se covered with foliage and verdure.

The disciples buried the saint, together with axe and staff, and there
they left him with the secret of his burial-ground.

This must have happened in the first or second century of the Christian
era. Six hundred years later, and one hundred years after the Moors had
landed in Andalusia, one Theodosio, Bishop of Iria (Galicia), took a
walk one day in his wide domains accompanied by a monk. Together they
lost their way and roamed about till night-fall, when they found
themselves far from home.

Stars twinkled in the heavens as they do to this day. Being tired, the
bishop and his companion dreamt as they walked along--at least it
appears so from what followed--and the stars were so many miraculous
lights which led the wanderers on and on. At last the stars remained
motionless above a wooded hill standing isolated in a beautiful vale.
The prelate stopped also, and it occurred to him to dig, for he
attributed his dreams to a supernatural miracle. Digging, a coffin was
revealed to him, and therein the saintly remains of St. James or
Santiago.

Giving thanks to Him who guides all steps, Theodosio returned to Iria,
and, by his orders, a primitive basilica was erected some years later on
the very spot where the saint had been buried, and in such a manner as
to place the high altar just above the coffin. A crypt was then dug out
and lined with mosaic, and the coffin, either repaired or renewed, was
laid therein,--some say it was visible to the hordes of pilgrims in the
tenth and eleventh centuries.

The shrine was then called Santiago de Campostela.--Santiago, which
means St. James, and Campostela, field of stars, in memory of the
miraculous lights the Bishop of Iria and his companion had perceived
whilst sweetly dreaming.

The news of the discovery spread abroad with wonderful rapidity.
Monasteries, churches, and inns soon surrounded the basilica, and within
a few years a village and then a city (the bishop's see was created
previous to 842 A. D.) filled the vale, which barely fifty years earlier
had been an undiscovered and savage region.

Throughout the middle ages, from the eleventh to the fifteenth
centuries, Santiago de Campostela was the scene of pilgrimages--not to
say crusades--to the tomb of St. James. From France, Italy, Germany, and
England hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children wandered to
the Galician valley, then one of the foci of ecclesiastical significan