Santiago where the bones of Saint James, 1/2 of Jesus the Christ’s "Sons of Thunder" were conveniently discovered when Spain’s Christian armies of the re-conquest verily needed them. When the army of the prophet Mohammed was leading the Moor’s, the discovery of these remains of St. James, Santiago, allowed the development of the myth of Santiago Matamoros, of St. James the Moor slayer, of the transformation of James from a fisher of men for his lord to the vision of a knight upon a steed of white, willfully killing up to 60,000 Arabs single-handed in only one battle. Galicia exchanged hands several times and with the assistance of our valiant knight, Spain won the day and the legend lived on into the new world where Santiago and his mount was a great ally in the slaying of American Indians too. How do you become a saint in the Roman Catholic Church? You slay a ton of it’s enemies or reluctant converts. He slew, he was sainted.

A cathedral was constructed, sacked and a greater one still put in it’s place and subsequently the Romanesque structure was renovated, remodeled and redone 4 times with the addition of a new facade for each point of the compass. The largest being on the Plaza do Obradorio, which encloses one of the great triumphs of medieval art - the Portico de Gloria. This portico was finished in 1188 under the direct supervision of Maestro Mateo and was the apex of Romanesque sculpture.

This amazingly realistic rendering of human forms where Christ presides in glory above St. James our interlocutor to the savior and is flanked by the prophets on one side and the apostles on the other. All are surrounded by the 24 elders of the Apocalypse (which I for one, hopes never to come.)

Here we dutifully, as have literally millions of pilgrims before us, inserted the fingers and thumb of our right hand into the depressions that have been worn through the millennia on the post upon which sits St. James and Jesus the Christ et al. Having thus grasped history and said a prayer (yes even semi-pagans sometimes pray) we circled the post and bumped our head against the forehead of Mateo or his self portrait, which knelt before us, for wisdom and creativity.

A beautiful and grande cathedral it is, full of gold gilt that came from the New World when Spain was the Ruler of All and was able to plunder it at will for the enrichment of the fatherland.

We circled behind the alter and climbed the steps to hug the back of the sculpture of St. James, encrusted with jewels and covered with gold, thus we completed our pilgrimage to this third most important shrine in Christendom after Jerusalem and Rome by viewing the crypt of the Saint below the altar. With this act we completed the cycle as it has been done since before the 12th century when it was said to have made this journey you would cut your time in purgatory by 1/2. I for one hope there is no purgatory, but if there is, half of my time is now covered.

mail slot for strangers - a.k.a. foreigners

Our abode for Santiago was to be and was the Hostal Barbantes, which upon first viewing appeared to be delightful with a balcony overlooking a small plaza, with the Obradoiro Plaza further in the distance and above the rooftops before us was the Cathedral itself. I imagine that in the summer this would be the case but as this was the beginning of November and the temperature was hovering around 3 degrees Celsius at night and as much as 6 or 7 during the day and inasmuch as the sun never shone on our side of the building and as it was built of stone and inasmuch as the bruja who ran aforesaid premises refused to turn the heat on till 8 of the evening of our second night after repeated harassment by we... this hovel sucked and sucked big time as we froze our patoots off night and day! Ah the joy of travel. ;-)

Raymond kisses the hand of a pair of stone cold locals

We visited two other churches in this medieval city during our stay. The Benedictine San Martin just to the rear of the Cathedral and now occupied by an order of nuns who were in high chant mode during our stroll of it’s interior. Actually we were quite respectful and tippy toed around whist viewing this vision of chiaroscuro, this "fricassee of gilt gingerbread" and had these grande palaces put in real perspective by the chanting of our hostesses. In any other setting this would be the main draw, but along side of the cathedral it is just an also ran. At first we knew not what luck we enjoyed in hearing the chanting but as we left, the door was quickly locked behind us. Seems that they had forgotten to before their ritual had commenced. Que buena fortuna!

The third church we visited was a curiosity of another sort. An unpretentious Romanesque church, The Santa Maria del Sar’s architect, for some unknown reason, canted it’s massive pillars out from vertical by 15 to 20 degrees and it is unsettling to sit in this church and wonder at it’s having stood for the last 800 years with this precarious arrangement. It had flying buttresses applied at a later date but information has it that it was due to an underground river that had threatened it stability.

Care for a hare or perhaps a phesant ?