Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

In the tenth century, in 997, the Moor Almanzor, a celebrated minister of the Moorish Court, arrived with his devastating army at the gates of Santiago, having reduced thirty monasteries and palaces to ruin on his way. Troops of Moors had come over from Cordova to join forces with Almanzor’s hosts. San Pedro de Mezonzo, the author of the Salve Regina, was then archbishop. When the Moorish army reached Santiago, they found to their surprise that its towers and its walls were deserted, and that no resistance was being offered to their advance. Penetrating into the heart of the city, they found stillness and solitude everywhere; they found the doors of the cathedral open, but there was only one living person inside it—an aged monk prostrate in prayer.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Almanzor.

“I am praying before the sepulchre of St. James,” replied the monk.

“Pray as much as you wish,” replied Almanzor, and he thereupon gave orders that none should molest him; after which, according to some, the Moor stationed himself before the altar to protect it from desecration at the hands of his followers.

St. Pedro de Mezonzo had fled to a neighbouring stronghold, bearing with him as much of the treasure of the cathedral as he could manage to carry.[62] It is clear that he at least was not one of the fighting prelates for which Galicia has been famous. Ferreiro tells us that when excavations were made in the cathedral of Santiago in 1878, traces of fire were certainly found. He argues from this that the Moors must have used fire in their attempt to destroy the building. Almanzor returned to Cordova laden with booty, and driving before him four thousand Christian captives, bearing on their shoulders the gates of Santiago Cathedral and its smaller bells, which, according to Fernandez Sandez, served as lamps in the great mosque of Cordova until the day when Ferdinand took the capital of the Calyphate, and caused captive Moors to bear them back to Santiago on their shoulders and restore them to the cathedral. Almanzor’s triumph was merely that of a successful expedition into the heart of Galicia, for the Moors never conquered that province.

San Pedro de Mezonzo was a monk of the Benedictine Order before he was raised to the archbishopric. The fact of his having been archbishop of Santiago at the time of Almanzor’s entry is not the only one that contributes to his fame. He is illustrious in the annals of Spanish history as being the supposed author of that beautiful prayer to the Virgin so universally revered throughout Catholic countries, the Salve Regina,[63] a prayer which every Catholic child lisps at its mother’s knee, and which has been translated into every language:—

“Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae; vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus, exules filii Evae; ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle. Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte, et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium ostende: O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.”

Of late years there has been much discussion among students of ecclesiastical literature as to who was really the author of that prayer. At a recent Catholic Congress held at Munich this question was raised by a Benedictine monk. Florez devoted many pages to his argument that St. Bernard was its author.[64] In 1892 a book on the subject was published at Karlsruhe, in which W. Brambach tried to prove that Hermanus Contractus, a Benedictine monk born in 1013 in Suabia, had composed the Salve. There are French writers who support the claims of a French priest, Ademar de Monteil, bishop of Puy-en-Velay about 1087, said to have been one of the most active organisers of the first European crusade. But the most recent as well as the most learned and scholarly thesis[65] on this question is that of Dr. Eladio Oviedo, professor of Ecclesiastical History and Archæology at the Pontifical University of Santiago. Dr. Oviedo has spared no pains in his search for the real author of the Salve; he has weighed every atom of available evidence, and patiently searched through the religious literature of centuries for traces of its influence, with the result that he is convinced that—not St. Bernard, not Hermanus Contractus, not Ademar de Monteil, but Pedro de Mezonzo of Galicia was the author of this prayer so dear to the Catholic heart.

The idea is not a new one. I have met with it in several old works on Galicia, but the proofs brought forward by Dr. Oviedo are more convincing than any others that have as yet appeared in print. He shows, and I think conclusively, that the Salve was known in Spain long before any allusion to it or sign of its influence appeared in French, German, or Italian literature. Gonzalo de Berceo, in the thirteenth century, introduced it into his Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Alfonso el Sabio relates in his Cantiga 262 a legend of how an old woman, who was deaf and dumb, was cured by the Holy Virgin, and straightway taught her townspeople the memorable Salve, which she, in her turn, had been taught by the angels. According to Alfonso el Sabio, it was sung for the first time in the church of Santa Maria del Puy.

In the sixteenth century the Salve was known to the fisherfolk on the Spanish coast as “The mariner’s prayer.” In the sixteenth century it had already become popular in France, Portugal, and Italy. It is mentioned in the Legends of St. Francis of Assisi by St. Buenaventura in 1274.