INTROIT

“He has prepared for them a city.”

--Hebrews 11: 16.

About the Way: Santiago de Compostela, the Terminus ad quem

A pilgrim is not a gyrovague. A pilgrim does not meander, for, whether he reaches it or not, the pilgrim chooses a firm goal in mind before he sets out on pilgrimage. My goal was to seek St. James at the city of Santiago de Compostela, in the western regions of Spain, in the northwest province of Galicia.

Why Santiago de Compostela? Why St. James?

The Galician historian and writer Ramón Oltero Pedrayo says the city of Santiago de Compostela is like Venice in that it has no ancient history. This is literary hyperbole on the part of the Galician, for there is evidence that, anciently, Celtic tribes inhabited the surrounding area. We also know that the city is built over the remains of a Romano-Suevic cemetery. It is sensible to believe that where there is a cemetery there was once a town nearby that supplied its bones. Where there are bones, there is history. Venice is built on water, Santiago de Compostela on bones. But it remains true that—unlike Rome or Jerusalem—Santiago de Compostela qua city has no ancient pre-Christian origin.

But that Santiago de Compostela has no real pre-Christian existence did not bother me in the least, for I did not go to Compostela for any reason other than Christian. I vowed to go to Compostela to visit the relics of the Apostle James the Greater. I wanted a friend in heaven, and one that could make there a lot of noise on my behalf, and so I chose as my friend an intimate of Jesus, the son of thunder—Saint James. Friends owe each other visits, and so I went to Compostela, where my friend’s grave lies. There is little distance between a Saint’s relics and a Saint’s heaven.

One may say that Santiago de Compostela is an apostolical city, for it is built upon an Apostle’s bones. So argued the great medieval bishop of Compostela Diego Gelmírez to the Pope. Evidently, the argument worked and worked well, for the Pope conferred upon the bishop the pallium due an archbishop, and, further, raised the status of the archdiocesan see to the status of a metropolitan see.

If the city is apostolic, it is also evangelical; and typically evangelical, the city has been raised from the dead. Unbounded and unpredictable Providence watered the mustard seed planted by a humble hermit—and the region of the dead was baptized into a city of life. It is a city that prompts an evangelical response from the visitor because of the claim of its founding. You cannot go away from Compostela untouched, but, like the rich young ruler of the Gospel, you may turn away—rich with the things of this world, but sad in the things of the spirit. The decision before you is this: either the founding of the city is a result of God’s invention, or it is not, and is built upon a massive pious fraud or mistake. Whatever your choice, the historical evidence is not compelling either way. There is plenty of room for bias and prejudice to have sway. There is room for reasonable men to differ. But there is also room for reasonable men to believe. Here the same sun that hardens the mud of indifference or skepticism can soften the wax of belief.

It is fitting perhaps that this city of yellow-lichened granite should be a stumbling block. I confronted it. Time and time again during the course of preparation for the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela I felt near, yet never reached, Tertullian’s credo quia absurdum est. More than once in preparation for the pilgrimage I uttered the prayer of the father with the possessed child: Credo, Domine, adiuva incredulitatem meam. “I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) The stumbling block of Santiago de Compostela is its origin. It is nothing short of incredible.

Santiago de Compostela’s compound name boasts its claimed origin. Santiago de Compostela. Santiago: from Sant’ Iago—Sanctus Iacobus—Saint James. Compostela: whose origin is less clear, is suggested variously as coming from the Latin term

campus stellae - field of stars

s campus stellae, “field of stars,” campus apostoli, “field of the apostle,” or compostium, “burial ground.” Any of these or all will do, for they all appear equally plausible alternatives, and definitive answers are impossible given the vagaries of time and etymology. All anyway fit the city’s claim. For the gist of the city’s claim is that it is centered on the tomb of the apostle James the Greater, a tomb found after years of neglect as a result of a vision of stars by the humble anchorite, Pelayo. This is what we are called to believe. Can we?

Archaeological excavations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries confirm that below the main altar of the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela an ancient compostium indeed exists. So even the most hardened skeptic must go this far. One cannot deny an evidentiary—albeit tenuous—fit between the ancient necropolis over which the Cathedral at Compostela is built and Pelayo’s vision.

Tandem Beati Iacobi apostoli corpus dignissimum summopere atque studiosissime in urbe Compostella visitandum est.

At Compostela are also some human bones. Whether they are the apostle’s is the question. Huge gaps, unfortunately, exist in the historical record; the documentary evidence is centuries too far removed from the historical event to be compelling. Skeptics have seized on that fact. But finally, historians are incompetent to judge the miraculous in Santiago, because it is suprahistorical. The tools of the historian are too blunt to judge the historicity of divine intervention in history. For many of these the miraculous is simply beyond the realm of their naturalistic, materialist presuppositions anyway, and they are soured by the poison of their theological cynicism.

Santiago de Compostela is similar to other shrines of claimed divine origin, e.g., Fatima an

. . . Fatima, Lourdes, Compostela . . .

d Lourdes, both of which involved supernatural private revelations. In a way, Pelayo’s visions near an ancient cemetery are those of Lucia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Martos in the fields of Fatima, or Bernadette Soubirous at the Grotto of Massabielle, in Lourdes. Santiago de Compostela is Fatima and Lourdes writ ten or eleven centuries back. The miracle of the sun, the miracle of the water, and the miracle of the stars.

