Annette M. B. Meakin

Avitus I. and Avitus II.—St. Isidore—The story of St. Fructuosus—The origin of duplex monasteries in Spain—One of the favourite saints of Galicia—Almanzor comes to Santiago de Compostela—San Pedro de Mezonzo—Almanzor returns to Cordova—The Salve Regina—Who wrote the Salve Regina?—Alfonso el Sabio—His Cantiga—The Mariner’s prayer—St. Gregory—Foreign authorities—How the Salve reached France and Italy—Dr. Oviedo’s Thesis—A startling article—The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception—De Consolatione Rationis—An allegory—Eadmer and Pedro Compostelano

IN our cursory survey of Galicia’s first golden age we have not attempted to give a full and complete account of all the strong souls who helped to make that age a golden one; we have been obliged to content ourselves with giving a few meagre particulars about those whose life and work have impressed us the most, and refer briefly often only to the names of those who loom less distinctly out of that distant past; such men, for instance, as the monk Bacchiarius, as Avitus I., and Avitus II., as the poet Prudentius and the saint Fructuosus. Of these we know for certain that the first three visited the East. Florez tells very fully the story of Bacchiarius, and how he came to wander forth from his monastery in search of that knowledge which he could not extract from books alone. As for the two Aviti, they were both in Jerusalem when Orosius was there, and one of them has been charged with having become infected with gnostic errors during his stay in Palestine, and having disseminated them in Galicia on his return thither. As for the poet Prudentius, he is to-day known to Spanish writers as “the Horace of the fourth century.” He was born in Galicia, in or near the town of Braga, about the year 368, during the reign of Constantine the Great. Two volumes of his lyric poetry have come down to us, both bearing Greek names, Kathemerion (Songs for Every Day) and Peristephanon (The Book of Garlands). Critics tell us that the lyrics contained in the former bear distinct traces of the literary influence of St. Ambrose; those contained in the latter, fourteen in number, are dedicated to the glorious sufferings of the early martyrs. Boissier calls Prudentius “un vÉritable Espagnol,” a poet who expressed the thoughts and feelings of his own people, and he adds, “c’est lÀ le principal veritÉ de la poÈsie lyrique: jamais elle n’est plus grande que quand elle traduit ainsi les sentiments populaires.”

St. Isidore, bishop of Seville, who was the most illustrious representative of intellectual Spain at the close of Galicia’s first golden age, and who earned for himself the title of “the oracle of the Spanish Church,” died in 636. “God created at this time,” says a contemporary monk, “two great suns to light these western shores with the rays of that flaming truth which shone from the Apostolic See; the one, Isidore of Seville, relighted among us, by his eloquence, his writings, his wisdom, and active industry, the great light of dogmatic truth issued by the Supreme Chair of Rome; the other, Fructuosus, by the immaculate innocence of his life, by the spiritual fire of his contemplations, made the virtues of the first fathers of the desert and the prodigies of the Thebaid shine into our hearts.”[59]

St. Fructuosus was a son of a general of the Gothic army. We read that when, as a boy, he was taken by his father into one of his estates upon the frontiers of Galicia, to number his flocks, “he secretly noted in his soul a site for a future monastery in that wild country.” Later on, when he had become his own master, he retired to the spot he had chosen as a child, and built a monastery, which he endowed with all he had. Montalembert tells us how he was shortly joined by a numerous band of monks, but that he himself, flying from the renown of his virtue, took refuge in the woods and most precipitous rocks, that he might be forgotten by all. One day, while he was at prayer in the forest, a labourer passing by took him for a fugitive slave, questioned him, and, dissatisfied with his answers, overwhelmed him with blows and led him with a rope round his neck to a place where he was recognised. Another time, like St. Bernard, he was taken for a wild beast. A hunter, seeing him covered merely with a goat-skin, and prostrated upon the summit of a rock, had aimed an arrow at him, when he perceived, by seeing him lift his hands to heaven, that it was a man occupied in prayer.[60]

Eventually the example of Fructuosus became so contagious that he had to build other monasteries to shelter his crowds of followers. Their number became so great that the duke of one of the provinces wrote to the king to warn him that if some obstacle were not interposed the country would be so depopulated that there would be no men to fill up the ranks of the army. The women imitated the men. A young girl of noble family, who was about to be married to an officer of the Visigothic Court, fled from her father’s house and hid in the woods near the monastery of Fructuosus, to whom she wrote, begging him to have pity upon her as upon a sheep which he must snatch from the fangs of the wolf. He received her, and built her a little cell in the forest, which soon became the centre of a community of eighty nuns. The officer endeavoured in vain to recover his betrothed. He compelled the superior of the new monastery to bring her to him; she came, but refused to look at him, and he remained mute in her presence. Then the royal judge said: “Leave her to serve the Lord, and find for yourself another wife.” Thus it was that Fructuosus originated the system of duplex monasteries in Spain.

