sencia, Coria, Toro
and Zamora, Tuy, Orense, and Astorga kept the Portuguese from Castilian
soil. In the extreme southwest Cuenca, impregnable and highly
strategical, looked eastwards and southwards against the Moor, and
northwards against the Aragonese.

In all these links of the immense strategical chain which protected
Castile from her enemies, the monarchs were cunning enough to erect sees
and appoint warrior-bishops. They even donated the new fortress-cities
with special privileges or _fueros_, in virtue of which settlers came
from all parts of the country to inhabit and constitute the new
municipality.

Such--in gigantic strides--is the story of most of Castile's world-famed
cities. In each chapter, dates, anecdotes, and more details are given,
with a view to enable the reader to become acquainted not only with the
ecclesiastical history of cities like Burgos and Valladolid, but also
with the causes which produced the growing importance of each see, as
well as its decadence within the last few centuries.

_PART II_

_Galicia_

I

SANTIAGO DE CAMPOSTELA

When the Christian religion was still young, St. James the Apostle--he
whom Christ called his brother--landed in Galicia and roamed across the
northern half of the Iberian peninsula dressed in a pilgrim's modest
garb and leaning upon a pilgrim's humble staff. After years of wandering
from place to place, he returned to Galicia and was beheaded by the
Romans, his enemies.

This legend--or truth--has been poetically interwoven with other legends
of Celtic origin, until the whole story forms what Brunetiere would call
a _cycle chevaleresque_ with St. James--or Santiago--as the central
hero.

According to one of these legends, it would appear that the apostle was
persecuted by his great enemy Lupa, a woman of singular beauty whom the
ascetic pilgrim had mortally offended. Thanks to certain accessory
details, it is possible to assume that Lupa is the symbol of the "God
without a name" of Celtic mythology, and it is she who finally venges
herself by decapitating the pilgrim saint.

The disciples of St. James laid his corpse in a cart, together with the
executioner's axe and the pilgrim's staff. Two wild bulls were then
harnessed to the vehicle, and away went cart and saint. As night fell
and the moon rose over the vales of Galicia, the weary animals stopped
on the summit of a wooded hill in an unknown vale, surrounded by other
hillocks likewi