(A historical chapter, which should be skipped.)
That most Spanish of Spaniards, Alarcon, is pleased in one of his
roguish sketches to depict the waywardness of a certain poetaster.
"Alonso Alonso was happy because he was thinking of many sad
things,--of the past centuries, vanished like smoke, ... of the little
span of life and of the absurdities with which it is filled, of the
folly of wisdom, of the nothingness of ambition, of all this comedy,
in short, which is played upon the earth."
Alonso Alonso would be in his very element in Santiago de Compostela.
The "unsubstantial pageant faded" of the mediaeval world is more than
memory there. It is a ghost that walks at certain seasons, notably
from the twentieth to the twenty-eighth of July. The story of the
birth, growth, and passing of that once so potent shrine, the
Jerusalem of the West, is too significant for oblivion.
The corner-stone of the strange history is priestly legend. The
Apostle James the Greater, so runs the tale, after preaching in
Damascus and along the Mediterranean coast, came in a Greek ship to
Galicia, then under Roman rule, and proclaimed the gospel in its
capital city, Iria-Flavia. Here the Virgin appeared to him, veiled,
like the mother of AEneas, in a cloud, and bade him build a church.
This he did, putting a bishop in charge, and then pursued his mission,
not only in the remote parts of Galicia, but in Aragon, Castile, and
Andalusia. At Saragossa the Virgin again flashed upon his sight. She
was poised, this time, on a marble pillar, which she left behind her
to become, what it is to-day, the most sacred object in all Spain. A
chip of this _columna immobilis_ is one of the treasures of Toledo.
The cathedral of the _Virgen del Pilar_,--affectionately known as
Pilarica,--which James then founded at Saragossa, is still a popular
goal of pilgrimage, the marble of the holy column being hollowed, at
one unshielded spot, by countless millions of kisses. The Apostle, on
his return to Jerusalem after seven years in Spain, was beheaded by
Herod. Loyal disciples recovered the body and set sail with it for the
Spanish coast. Off Portugal occurred the pointless "miracle of the
shells." A gentleman was riding on the shore, when all at once his
horse, refusing to obey the bit, leapt into the sea, walking on the
crests of the waves toward the boat. Steed and rider suddenly sank,
but promptly rose again, all crusted over with shells, which have been
ever since regarded as the emblem of St. James in particular, and of
pilgrim folk in general.
"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 Stellae_, 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,
And trooping to Rameiro came every Christian spear;
The blessed Saint Iago, they called upon his name:--
That day began our freedom, and wiped away our shame."
The hosts of Cross and Crescent met in battle-shock near Logrono. Only
nightfall saved the Christians from utter rout, but in those dark
hours of their respite the apparition of Santiago bent above their
sleeping king. "Fear not, Rameiro," said the august lips. "The enemy,
master of the field, hems you in on every side, but God fights in your
ranks." At sunrise, in the very moment when the Moslem host was bowed
in prayer, the Christians, scandalized at the spectacle, charged in
orthodox fury. Their onset was led by an unknown knight, gleaming in
splendid panoply of war. Far in advance, his left hand waving a snowy
banner stamped with a crimson cross, he spurred his fierce white horse
full on the infidel army. His brandished sword "hurled lightning
against the half-moon." At his every sweeping stroke, turbaned heads
rolled off by scores to be trampled, as turbaned heads deserve, under
the hoofs of that snorting steed. The Son of Thunder had found his
function, which was nothing less than to inspirit the Reconquest.
Henceforth he could always be counted on to lead a desperate assault,
and "_Santiago y Cierra Espana!_" was the battle-cry of every
hard-fought field. So late as 1212, at the crucial contest of Las
Navas de Tolosa, the "Captain of the Spaniards" saved the day.
Whatever may be thought of such bloody prowess on the part of Christ's
disciple, the fisherman of Galilee, he could not have taken, in that
stormy age, a surer course to make himself respected. All Europe
sprang to do honor to a saint who could fight like that. Charlemagne,
guided by the Milky Way, visited the shrine, if the famous old Codex
Calixtinus may be believed, with its convincing print of the
Apostle sitting upright in his coffin and pointing the great Karl to
the starry trail. In process of time the Gran Capitan came bustling
from Granada. The king of Jerusalem did not find the road too long,
nor did the Pope of Rome count it too arduous. England sent her first
royal Edward, and France more than one royal Louis. Counts and dukes,
lords and barons, rode hundreds of miles to Compostela, at the head of
feudal bands which sometimes clashed by the way. Saints of every clime
and temper made the glorious pilgrimage,--Gregory, Bridget, Bernard,
Francis of Assisi. To the shrine of St. James came the Cid in radiant
youth to keep the vigil of arms and receive the honors of knighthood,
and again, mounted on his peerless Bavieca, to give thanks for victory
over the five Moorish kings. It was on this second journey that he
succored the leper, inviting him, with heroic disdain of hygiene, to
be his bedfellow "in a great couch with linen very clean and costly."
