SANTIAGO DE CAMPOSTELA
When the Christian religion was still young, St. James the Apostle—he whom Christ called his brother—landed in Galicia and roamed across the northern half of the Iberian peninsula dressed in a pilgrim's modest garb and leaning upon a pilgrim's humble staff. After years of wandering from place to place, he returned to Galicia and was beheaded by the Romans, his enemies.
This legend—or truth—has been poetically interwoven with other legends of Celtic origin, until the whole story forms what Brunetière would call a cycle chevaleresque with St. James—or Santiago—as the central hero.
According to one of these legends, it would appear that the apostle was persecuted by his great enemy Lupa, a woman of singular beauty whom the ascetic pilgrim had mortally offended. Thanks to certain[{76}] accessory details, it is possible to assume that Lupa is the symbol of the "God without a name" of Celtic mythology, and it is she who finally venges herself by decapitating the pilgrim saint.
The disciples of St. James laid his corpse in a cart, together with the executioner's axe and the pilgrim's staff. Two wild bulls were then harnessed to the vehicle, and away went cart and saint. As night fell and the moon rose over the vales of Galicia, the weary animals stopped on the summit of a wooded hill in an unknown vale, surrounded by other hillocks likewise covered with foliage and verdure.
The disciples buried the saint, together with axe and staff, and there they left him with the secret of his burial-ground.
This must have happened in the first or second century of the Christian era. Six hundred years later, and one hundred years after the Moors had landed in Andalusia, one Theodosio, Bishop of Iria (Galicia), took a walk one day in his wide domains accompanied by a monk. Together they lost their way and roamed about till night-fall, when they found themselves far from home.[{77}]
Stars twinkled in the heavens as they do to this day. Being tired, the bishop and his companion dreamt as they walked along—at least it appears so from what followed—and the stars were so many miraculous lights which led the wanderers on and on. At last the stars remained motionless above a wooded hill standing isolated in a beautiful vale. The prelate stopped also, and it occurred to him to dig, for he attributed his dreams to a supernatural miracle. Digging, a coffin was revealed to him, and therein the saintly remains of St. James or Santiago.
Giving thanks to Him who guides all steps, Theodosio returned to Iria, and, by his orders, a primitive basilica was erected some years later on the very spot where the saint had been buried, and in such a manner as to place the high altar just above the coffin. A crypt was then dug out and lined with mosaic, and the coffin, either repaired or renewed, was laid therein,—some say it was visible to the hordes of pilgrims in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
The shrine was then called Santiago de Campostela.—Santiago, which means St.[{78}] James, and Campostela, field of stars, in memory of the miraculous lights the Bishop of Iria and his companion had perceived whilst sweetly dreaming.