Santiago de Compostela

“ 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. ”

“ Thus the Latino-Byzantine or the Romanic styles of architecture reached from Rome to Scandinavia and from Palestine to Galicia. It is to Galicia that we must bend our steps if we wish to look upon the chief monument of Romanic architecture in Spain, for that monument is no other than the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
The rise of Gothic architecture began in the early part of the eleventh century, which forms one of the most important epochs in the annals of the Roman Catholic Church ”

“ You need only blame yourself, Señor, for since your honor scruples not to make free with the reverend friar's mule, you ought not to be surprised if his reverence takes the same liberty with your horse."
"By Santiago de Compostela, [20] this is past bearing," cried Don Rodrigo. "How can the rogue of a friar conscientiously take my beautiful Arabian for this worthless mule? What! has the man of God no conscience?" ”

“ He founded, either immediately or within a few years, several Spanish settlements. Among these was the villa of Santiago de Compostela, in the immediate vicinity of Tepic and Jalisco towns, for a long time the capital of New Galicia. [60]
Not long afterward Juan de Oñate was sent to establish Espíritu Santo, Called later Guadalajara, in honor of Guzman's birthplace. The first founding was Coat of Arms of the City of Guadalajara. at Nochistlan; but in 1533 the town was removed to the Jacotlan Valley, near Cuquio, and finally in 1541 placed south of the river, in Tonalá. ”

“ Fructuosus—The origin of duplex monasteries in Spain—One of the favourite saints of Galicia—Almanzor comes to Santiago de Compostela—San Pedro de Mezonzo—Almanzor returns to Cordova—The Salve Regina—Who wrote the Salve Regina?—Alfonso el Sabio—His Cantiga—The Mariner’s prayer—St. ”

“ The cathedral has a modern front, but part of the interior was built in the 9th century and is noted for its splendid proportions, lofty outline, and beautiful Gothic columns. There is a large hospital founded by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1504, and a university founded in 1504. There are many ruined convents in the city. It has numerous manufactures of hosiery, linen, cotton, silk, leather, paper, and wine, but its trade has much declined during the last four centuries. ”

“ The clocks were striking two when we reached the gates of the sacred city, where fresh hindrance met us. The customs officials were on the alert. Who were we that would creep into Compostela de Santiago under cover of night, in an irregular conveyance piled high with trunks and boxes? Smugglers, beyond a doubt! But they would teach us a thing or two. We might wait outside till morning.
Maids of Honor
Delighted boys from a peasant camp beyond the walls ran up to jeer at our predicament. ”

“ James of Compostella, patron saint of Spain, and traditionally the "Apostle" of that country. Santiago de Compostella was once the capital of Galicia; it lies 55 kilometres south of Coruña, on the north bank, and near the source, of the River Sar, which flows into the Ulla. The town is built round the Cathedral, which claims to possess the body of St. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spain seems actually skied over with the wings of guardian angels. The traditional tutelar of the nation, Santiago, counts for less, especially in the south and centre of the Peninsula, than might be expected, and was long since officially superseded by the Virgin; but cities, hamlets, families, individuals, all have their protecting saints. Some are martyrs, some bishops, some apostles, while Cordova rests secure beneath the shining plumes of the angel Raphael. ”

“ Pilgrims are nowadays but few, excepting only on the feast of the patron, and they have ceased to be popular at Santiago. If they chance to be poor, the townspeople turn a deaf ear when they ask an alms “for the love of St. James”; or, should they be rich, seek only to turn them to account and to lighten their purses.
Although greatly fallen from its ancient splendor, Santiago, formerly the capital of Galicia, and now the simple chief town of a judicial circuit, still has importance in the ecclesiastical order. ”

“ The cathedral is most admirably situated, for it forms the central mass to four great quadrangles which keep a clear space in front of it on each of the four façades. And colleges, hospitals, and palaces are grouped around the quadrangles, like a party of lordly vassals assembled to do honour to a king.
The streets of the city are narrow, paved with great slabs of granite; and in most cases arcaded, as protection against, not the sun, but the rain. For Santiago is notoriously the rainiest spot in the Peninsula, and is heartily bantered in consequence by all who are envious of its complaint. ”

“ Though the granite, especially in wet weather — and there is much rain at Santiago — is of too dark a tint for perfection of color, yet nothing can be more striking than the view of the huge cathedral and surrounding palaces and convents, when seen from the environs. Perched high up upon mountains, the hills nevertheless stand round about Santiago even as they stand round about Jerusalem. ”

“ Covering an area which seems a mere oblong speck on the enormous surface of the landscape, Santiago stands supreme. It is the only living thing in what appears to be a dead setting. There is perfect Sabbath stillness in the air, and you see the city now, when here and there a peasant slowly climbs the winding road, as old-time pilgrims must have looked upon it at the end of long and weary journeys.
Behind you is Arosa Bay, one of the world's finest anchorages, where modern fleets may safely lie ”

“ Nothing can more clearly give an idea of what primitive travelling in Galicia means than to watch the diligence from Ferrol, Finisterre, or Santiago drive up with jingling bells and cracking of whips, to put down weary passengers, and, the horses having been unharnessed, to see the oxen draw the coach to its departure-place. There are to be seen, too, the miradores, glazed frontages for which Corunna is celebrated. These vast stretches of windows protect the houses from the strong winds in winter and form bright and warm interior verandahs. ”