The founding of Santiago de Compostela has its immediate origin in an event called the inventio of the tomb of St. James. Medieval chroniclers use the term revelatio, or revelation, as a synonym for the same event. The Latin term inventio is, however, ambiguous, which makes its use convenient for both the believer and the skeptic. In Latin inventio means variously to come upon, discover, or find. It may also mean to invent or contrive. While the medieval authors intended the former, skeptics—both ancient and modern—mean the latter.

The inventio or discovery of the tomb of the apostle James is the seminal event in the foundation of Santiago de Compostela as the medieval world knew it and as we know it. Before then, Compostela was just an abandoned cemetery, under the stars, for as our sources tell us, the body of blessed James at that time lay hidden and

qua beati Jacobi corpus tunc temporis latebat incognitum

forgotten. The inventio arose from the vision of an obscure hermit who lived in the ninth century. This anchorite named Pelayo had his hermitage in the forests by the hill of Libredón, in the old diocese of Iria Flavia in the then kingdom of Asturias and Galicia. This was a land of shepherds, near an ancient Roman road. Sometime probably between 820 and 847 A.D. Pelayo had a vision, accompanied by the light of stars and the songs and voices of angels. These divine signs revealed to him a small marble, arched burial structure—sources describe it as a habitaculum or domuncula—in an ancient and neglected cemetery. In it were found the sepulchres of the Apostle James and two of his disciples, Theodorus and Athanasius.

Twenty kilometers westward, very close to the sea, at the town of Iria Flavia, modern day Padrón, Bishop Teodomiro learned of the visions, and investigated the claim. After a three day fast, Bishop Teodomiro visited the site, looked at the burial chamber below the ground, and was convinced of both the supernatural origins of the vision and the historical validity of its claim. What did he see as he ducked beneath the tomb’s arched marble doorway, sub arcis marmoricis? That presents—regrettably—one of many historical lacunae in the Jacobean record. It is tempting, but wholly wishful speculation, to think it might have been something so stark as an inscription by Roman chisel on Spanish stone that therein lay “James, son of Zebedee and brother of John, Apostle and Martyr.”

Whatever it was that was there unquestionably left the good bishop sincerely convinced Pelayo’s vision was authentic. The good bishop spoke of that sincerity after his death, for he chose to be buried in Compostela, and not in Iria Flavia, the seat of his see.¹ But while alive, Bishop Teodomiro also declared the remains in the tomb to be those of the Apostle James and two of his disciples, Athanasius and Theodorus. Alfonso II el Casto, the Chaste, the long-ruling king of Asturias and Galicia (791-842), was informed of it. Leaving his capital Oviedo, he made the pilgrimage and was likewise convinced.

I suppose, if he is so disposed, a man may ascribe all this to foolish superstition or fraud and shut his ear to it and as a consequence close the door of his heart. Yet I also know that, if he is so disposed, a man may give it his ear and open his heart. For the inventio bespeaks of a remarkable historical event, possible yet admittedly difficult to believe. Like the bridges built by bridge-building Saints John and Dominic over the rivers of the Camino in the rich Riojan lands, Love, and not cold logic, spans the difficulty.

The forests were cleared around the locus arcis marmoricis, the place of the marble arch, and

Ecclesia ex petra et luto opere parvo.

the place became known as locus Sancti Iacobi, the place of St. James. Santiago de Compostela was founded. Bishop Teodomiro ordered the building of a church, which was financially supported by the donations of King Alfonso II. The first church built over the grave was simple and small—of rock and loam. The Benedictines then came and established the monastery of Antealtares, placed east of the tomb. These monks, originally twelve in number under their abbot, Ildefredo, were charged with the maintenance of the tomb and relics of St. James. By 914, the locus Sancti Jacobi was known as villa Compostela, eventually Santiago de Compostela.

I have sided with the hermit Pelayo and the bishop of Iria Flavia. You may not. I suppose th

Sub arcis marmoricis.

e decision is your perogative, but it is not your perogative to ignore the consequence of it. You must live with your decision. You must decide whether God can on occasion enter history, and if He does, whether He did so with Pelayo. And if you decide against Pelayo and against St. James you will be unable to enjoy in any full sense the evangelical mystery, grace, and romance, that are part of the scrip of burdens and joys carried by a pilgrim on pilgrimage to Compostela. You may walk the Camino and it will be pleasant enough and spiritually fulfilling, but you will be condemned to do so only with your feet. Your heart will never be with St. James. For we may be merely on the road to Compostela or we may be both on the road to Compostela and the Way of St. James. The goal, dear pilgrim, is to travel to Santiago with both your feet and your heart. Both limb and heart must be given to St. James, and, if they are, the Son of Thunder will introduce you (as a good Apostle should) to the Son of God, in a way you could not imagine.

The philosopher Ortega y Gasset calls the Escorial Spain's great poem in stone. If so, the Cathedral at Compostela is Spain's great prayer, its great hymn, in stone.

¹Those scholars that ascribed Theodomir as a legendary figure were surprised when excavations in 1955 revealed his relics and tomb. The bishop’s sarcaphagus is in the Cathedral, in the transept to the right of the altar.