the pillar-stone mentioned by Borlase,[1] and as the stone was more important than the saint in the eyes of the people, there was nothing to be done but to identify them by a pious fiction. Thus, I believe, grew up that story, related in all simplicity by William Wey, of what I think I may describe as the Inlapidation of St. James.
This worship of the concrete stone rather than of the abstract saint infected also the pilgrims who frequented the sacred spot, and they were, so Wey tells us, in the habit of breaking off small portions of these stones to take home with them as sacred relics or as souvenirs of their visit. This seems to have annoyed the custodians of the shrine, who doubtless were true worshippers of Santiago, and so, Wey tells us, they took the stone which was called "puppis vel Barcha" and threw it into the river, and placed the other beneath the high altar of the church of St. James Patronensis, from whom, according to Wey, the town took the name of Patronon or Padron. There these remained for some years, for Pope Gregory III (731-741) promised a large number of indulgences to those who visited the Church of St. Mary of Yria, the Church of St. James Patronon, where the stone Patronon was fixed beneath the high altar, the place where Barcha was, and the spring of St. James, where the Apostle had stood and preached when he visited Spain in the flesh. The two stones and the spring were still to be seen and worshipped when William Wey visited the spot in 1456, in spite of the admonitions of the Councils of Toledo.
Such was the state of the cult during the latter part of the eighth century, but soon after a change took place. It was some time during the reign of Alfonso the Chaste, King of Asturias, that is to say between 791 and 842, that it seems to have occurred to Theodomir XV, Bishop of Iria, that a change was needed. No subsequent writer gives us a clue to his motives, but we cannot be far wrong
- ↑ Vid. supr.