“ The legends are picturesque if not convincing; the fact remains that the scallop is the emblem of St. James's pilgrimage now as it has been since he gave his name to Spain's Jerusalem.
A road, newly cut, leads from Santiago to the summit of a hill towards the west, and on the top of that eminence there is a granite monument which makes the fourteenth cross to be reached by the devout visitor who wishes to complete the pilgrimage. I do not know the name of either the road or the eminence, but the one may be called the Pilgrims' Road and the other the Pilgrims' Hill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But her exaggerated gastronomical entertainment of the friar did not last long, for he went off to his monastery after the two days, leaving a great void behind him. His vacation was over, and the leave of absence granted by his Superior in order that he might take sea-baths and recruit his health; so the Moor in a friar’s garb meekly wended his way back to his gloomy retreat in Compostela, where the walls{305} were covered with dampness, and a green moisture was visible on the window-sills and the cracks of the masonry. ”

“ Accordingly, at eleven o’clock in the morning they poured forth into the streets of Santiago in unruly crowds, hooting and shouting and leaping in the air. Drawn to my window by their hissing and hooting, I saw some two hundred of them pass down the street in the wildest state of excitement, while the townspeople watched them from their balconies and smiled at their folly.
Besides the important edifices to which I have devoted several of my earlier chapters, Santiago possesses a good many interesting churches, and is rich in convents for women, which also deserve a brief notice. ”

“ The population numbers less than thirty thousand, yet there are forty-six churches, containing nearly three hundred altars, with thirty-six religious and kindred institutions. If priests and churches make a city good, then Santiago must be a veritable holy of holies. ”

“ San Tomas and San Lazarus, and the imaginary Santiago, as a heavenly knight, Protector of Spain, clad in the white mantle of his order, a broadsword by his side, and a glory round his casque, carrying the baton of command.
From the balconies and the miradores float damask draperies, striped Moorish stuffs, and wreaths of feathers and flowers; fans wave incessantly in the heavy air, and long black mantillas fall over eyes lustrous under meshes of coal black hair—to the wild ringing of every bell in the city, led by the boom of the Giralda, and petards exploding as of a city taken by assault. ”

“ From every country in Europe the faithful travelled by horse or on foot, many of them spending months on the journey. Countless thousands worshipped at the shrine and returned to their homes; unnumbered thousands perished on the way to Santiago or back; while multitudes who reached the holy city never left it, for accommodation was limited, and pestilence swept off the pilgrims ruthlessly. At times the crowds were so enormous that the cathedral had to remain open day and night, so that they could find resting-places on its extensive floors. ”

“ Santiago is delightfully situated amidst heather-clad hills, the lower slopes of which are well wooded with oak, fir, and eucalyptus. Great boulders of granite stand out like the monoliths of prehistoric ages. ”

“ The surroundings of the city of Santiago are very grand. The circling mountains rise sheer and high. The plains are threaded by rapid winding brooks and are dotted here and there with quaint villages, curiously picturesque from their combining traces of an outworn old-world civilization with new and raw barbarism. The tall, graceful, feathery bamboos rise by the water's edge, and elsewhere, even on the mountain-crests, where the soil is wet and rank enough; and the splendid royal palms and cocoanut palms tower high above the matted green jungle. ”

“ The Spaniards having been forbidden to go to Jerusalem as crusaders, and being too much occupied at home with the Moors to make such a long pilgrimage, wisely substituted Santiago, where the remains of St. James, the patron of Spain, is supposed to rest. His body is said to have floated in a stone coffin from Joppa to Padron (thirteen miles below Santiago) in seven days, and for nearly eight centuries lay forgotten in a cave, but was at length miraculously brought to light by mysterious flames hovering over its resting-place, and in 829 was removed to Santiago. ”

“ The banded imposts on which the arches and early Gothic vaulting of this chapel rest are ornamented with remarkable sculpture, quite different from any we have noticed in the cathedral. Musicians with various quaint instruments are represented as singing the praises of the Most High: angels, birds, and rosettes adorn the groined vaults. In the adjoining refectory, separated from the chapel by a huge pier, the sculptures represent scenes from the everyday life of Santiago in the twelfth century. ”

“ To any one who is fond of beautiful sculpture a walk round the gallery which encircles the cathedral of Santiago is nothing short of a delight. The arches of windows through which we look down into the naves are supported by carved capitals of the most perfect workmanship; there are many hundreds of them, and there are not two alike.
Frenchmen claim that all this beautiful work was done under the supervision of monks from Cluny; if not, indeed, by them, they argue that the same class of finely sculptured foliage is to be found at Toulouse and elsewhere in Southern France. ”

“ There they stand firm, awaiting the Mohammedan invasion; there they endure and survive it; there they preserve a nucleus of faith and Christian virtue, for those incomparable days, when, from those shores freed by unwearied heroism, Spain and Portugal shall spring forth to discover a new world and to plant the Cross in Africa, in Asia, and in America.”{42}
St. Fructuosus is still one of the favourite saints of Galicia. The cathedral of Santiago has a chapel dedicated to him, built in 1696, [61] and his day is honoured by every peasant in the land. ”