How did the apostle James die?

One verse in Acts

James, son of Zebedee, was a Galilean fisherman, called with his brother John from their father’s boat (Matthew 4:21–22). With Peter, the brothers formed the inner circle of Jesus. Yet his death gets a single sentence.

Now about that time, King Herod stretched out his hands to oppress some of the assembly. He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.

This Herod is Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, whom Rome made king of all Judaea from AD 41 to 44. Acts and the Jewish historian Josephus both describe his sudden death at Caesarea in 44 (Acts 12:23; Antiquities 19.343–350), so James died in or shortly before that year. Acts gives no charge and no trial. It says the killing won the king favor, so at Passover he arrested Peter too, who escaped from prison (12:3–11). Luke gives the first martyr, Stephen, two chapters. James, the first apostle to be martyred, gets one verse. (Judas Iscariot had died before him, but by his own hand.)

“With the sword”

Death “with the sword” most likely means beheading. The Mishnah lists beheading as the penalty for murder and for a town led into idolatry (Sanhedrin 9:1), and it was also how Rome executed by the sword. Christian art gives James a sword, or a pilgrim’s staff.

A second-century story adds one scene. Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius, says the man who brought James to court was so moved by his testimony that he declared himself a Christian too. On the way to execution he asked James to forgive him. James thought for a moment, wished him peace and kissed him, and the two were beheaded together (Church History 2.9).

The cup he was promised

Jesus nicknamed James and John Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17), and once they offered to call fire down on a village that turned him away (Luke 9:54). They also asked for the seats at his right and left in his glory. His answer sounds different after Acts 12.

They said to him, “We are able.” Jesus said to them, “You shall indeed drink the cup that I drink, and you shall be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with;

The brothers drank it at opposite ends. James was the first apostle killed; John, by tradition, outlived all the others. Christians call this James “the Great” to tell him apart from James son of Alphaeus and from James the brother of Jesus, stoned in AD 62.

Is he buried in Santiago de Compostela?

That is the claim of the cathedral in Galicia, in northwest Spain. The story runs that James preached in Spain, and that after his death his disciples carried his body there by boat. It first appears in writing around the seventh century. In the early ninth century a hermit reported lights over a field, a local bishop declared the grave the apostle’s, and King Alfonso II of Asturias built a church over it. Santiago is simply Saint Iago, Saint James, and the pilgrim road, the Camino, became one of the great journeys of Europe. In 1589, fearing Francis Drake’s raid on the coast, the archbishop hid the bones; they were found again in 1879, and Pope Leo XIII declared them authentic in 1884.

Historians are doubtful. Acts leaves James little time for Spain, and Paul, writing in the 50s, plans to go there himself because he preaches only “not where Christ was already named” (Romans 15:20, 24). For pilgrims, the road matters as much as the grave. The feast of St James is July 25.