Fructuosus cultivated literature sedulously, and led his monks to do likewise. He also wrote poetry, some of which is still extant; it is quoted by Florez. His monks kept great flocks of sheep, the profit of which they spent in charity. Some years before his death he was made archbishop of Braga, but he did not cease to practise the rule of monastic life, and he built many new monasteries. He surveyed all the coasts of Spain from Cape Finisterre to Cape St. Vincent, crossed the rivers Duero and Guadalquivir, reaching the promontories and islands, even to the spot where Cadiz now stands, and seeking everywhere asylums for prayer and solitude. “Thanks to him,” continues Montalembert, in a prophetic strain, “the extreme frontiers of the West become guarded by a line of monastic garrisons. The great waves of the ocean rushing from the shores of another hemisphere, from that half of the world still unknown to Christians, is met by the gaze and the prayers of the monks from the lofty cliffs of the Iberian Peninsula. There they stand firm, awaiting the Mohammedan invasion; there they endure and survive it; there they preserve a nucleus of faith and Christian virtue, for those incomparable days, when, from those shores freed by unwearied heroism, Spain and Portugal shall spring forth to discover a new world and to plant the Cross in Africa, in Asia, and in America.”

St. Fructuosus is still one of the favourite saints of Galicia. The cathedral of Santiago has a chapel dedicated to him, built in 1696,[61] and his day is honoured by every peasant in the land.

Galicia has some valuable archÆological monuments of the eighth century, to which we shall refer in a later chapter, but she produced no great literary character whose history need detain us here. It was in this century that the Moors first invaded the Peninsula; and Galicia, though not then invaded, began from this time to send the flower of her youth to fight the Saracens. In the ninth century there took place the discovery of the tomb of the apostle St. James on the spot where the cathedral of Santiago now stands, a discovery which led to the concentration of the reverential love of all medieval Christendom upon that distant corner of Spain, and eventually caused Santiago to rival Jerusalem as a centre for holy pilgrimage from all parts of the known world.

In the tenth century, in 997, the Moor Almanzor, a celebrated minister of the Moorish Court, arrived with his devastating army at the gates of Santiago, having reduced thirty monasteries and palaces to ruin on his way. Troops of Moors had come over from Cordova to join forces with Almanzor’s hosts. San Pedro de Mezonzo, the author of the Salve Regina, was then archbishop. When the Moorish army reached Santiago, they found to their surprise that its towers and its walls were deserted, and that no resistance was being offered to their advance. Penetrating into the heart of the city, they found stillness and solitude everywhere; they found the doors of the cathedral open, but there was only one living person inside it—an aged monk prostrate in prayer.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Almanzor.

“I am praying before the sepulchre of St. James,” replied the monk.

“Pray as much as you wish,” replied Almanzor, and he thereupon gave orders that none should molest him; after which, according to some, the Moor stationed himself before the altar to protect it from desecration at the hands of his followers.

St. Pedro de Mezonzo had fled to a neighbouring stronghold, bearing with him as much of the treasure of the cathedral as he could manage to carry.[62] It is clear that he at least was not one of the fighting prelates for which Galicia has been famous. Ferreiro tells us that when excavations were made in the cathedral of Santiago in 1878, traces of fire were certainly found. He argues from this that the Moors must have used fire in their attempt to destroy the building. Almanzor returned to Cordova laden with booty, and driving before him four thousand Christian captives, bearing on their shoulders the gates of Santiago Cathedral and its smaller bells, which, according to Fernandez Sandez, served as lamps in the great mosque of Cordova until the day when Ferdinand took the capital of the Calyphate, and caused captive Moors to bear them back to Santiago on their shoulders and restore them to the cathedral. Almanzor’s triumph was merely that of a successful expedition into the heart of Galicia, for the Moors never conquered that province.

