Spanish Highways and Byways

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 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.

XXVI

THE SON OF THUNDER

"Thou shield of that faith which in Spain we revere,Thou scourge of each foeman who dares to draw near,Whom the Son of that God who the elements tamesCalled child of the thunder, immortal Saint James."– Hymn to Santiago, in George Borrow's translation.

Fatigues of the journey and discomforts of our lodging melted from memory like shadows of the night when we found ourselves, on the morning of July twenty-fourth, before that rich, dark mass of fretted granite, a majestic church standing solitary in the midst of spreading plazas. These are surrounded by stately buildings, the archiepiscopal palace with its memories of Gelmirez, the royal hospital founded by Ferdinand and Isabella for the succor of weary pilgrims, ancient colleges with sculptured façades, marvellous old convents whose holy fathers were long since driven out by royal decree into hungry, homesick exile, and the columned city hall with its frontal relief of the battle of Clavijo and its crowning statue of St. James. The great, paved squares, the magnificent stairways and deeply recessed portals were aglow with all Galicia. Peasants in gala dress, bright as tropic birds, stood in deferential groups about the pilgrims, for there were actual pilgrims on the scene, men and women whose broad hats and round capes were sewn over with scallop-shells, and whose long staffs showed little gourds fastened to the upper end. They wore rosaries and crucifixes in profusion, and their habit was spangled with all manner of charms and amulets, especially the tinsel medals with their favorite device of St. James riding down the Moors. We bought at one of the stalls set up before the doors for sale of holy wares a memento of the famous old jet-work, a tiny black hand, warranted, if hung about the neck, to cure disorders of the eyes. We fell to chatting with a pilgrim who was shod in genuine sandal shoon. A large gourd was tied to his belt, the rim of his hat was turned up at one side and caught there with a rosy-tinted shell, and his long, black ringlets fell loose upon his shoulders, framing a romantic Dürer face. He talked with us in German, saying that he was of Wittemberg, and once a Lutheran, but had been converted to the true faith on a previous visit to Spain. Since then he had footed his penitential way to Jerusalem and other distant shrines. As his simple speech ran on, we seemed to see the mountains round about Santiago crossed by those converging streams of mediæval pilgrims, all dropping on their knees at the first glimpse of the cathedral towers. With that sight the fainting were refreshed, the lame ran, and jubilant songs of praise to Santiago rolled out in many languages upon the air.

"Primus ex apostolis,Martir Jerusolinus,Jacobus egregio,Sacer est martirio."

In those Ages of Faith all the gates of the city were choked with the incoming tide, the hostels and cure-houses overflowed, and the broad plazas about the cathedral were filled with dense throngs of pilgrims, massed nation by nation, flying their national colors, singing their national hymns to the strangely blended music of their national instruments, and watching for the acolyte who summoned them, company by company, into the august presence-chamber of St. James. His shrine they approached only in posture of lowliest reverence. Even now, at the end of the nineteenth century, our first glance, as we entered the lofty, dim, and incense-perfumed nave, fell on a woman-pilgrim dragging herself painfully on her knees up the aisle toward the High Altar, and often falling prostrate to kiss the pavement with groans and tears.

Mediæval pilgrims, when they had thus won their way to the entrance of the Capilla Mayor, and there received three light blows from a priestly rod in token of chastisement, were granted the due indulgences and, in turn, laid their offerings before the great white altar. Still there sits, in a niche above, the thirteenth-century image of St. James, a colossal figure wrought of red granite, with stiffly flowing vestments of elaborately figured gilt. His left hand grasps a silver staff, with gilded gourd atop, and his right, whose index finger points downward to the burial vault, holds a scroll inscribed, "Hic est corpus divi Jacobi Apostoli ac Hispaniarum Patroni." Once he wore a broad-brimmed hat all of pure gold, but this was melted down by Marshal Ney in the French invasion. At that time the sacred vessels were heaped like market produce into great ox-carts, until the cathedral had been plundered of ten hundredweight of treasure. It was "the end of the pilgrimage" to climb the steps behind this statue and kiss its resplendent silver cape, studded with cockle-shells and besprinkled with gems. But the pilgrims of the past had much more to see and worship, – the jewelled crown of the Apostle set upon the altar, his very hat and staff, the very axe that beheaded him, and other relics to which the attention of the modern tourist, at least, is not invited. Yet even we were conducted to the Romanesque crypt beneath the High Altar, where stands another altar of red marble, decorated by a relief of two peacocks drinking from a cup. This altar is surmounted by a bronze pedestal, which bears the sumptuous ark-shaped casket with its enshrined handfuls of dubious dust.

