably meant to daze would-be predators and allow the Vampire Squid to disappear into the blackness without the need to swim far. The display is made only if the animal is very agitated.