Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

"How should I your true love know

From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff

And his sandal shoon."

The Santiago "cockle," which thus, as a general pilgrim symbol, outstripped the keys of Rome and the cross of Jerusalem, is otherwise accounted for by a story that the body of St. James was borne overseas to Galicia in a shell of miraculous size, but this is not the version that was told us at the shrine.

The two disciples, Theodore and Athanasius, temporarily interred their master in Padron, two leagues from Iria, until they should have obtained permission from the Roman dame who governed that region to allow St. James the choice of a resting-place. Her pagan heart was moved to graciousness, and she lent the disciples an ox-cart, in which they placed the body, leaving the beasts free to take the Apostle's course. It is hardly miraculous that, under the circumstances, Lady Lupa's oxen plodded straight back to Iria and came to a stop before her summer villa. Since this was so clearly indicated as the choice of the saint, she could do no less than put her house at his disposal. In the villa was a chapel to the war-god Janus, but when the body of Santiago was brought within the doors, this heathen image fell with a crash into a hundred fragments. Here the saint abode, guarded by his faithful disciples, until, in process of time, they slept beside him. The villa had been transformed into a little church, so little that, when the Imperial persecutions stormed over the Spanish provinces, the worshippers hid it under heaps of turf and tangles of brier bushes. Those early Christians of Iria were slain or scattered, and the burial place of St. James was forgotten of all the world.

In the seventh century, a rumor went abroad that the Apostle James had preached the gospel in Spain. The legend grew until, in the year 813, a Galician anchorite beheld from the mouth of his cavern a brilliant star, which shone persistently above a certain bramble-wood in the outskirts of Iria. Moving lights, as of processional tapers, twinkled through the matted screen of shrubbery, and solemn chants arose from the very heart of the boscage. Word of this mystery came to the bishop, who saw with his own eyes "the glow of many candles through the shadows of the night." After three days of fasting, he led all the villagers in procession to the thicket which had grown up, a protecting hedge, about the ruins of the holy house. The three graves were found intact, and on opening the chief of these the bishop looked upon the body of St. James, as was proven not only by severed head and pilgrim staff, but by a Latin scroll. The swiftest horsemen of Galicia bore the glorious tidings to the court of the king, that most Christian monarch, Alfonso II, "very Catholic, a great almsgiver, defender of the Faith." So loved of heaven was this pious king, that once, when he had collected a treasure of gold and precious stones for the making of a cross, two angels, disguised as pilgrims, undertook the work. When, after a few hours, Alfonso came softly to the forge to make sure of their honesty and skill, no artisans were there, but from an exquisitely fashioned cross streamed a celestial glory. So devout a king, on hearing the great tidings from Galicia, lost no time in despatching couriers to his bishops and grandees, and all the pomp and pride of Spain, headed by majesty itself, flocked to the far-off hamlet beyond the Asturian mountains to adore the relics of Santiago.

Now began grand doings in Iria, known henceforth as the Field of the Star, Campus Stellæ, or Compostela. Alfonso had a church of stone and clay built above the sepulchre, and endowed it with an estate of three square miles. The Pope announced the discovery to Christendom. A community of twelve monks, with a presiding abbot, was installed at Compostela to say masses before the shrine. For these beginnings of homage the Apostle made a munificent return. A wild people, living in a wild land at a wild time, these Spaniards of the Middle Ages were shaped and swayed by two sovereign impulses, piety and patriotism. These two were practically one, for patriotism meant the expulsion of the Moor, and piety, Cross above Koran. It was a life-and-death struggle. The dispossessed Christians, beaten back from Andalusia and Castile to the fastnesses of the northern mountains, were fighting against fearful odds. They felt sore need of a leader, for although, when their ranks were wavering, the Virgin had sometimes appeared to cheer them on, hers, after all, was but a woman's arm. It was in the battle of Clavijo, 846, that Santiago first flashed into view, an invincible champion of the cross.

Rameiro, successor to Alfonso II, had taken the field against the terrible Abderrahman of Cordova, who had already overrun Valencia and Barcelona and was demanding from Galicia a yearly tribute of one hundred maidens. This exceedingly Moorish tax, which now amuses Madrid as a rattling farce in the summer theatre of the Buen Retiro, was no jesting matter then. Not only the most famous warriors of the realm, Bernardo del Carpio in their van, but shepherds and ploughmen, priests, monks, even bishops, flocked to the royal standard.

"A cry went through the mountains when the proud Moor drew near,