ABSTRACT
Up to the end of the 18th century, devotion to St James the Greater was widespread in France. Churches, chapels, and altars dedicated to the apostle needed to have a relic of him, often a contact relic. As a consequence of the spread of the story of Charlemagne’s discovery of the apostolic tomb (Codex Calixtinus, book V), several churches claimed to possess either the entire body or the skull of the son of Zebedee. These relics aroused temporary interest, manifested by local pilgrimages and processions, but never supplanted the shrine of Compostela.
