A Credential, and a Certificate at the End

Reaching Santiago used to mean carrying proof, and the cathedral still swings a giant incense burner partly because of what centuries of exhausted pilgrims smelled like on arrival.

A credential, and a certificate at the end

Pilgrims walking any of the routes making up the Camino de Santiago traditionally carry a credencial, a pilgrim passport stamped at stops along the way, which qualifies them on arrival to receive the Compostela, an official certificate of completion issued by the cathedral, a documentation system that has operated in some form for many centuries and continues largely unchanged today.

A giant censer with a practical origin

The cathedral's Botafumeiro, an enormous incense burner swung in a dramatic wide arc across the transept by a team of handlers, is traditionally explained partly as a practical response to the smell of large numbers of unwashed pilgrims filling the cathedral after weeks of walking, alongside its more straightforward ceremonial and purifying religious function.

As this entry's companion article covers

The long-running scholarly and historical dispute over whether the remains housed in the cathedral genuinely belong to the apostle James is addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.