none, and the only documents that throw any light upon the origin of the cult are:
An anonymous work, written, it is believed, by a monk of Compostella about 1050, and known variously as Le Livre de St. Jaques, or the Codex Calixtinus.[1]
Historia Compostelana, by D. Didacus Gelmirez, first Archbishop of Compostella, written towards the close of the eleventh century.[2]
The Itinerary of William Wey, written in 1456.[3]
All three give a purely mythical account of the origin of the cult, but William Wey, who was an intelligent traveller, managed to pick up on the spot certain traditions, which have a very primitive appearance, and which will help us, better than the earlier and more official accounts, to understand how the cult arose.
William Wey was a Fellow of Eton, who, when past middle life, was seized with a desire for foreign travel, and in 1456 sailed from Plymouth to Coruña, and visited the shrine of Santiago at Compostella, and other sacred sites in its neighbourhood. In his diary, which was published in 1857 by the Roxburghe Club, he gives a faithful account of his voyage, and describes the shrine and its associations as they then were, giving very fully the traditions there current concerning its foundation.
He relates how the saint came to Spain and preached the gospel at Padron, and subsequently returned to Jerusalem, where he was afterwards put to death. After his martyrdom his disciples took his body and carried it to Joppa, where they found a large ship ready to start; on this they placed the body, and setting sail, arrived in seven days at Padron. Having reached the port they carried the body ashore, singing the while In mare viae