Our latter-day pilgrims seemed well content with the measure of wealth and sanctity which Moorish sack and English piracy, French invasion and Carlist wars, had spared to the cathedral. In the matter of general relics, nevertheless, Santiago suffers by comparison with the neighbor cathedral of Oviedo, which proudly shows a silver-plated old reliquary, believed by the devout to have been brought in the earliest Christian times from Rome. This chest contains, in addition to the usual pieces of the true cross and thorns from the crown, such remarkable mementos as St. Peter's leathern wallet, crumbs left over from the Feeding of the Five Thousand, bits of roast fish and honeycomb from Emmaus, bread from the Last Supper, manna from the wilderness, a portion of Moses' rod and the mantle of Elijah. Oviedo possesses, too, that famous cross which the angels made for Alfonso II, and one of the six water-jars of Cana. But the relic chapel of Santiago makes up in quantity whatever it may lack in quality, holding bones, garments, hair-tresses, and like memorials of a veritable army of martyrs, even to what Ford disrespectfully calls "sundry parcels of the eleven thousand Virgins." Special stress is laid on a Calvary thorn which turns blood-red every Good Friday, and a drop, forever fresh, of the Madonna's milk. If pilgrims are not satisfied with these, they can walk out to Los Angeles, an adjacent village, whose church was built by the angels. Eccentric architects they were in choosing to connect their edifice with the cathedral of Santiago by an underground beam of pure gold, formerly one of the rafters in God's own house.

We had speech of several pilgrims that first morning. One was a middle-aged, sun-browned, stubby little man, whom during the ensuing week we saw again and again in the cathedral, but never begging, with the most of the pilgrims, at the portals, nor taking his ease in the cloisters, – a social promenade where the laity came to gossip and the clergy to puff their cigarettes. This humble worshipper seemed to pass all the days of the festival in enraptured adoration, on his knees now before one shrine, now before another. We found him first facing the supreme architectural feature of the cathedral, that sublime and yet most lovely Portico de la Gloria. He was gazing up at its paradise of sculptured saints and angels, whose plumes and flowing robes still show traces of azure, rose, and gold, with an expression of naive ecstasy. He told us that he came from Astorga, and had been nine days on the way. He spent most of his time upon the road, he added, visiting especially the shrines of the Virgin. "Greatly it pleases me to worship God," he said, with sparkling eyes, and ran on eagerly, as long as we would listen, about the riches and splendors of different cathedrals, and especially the robes and jewels of the Virgen del Pilar. He seemed in his devout affection to make her wealth his own. One of the most touching effects of the scene was the childlike simplicity with which the poor of Galicia, coming from such vile hovels, felt themselves at home in the dwelling of their saint. Not even their sins marred their sense of welcome. In the cloisters we encountered an old woman in the pilgrim dress, her staff wound with gay ribbons, limping from her long jaunt. She told us frankly that she was "only a beggar" in her own village, and had come for the outing as well as to please the priest, who, objecting to certain misdemeanors which she had the discretion not to specify, had prescribed this excursion as penance. She was a lively old soul, and was amusing herself mightily with the Goya tapestries, and others, that adorned the cloisters in honor of the time. "You have a book and can read," she said, "and you will understand it all, but what can I understand? I can see that this is a queen, and she is very fine, and that those are butchers who are killing a fat pig. But we who are poor may understand little in this world except the love of God." Others of the pilgrims were village folk of Portugal, and, taken all together, these modern wearers of the shell were but a sorry handful as representing those noble multitudes who came, in ages past, to bow before the shrine. The fourteen doors of the cathedral then stood open night and day, and the grotesque lions leaning out over the lintels could boast that there was no tongue of Europe which their stone ears had not heard. Three open doors suffice in the feast days now, but with the new flood of faith that has set toward Lourdes, pilgrimages to Santiago, as to other Latin shrines, are beginning to revive.

