The Battle of St. James The Greater at Clavijo

Saint James the Greater (died a.d. 44) was one of Christ’s apostles and the patron saint of Spain. He was said to have miraculously appeared, sword in hand, to help the Christian Spaniards defeat a Muslim army in a.d. 844—a battle that in fact never happened. The scene here abounds in gritty details such as the beheaded enemy corpse and various dismembered limbs. The saint wears a scallop shell on his hat, an allusion to the sign pilgrims wore on their long journey to revere his relics at the Spanish cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.