[Illustration: DANCING THE SEVILLANA]
Even in the ninth century such multitudes visited the sepulchre that a
society of hidalgos was formed to guard the pilgrims from bandits
along that savage route, serve them as money-changers in Compostela,
and in all possible ways protect them from robbery and ill-usage. This
brotherhood gave birth to the famous Order of Santiago, whose two vows
were to defend the pilgrims and fight the Mussulmans. These red-cross
knights were as devout as they were valiant, "lambs at the sound of
the church-bells and lions at the call of the trumpet." Kings and
popes gave liberally to aid their work. Roads were cut through Spain
and France, even Italy and Germany, "to Santiago." Forests were
cleared, morasses drained, bridges built, and rest-houses instituted,
as San Marcos at Leon and the celebrated hostelry of Roncesvalles.
Compostela had become a populous city, but a city of inns, hospitals,
and all variety of conventual and religious establishments. Even
to-day it can count nearly three hundred altars. In the ninth century
the modest church of Alfonso II was replaced by an ornate edifice rich
in treasures, but in the gloomy tenth century, when Christian energies
were arrested by the dread expectation of the end of the world, the
Moors overran Galicia and laid the holy city waste. The Moslem
general, Almanzor, had meant to shatter the urn of Santiago, but when
he entered Compostela with his triumphant troops, he found only one
defender there, an aged monk sitting silent on the Apostle's tomb. The
magnanimous Moor did not molest him, nor the ashes his feebleness
guarded better than strength, but took abundant booty. When Almanzor
marched to the south again, four thousand Galician captives bore on
their shoulders the treasures of the Apostle, even the church-bells
and sculptured doors, to adorn the mosque of Cordova. The fresh
courage of the eleventh century began the great Romanesque cathedral
of Santiago. Donations poured in from all over Europe. Pilgrims came
bowed under the weight of marble and granite blocks for the fabric.
Young and old, men and women, beggars and peasants, princes and
prelates, had a hand in the building, cutting short their prayers to
mix mortar and hew stone. Artists from far-off lands, who had come on
pilgrimage, lingered for years, often for lifetimes, in Compostela,
making beautiful the dwelling of the saint.
The great epoch of Santiago was the twelfth century, when there
succeeded to the bishopric the able and ambitious Diego Gelmirez, who
resolved that Compostela should be recognized as the religious centre
of Spain, and be joined with Jerusalem and Rome in a trinity of the
supreme shrines of Christendom. He was a man of masterly resource,
persistence, pluck. Not too scrupulous for success, he found all means
good that made toward the accomplishment of his one splendid dream.
The clergy of Santiago, who had hitherto borne but dubious repute, he
subjected to instruction and to discipline, calling learned priests
from France to tutor them, and sending his own, as they developed
promise, to sojourn in foreign monasteries. He zealously promoted the
work on the cathedral, rearing arches proud as his aspiration, and
watch-towers strong as his will. He invested the sacred ceremonies,
especially the ecclesiastical processions, with extraordinary pomp, so
that the figure of Alfonso VI, conqueror of Toledo, advancing through
the basilica in such a solemn progress, appeared less imposing than
the bishop himself, crowned with white mitre, sceptred with ivory
staff, and treading in his gold-embroidered sandals upon the broad
stones that pave the church as if on an imperial palace floor.
Gelmirez was indefatigable, too, in building up the city. Eager to
swell the flood of pilgrimage, he founded in Compostela, already a
cluster of shrines and hostelries, still more churches, inns, asylums,
hospitals, together with convents, libraries, schools, and all other
recognized citadels of culture. He fought pestilence and dirt,
introducing an excellent water supply, and promoting, so far as he
knew how, decent and sanitary living. He was even a patron of
agriculture, bringing home from his foreign journeys, which took him
as far as Rome, packets of new seed slipped in among parcels of jewels
and no less precious budgets of saintly molars and knuckle-bones. But
these missions abroad, having always for chief object the pressing of
his petition upon the Holy See, involved costly presents to
influential prelates, especially the red-capped cardinals. The revenue
for such bribes he wrung from the Galician peasantry, who gave him a
measure of hate with every measure of grain. Gelmirez had so many uses
for money that no wonder his taxes cut down to the quick. The lavish
offerings sent by sea to the shrine of Santiago, ruby-crusted
crucifixes of pure gold, silver reliquaries sparkling with emeralds
and jacinths, pontifical vestments of richest tissue and of rarest
artistry, well-chased vessels of onyx, pearl, and jasper, all that
constant influx of glistening tribute from the length and breadth of
Christendom, had drawn Moorish pirates to the Galician waters. To
guard the treasure-ships, repel the infidels, and, incidentally,
return tit for tat by plundering their galleys, the warrior bishop
equipped a formidable fleet, and kept it on patrol off the coast,--a
strange development from the little fishing-boat whence James and John
trailed nets in the lake of Galilee.
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 mediaeval 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.
[Illustration: WITHIN THE CLOISTER]