In the Breviarum Eborense, printed in Lisbon in 1548, the following remarks are quoted from a letter of Leo III, who was Pope from 795 to 816: "But his body was carried away by night for fear of the Jews by his disciples, who, accompanied by an angel of the Lord, went to Joppa by the sea shore. While they were waiting here, doubting what to do, by God's will there appeared a ship ready to sail. They entered it rejoicing with the foster-son of the Saviour, and setting sail, voyaged with a favourable wind in great calm, and dropped anchor in the port of Iria in Galicia. Having landed from the ship they set the body in a small farm called Liberum donum, distant nearly eighteen miles from that town, and there it is now worshipped. But they found in that place an idol set up by the pagans and a crypt, in which were iron tools for cutting stone. And rejoicing thereat they destroyed the idol entirely and having opened the ground they interred the body of the apostle in a stone tomb which they had excavated, raising above it a little house with an altar."[1]
Thus, if we can accept the authenticity of this letter, the legend that St. James had been buried at Compostella was recognised with papal sanction before 816.
Alfonso the Chaste died in 843 and was succeeded by his cousin Ramiro I, who was King of Asturias and Leon, and the crown of these provinces continued with his descendants until, at the death without issue of Bermudo III in 1037, it passed to his sister Sancha, who had married Ferdinand I, King of Castile, and the kingdoms became for a time united. At the death of Ferdinand in 1065, the kingdoms were again divided between his sons, Castile going to Sancho II, Leon to Alfonso VI and Galicia to Garcia, but Sancho and Garcia seem to have left no issue, and at his death in II09, as his son Sancho had died the previous year, Alfonso left all three kingdoms to his
- ↑ Acta Sanctorum, vi. Julii. De S. Jacobo Majori, 14.
