The Cathedrals of Northern Spain / Their History and Their Architecture; Together with Much of Interest Concerning the Bishops, Rulers and Other Personages Identified with Them

by Charles Rudy

The news of the discovery spread abroad with wonderful rapidity. Monasteries, churches, and inns soon surrounded the basilica, and within a few years a village and then a city (the bishop's see was created previous to 842 A. D.) filled the vale, which barely fifty years earlier had been an undiscovered and savage region.

Throughout the middle ages, from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, Santiago de Campostela was the scene of pilgrimages—not to say crusades—to the tomb of St. James. From France, Italy, Germany, and England hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children wandered to the Galician valley, then one of the foci of ecclesiastical significance and industrial activity. The city, despite its local character, wore an international garb, much to the benefit of Galician, even Spanish, arts and literature. It is a pity that so little research has been made concerning these pilgrimages and the influences they brought to bear on the history of the country. A book treating[{79}] of this subject would be a highly interesting account of one of the most important movements of the middle ages.

The Moors under Almanzor pillaged the city of Santiago in 999; then they retreated southwards, as was their wont. The Norman vikings also visited the sacred vale, attracted thither by the reports of its wealth; but they also retreated, like the waves of the sea when the tide goes out.

After the last Arab invasion, an extemporaneous edifice was erected in place of the shrine which had been demolished. It did not stand long, however, for the Christian kings of Spain, whose dominions were limited to Asturias, Leon, and Galicia, ordered the construction of a building worthy of St. James, who was looked upon as the god of battles, much like St. George in England.

So in 1078 the new cathedral, the present building, was commenced, and, as the story runs, it was built around the then existing basilica, which was left standing until after the vault of the new edifice had been closed.

The history of Spain at this moment helped to increase the religious importance of Santiago. The kingdom of Asturias[{80}] (Oviedo) had stretched out beyond its limits and died; the Christian nuclei were Galicia, Leon, and Navarra. In these three the power of the noblemen, and consequently of the bishops and archbishops, was greater than it had ever been before. Each was lord or sovereign in his own domains, and fought against his enemies with or without the aid of the infidel Arab armies, which he had no compunction in inviting to help him against his Christian brothers. Now and again a king managed to subdue these aristocratic lords and ecclesiastical prelates, but only for a short time. Besides, nowhere was the independent spirit of the noblemen more accentuated than in Galicia; nowhere were the prelates so rebellious as in Santiago, the Sacred City, and none attained a greater height of personal power and wealth than Diego Galmirez, the first archbishop of Santiago, and one of the most striking and interesting personalities of Spanish history in the twelfth century, to whom Santiago owes much of her glory, and Spain not little of her future history.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were thus the period of Santiago's greatest fame and renown. Little by little the central[{81}] power of the monarchs went southwards to Castile and Andalusia, and little by little Santiago declined and dwindled in importance, until to-day it is one city more of those that have been and are no longer.

For the city's history is that of its cathedral, of its shrine. With the birth of Protestantism and the death of feudal power, both city and cathedral lost their previous importance: they had sprung into life together, and the existence of the one was intricately interwoven with that of the other.

The stranger who visits Santiago to-day does not approach it fervently by the Mount of Joys as did the footsore pilgrims in the middle ages. On the contrary, he steps out of the train and hurries to the cathedral church, which sadly seems to repeat the thoughts of the city itself, or the words of Señor Muguira:

"To-day, what am I? An echo of the joys and pains of hundreds of generations; a distant rumour both confused and undefinable, a last sunbeam fading at evening and dying on the glassy surface of sleeping waters. Never will man learn my secrets, never will he be able to open my granite[{82}] lips and oblige them to reveal the mysterious past."