The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

Galicia at the head of a great host, and after you all peoples shall come in pilgrimage even till the end of time. Go then; I will be your helper; and as guerdon of your travails I will get you from God a crown in heaven, and your name shall abide in the memory of man until the Day of Judgment.”
    According to the chronicle, Charlemagne then had made three expeditions into Spain. In the first he besieged Pamplona and captured

    it, and pushed on as far as Compostella, and beyond as far as El Padron, where the boat arrived from the Holy Land carrying the body of the Apostle. He then rode into the sea and stuck his lance there, in sign of his dominion even to the ends of the world. In the second expedition he had entered Spain again to chastise the Saracen King Agolant, whom he defeated on the banks of the River Cea and then he built an abbey where Sahagún now stands. In the third expedition he had assembled all his army in the landes of Bordeaux and crossed the Pyrennees by the Somport Pass and again had become Master of Spain. On the way home he had captured Saragossa, but in the mountains his rearguard was attacked by Saracens. Roland and his thousand knights were slain and buried by the Emperor at St. Romanin of Blaye and Belin, St. Seurin at Bordeaux and les Alyscamps. At the end the Emperor dies and all the deeds of his life are placed in the balance on the Day of Judgment, and it is not certain whether they will weigh down his multitude of sins, but a headless Galician throws in the stones of all the churches built by him and thus he mounts to Paradise.

THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JAMES

    Soon after the death of Diego Gelmirez the celebrated Order of Knighthood of St. James was instituted to commemorate the life and deeds of Santiago Matamoros, whose war-cry, ‘Santiago y cierra España’ (‘St. James and close Spain’) roused the Spaniards as they rode into battle.
    In the will of San Juan de Ortega there is a reference to lawless brigands who attacked the pilgrims, and according to this the first Knights of St. James were knights-errant, who protected the weary and defenceless. According to tradition the Order was founded by Ramiro I, King of León, and there were thirteen freiles, or professed knights in memory of Jesus Christ and His twelve Apostles. The society which arose in the twelfth century, the age of the Crusades, was however, essentially warlike, and war became the main business of life for a people seeking to regain their country from a conqueror who differed from them both in race and religion. The Order of Santiago was confirmed in 1175 by Pope Alexander III, and its ideal was that of the Knights Templars, whose motto was: Non nobis non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.
    Two ideals, the military-chivalrous and the religious-monastic, crystallize in the form of the military Orders and the urgency of the appeal against the Infidel at the doors gave strength to these associations in Spain when they had lost their vitality in other countries. 17 In Spain, moreover, besides the redemption of the country from the Moors, the Knights of St. James undertook to protect the pilgrims on their way to and from Compostella.
    The motto of the Order was Rubet ensis sanguine Arabum (The sword is red with the blood of the Moors), and the badge was a blood-red sword in the form of a cross charged with a white scallop shell. The original thirteen Knights had taken the voluntary vow of chastity, but after 1350 a substitute or emienda could take the place of an absent Knight in the Chapter. The Knights were to be lions in battle and lambs in their convents, and they had to resign some of their personal rights. The married ones lost their patria potestas, so that they and their families became, nominally at least, the property of the Order.
    They were not only Crusaders on the field of battle, but they also regulated in many ways the relations between the Spanish monarchs and the Moslem world of Spain and North Africa in the matter of rescuing and ransoming captives, a great work which was afterwards continued by the Monks of Mercy. 18
    The Order grew in favour and wealth in the succeeding centuries, so that it possessed at the end of the fifteenth century no less than two hundred commanderies, with as many priories, and an immense number of castles and villages, together with property of every description. It had become, in fact, a state within a state, and the Catholic monarchs considered its independence of the