160. Plan of Dolmen at Cangas de Onis.
161. Dolmen of San Miguel, at Arrichinaga.
A still more remarkable instance of the same kind is to be found at a place called Arrichinaga, about twenty-five miles from Bilboa, in the province of Biscay. In the hermitage of St. Michael, at this place, a dolmen of very considerable dimensions is enclosed within the walls of what seems to be a new modern church. It may, however, be the successor of one more ancient; but the fact of these great stones being adopted by the Christians at all shows that they must have been considered sacred and objects of worship by the natives at the time when the Christians enclosed them in their edifice. If the facts are as represented in the woodcut,[458] we can now easily understand why the councils of Toledo, in 681 and 692, fulminated their decrees against the "veneratores lapidum;"[459] and why also the more astute provincial priesthood followed the advice that Pope Gregory gave to Abbot Millitus, and by means of a little holy water and an image of San Miguel turned the sacred stones of the pagans into a temple of the true God. It is difficult to say when Christianity penetrated into the Asturias—not, probably, before the time of Pelayo (A.D. 720); but even this would be too early for such churches as those of Cangas de Onis and Arrichinaga. They, in fact, seem to carry down the veneration for big stones to almost as late a date as the age indicated by the dolmen at Confolens ([woodcut No. 123]), and bring the probable erection of some of them at least, if not of all, within the historic era.
Portugal.
