Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

The audacity of Gelmirez reached its height in his struggle with the Queen Regent, Urraca of unlovely memory, for the control of the child king, Alfonso VII. This boy was the grandson of Alfonso VI, "Emperor of Spain," who survived all his legitimate children except Urraca. The father of the little Alfonso, Count Raymond of Burgundy, was dead, and Urraca had taken a second husband, Alfonso the Battle-maker. The situation was complicated. The Battle-maker wore the crowns of Aragon and Navarre, Urraca was queen of Leon and Castile, while the child, by his grandfather's will, inherited the lordship of Galicia. The Bishop of Santiago, who baptized the baby, had strenuously opposed Urraca's second marriage. As that lady had, nevertheless, gone her own wilful way, setting at naught the bishop's remonstrance and inciting Galicia to revolt against his tyranny, Gelmirez had kidnapped the royal child, a puzzled little majesty of four summers, and solemnly crowned and anointed him before the High Altar of St. James, declaring himself the protector of the young sovereign. Urraca soon wearied of her Aragonese bridegroom, and, casting him off, took up arms to defend her territories against his invasion. The powerful bishop came to her aid with men and money, but exacted in exchange an oath of faithful friendship, which Urraca gave and broke and gave again. Meanwhile the popular hatred swelled so high against Gelmirez that an open insurrection, in which many of his own clergy took part, drove him and the Queen to seek refuge in one of the cathedral towers, while the rebels burned and pillaged in the church below. The bishop barely escaped with his life, fleeing in disguise from Compostela; but soon the baffled conspirators saw him at his post again, punishing, pardoning, rebuilding—as indomitable as St. James himself. The election of Diego's friend, Calixtus II, to the papacy, gave him his supreme opportunity. Money was the prime requisite, and Gelmirez, not for the first nor second time, borrowed of the Apostle, selling treasures from the sacristy. The sums so raised were carried to the Pope, across the bandit-peopled mountains, by a canon of Santiago masquerading as a beggar, and by a trusty group of particularly ragged pilgrims. This proof of ecclesiastical ripeness overcame all papal scruples, and Calixtus, despite the clamor of enemies and rivals, raised Santiago to the coveted archbishopric.

The first half of his great purpose effected, Gelmirez strove with renewed energy to wrest from Toledo the primacy of Spain. He fortified Galicia, hurled his fleet against Moorish and English pirates, built himself an archiepiscopal palace worthy of his hard-won dignities, stole from Portugal the skeletons of four saints to enhance the potency of Santiago, and made much of the skull of the Apostle James the Less, which Urraca had presented in one of her fits of amity. But this time the reverend robber was not destined to success. The Archbishop of Toledo formed a powerful party against him, Calixtus died, even the king, whom Gelmirez had armed knight in the cathedral of Santiago and had crowned a second time at Leon, grew restive under the dictation of his old tutor. The smouldering hatred of Galicia again flamed out. The aged archbishop once more had to see his church polluted, its treasures plundered, its marvels of carved work, stained glass, and gold-threaded vestments spoiled and wasted by that senseless rabble which had twisted out from under his heavy foot. Faint and bleeding from a wound in his head, too white a head, for all its pride, to be battered with stones, Gelmirez had almost fallen a victim to the mob, when two of his canons snatched him back to the refuge of the High Altar, barring the iron-latticed doors of the Capilla Major against those savage sheep of his pasture. The outrage was so flagrant that, for very shame, pope and king, though both had accepted the bribes of his enemies, responded to his appeal, and assisted him to resume that rigorous sway which lasted, all told, for something like forty years.

Such was the man and such the process that made the shrine of Santiago the third in rank of mediæval Christendom. Under the rule of Gelmirez Compostela had become one of the principal cities of the Peninsula, a seat of arts and sciences where Spanish nobles were proud to build them palaces and to educate their sons. The mighty influx of pilgrims, which went on without abatement century after century, nearly twenty-five hundred licenses being granted, in the single year 1434, to cockle-hatted visitors from England alone, filled the place with business. Inn-keepers, physicians, money-changers, merchants were in flourishing estate, and a number of special industries developed. One street was taken up by booths for the sale of polished shells. Another bears still the name of the jet-workers, whose rosaries, crucifixes, stars, gourds, staffs, and amulets were in high demand. Souvenirs of Santiago, little crosses delicately cut and chased, mimic churches, towers, shrines gave employ to scores of artists in silver and mother-of-pearl. The enormous revenue from the sale of phials of healing oil and from the consecrated candles must needs go to the Apostle, but the cunning craftsmen who loaded their stalls with love-charms had a well-nigh equal patronage.

The finished cathedral was consecrated in 1211, and in 1236 the royal saint, Fernando III, sent to Compostela a train of Mohammedan captives, bringing back on their shoulders the bells Almanzor had taken. These had been hung, inverted, in the beautiful mosque of Cordova to serve as lamps for the infidel worship, but at last St. James had his own again. Thus Santiago trampled on the Moors, and his ashes, or what had passed for his ashes, slept in peace, with nothing to do but work miracles on blind and crippled pilgrims, until, in 1589, an army of English heretics, led by the horrible Drake, landed in Galicia. These Lutheran dogs were not worthy of a miracle. The archbishop and his canons, with the enemy hammering on the gates of Compostela, hastily took up and reburied the three coffins of the original shrine, so secretly that they could not be found again. In 1879, however, a miscellany of brittle bits of bone was brought to light by a party of determined seekers, and these repulsive fragments, after scientific analysis conducted in an ecclesiastical spirit, were declared to be portions of three skeletons which might be ages old. Leo XIII clenched the matter by "authenticating" one of them, apparently chosen at random, as the body of Santiago. But although for us of the perverse sects, the contents of that magnificent silver casket, the centre of the Santiago faith, could arouse no thrill of worship, the Pilgrim City itself and its storied, strange cathedral were the most impressive sights of Spain.

Within the Cloister

XXVI

THE SON OF THUNDER