Mass was over at the late hour of our arrival, but nave and aisles, transepts and cloisters, hummed with greetings of friends, laughter of children, who sported unrebuked about those stately columns, and the admiring exclamations of strangers. We were often accosted in Spanish and in French and asked from what country we came, and if we "loved the beautiful church of the Apostle." When we were occasionally cornered, and driven in truthfulness to say that we were Yankees, our more intelligent interlocutors looked us over with roguish scrutiny, but increased rather than abated their courtesies. As for the peasants, their geography is safely limited. Noticing that our Spanish differed from theirs, they said we must be from Castile, or, at the most, from Portugal. At all events we were strangers to Santiago, and they merrily vied with one another in showing us about and giving us much graphic information not to be found in guide-books.

Much of their lore appears to be of their own invention. The superb Puerta de la Gloria, wrought by a then famous architect sent from the king of Leon, but known to us to-day only as Master Mateo, was the fruit of twenty years' labor. This triple porch, which runs across the west end of the nave, being finally completed, Master Mateo seems to have symbolized the dedication of his service to the Apostle in a kneeling statue of himself, facing the east, with back to the richly sculptured pillar of the chief portal. The head of this figure is worn almost as round and expressionless as a stone ball by the caresses of generations of childish hands. The little girls whom we watched that morning as they patted and smoothed the much-enduring pate told us, kissing the marble eyes, that this was a statue of St. Lucia, which it certainly is not. In another moment these restless midgets were assaulting, with fluent phrases of insult, the carven faces of certain fantastic images which form the bases of the clustered columns. The children derisively thrust their feet down the yawning throats, kicked the grotesque ears and noses, and in general so maltreated their Gothic victims that we were moved to remonstrate.

"But why should you abuse them? What are these creatures, to be punished so?"

"They are Jews," hissed our little Christians with an emphasis that threw new light on the Dreyfus affaire. But an instant more, and these vivacious, capricious bits of Spanish womanhood were all absorbed in aiding a blind old peasant who had groped her way to the sacred Portico for its especial privilege of prayer. The central shaft, dividing into two the chief of the three doorways, represents the Tree of Jesse, the patriarchal figures half-enveloped in exquisitely sculptured foliage. The chiselled capital shows the Trinity, Dove and Son and Father, with adoring angels. Above sits a benignant St. James, whose throne is guarded by lions, and over all, in the central tympanum of the sublime doorway, is a colossal figure of our Lord, uplifting His wounded hands. About Him are grouped the four Evangelists, radiant with eternal youth, and eight angels bearing the instruments of the Passion, the pillar of the scourging, whips, the crown of thorns, the nails, the scroll, the sponge, the spear, the cross. Other angels burn incense before Him, and the archivolt above is wrought with an ecstatic multitude of elders, martyrs, and saints, so vivid after all these centuries that one can almost hear the blithe music of their harps. It is the Christ of Paradise, enthroned amid the blest, to whom His presence gives fulness of joy forevermore. Above the lesser doors on either side are figured Purgatory and Hell. The fresh and glowing beauty, so piquant and yet so spiritual, the truly celestial charm of this marvellous Portico which Street did not fear to call "one of the greatest glories of Christian art," was never, during this festal week, without its throng of reverent beholders, the most waiting their turn, like our old blind peasant, to fit thumb and finger into certain curious little hollows on the central shaft, and thus offer prayer which was sure of answer. Minute after minute for unbroken hours, the hands succeeded one another there, – old, knotted, toilworn hands, the small, brown hands of children, jewelled hands of delicate ladies, and often, as now, the groping hand of blindness, with childish fingers helping it to find those mystical depressions in the agate. Some of the bystanders told us that St. James had descended from his seat above the capital, and laid his hand against the column, leaving these traces, but more would have it that the Christ Himself had come down by night from the great tympanum to place His wounded hand upon the shaft. Street records that he observed several such petitioners, after removing the hand, spit into the mouths of the winged dragons that serve as base to the pillar; but that literally dare-devil form of amen must now have gone out of fashion, for we did not see it once.