San Pedro de Mezonzo was a monk of the Benedictine Order before he was raised to the archbishopric. The fact of his having been archbishop of Santiago at the time of Almanzor’s entry is not the only one that contributes to his fame. He is illustrious in the annals of Spanish history as being the supposed author of that beautiful prayer to the Virgin so universally revered throughout Catholic countries, the Salve Regina,[63] a prayer which every Catholic child lisps at its mother’s knee, and which has been translated into every language:—

Of late years there has been much discussion among students of ecclesiastical literature as to who was really the author of that prayer. At a recent Catholic Congress held at Munich this question was raised by a Benedictine monk. Florez devoted many pages to his argument that St. Bernard was its author.[64] In 1892 a book on the subject was published at Karlsruhe, in which W. Brambach tried to prove that Hermanus Contractus, a Benedictine monk born in 1013 in Suabia, had composed the Salve. There are French writers who support the claims of a French priest, Ademar de Monteil, bishop of Puy-en-Velay about 1087, said to have been one of the most active organisers of the first European crusade. But the most recent as well as the most learned and scholarly thesis[65] on this question is that of Dr. Eladio Oviedo, professor of Ecclesiastical History and ArchÆology at the Pontifical University of Santiago. Dr. Oviedo has spared no pains in his search for the real author of the Salve; he has weighed every atom of available evidence, and patiently searched through the religious literature of centuries for traces of its influence, with the result that he is convinced that—not St. Bernard, not Hermanus Contractus, not Ademar de Monteil, but Pedro de Mezonzo of Galicia was the author of this prayer so dear to the Catholic heart.

The idea is not a new one. I have met with it in several old works on Galicia, but the proofs brought forward by Dr. Oviedo are more convincing than any others that have as yet appeared in print. He shows, and I think conclusively, that the Salve was known in Spain long before any allusion to it or sign of its influence appeared in French, German, or Italian literature. Gonzalo de Berceo, in the thirteenth century, introduced it into his Milagros de Nuestra SeÑora. Alfonso el Sabio relates in his Cantiga 262 a legend of how an old woman, who was deaf and dumb, was cured by the Holy Virgin, and straightway taught her townspeople the memorable Salve, which she, in her turn, had been taught by the angels. According to Alfonso el Sabio, it was sung for the first time in the church of Santa Maria del Puy.

In the sixteenth century the Salve was known to the fisherfolk on the Spanish coast as “The mariner’s prayer.” In the sixteenth century it had already become popular in France, Portugal, and Italy. It is mentioned in the Legends of St. Francis of Assisi by St. Buenaventura in 1274.

Dr. Oviedo points out that the melody of the Salve is written in the purest Gregorian style, and evidently composed at a date anterior to the musical innovation which first showed itself at the beginning of the eleventh century, and was fully consummated in the first half of the twelfth. In order to perceive the archaic character of the musical style of the Salve, Dr. Oviedo observes, it is sufficient to compare it with the melodies of the first period of liturgic song, which begins with its creator, St. Gregory,[66] and terminates with the tenth century. Our friend has made the comparison, he has noted the beauty, the freshness, the spontaneity of the ancient melodies that sprang from the musical vein of St. Gregory, Charlemagne, Paul Varnefried, and others, and he has decided that this is the school in which the Salve must be classed; he has studied it also from a paleographical point of view, and made himself acquainted with its primitive form and with the various changes through which it has passed. Those who wish to follow these interesting investigations step by step can do so by perusing Dr. Oviedo’s own account of them.

A set of homilies preached upon the Salve Regina in the thirteenth century has been attributed by many, but without any foundation, to St. Bernard. It was in the sixteenth century that this prayer became crystallised into its present form. The first instance of its translation into a romance language occurs in the Cantiga 262 of Alfonso el Sabio. Yepes, the first Spaniard to claim for Spain the glory of being the birthplace of the Salve, wrote: “It has been usual for Germans and other authors to say that a Benedictine monk called Herman Contractus was the composer of this impassioned antiphona so celebrated in the Church. But Claudio de Rota, Antonio de Mocares, and Durando think that St. Pedro Mezonzo (or Mozonzo) composed the Salve; and I do not see why we Spaniards need let our hands be tied and assent unquestioningly to the statement that a German was its author.” Dr. Oviedo laughs to scorn the absurd theory that it was originally composed in Greek by one of the Apostles, and only translated by Pedro de Mezonzo.

Having fixed, then, the period within which the Salve must have first appeared, namely, the eleventh century, Dr. Oviedo goes on to search for the precise moment in that century at which the prayer became a historical fact. St. Pedro de Mezonzo died in 1003, Herman Contractus in 1054, and Ademar de Monteil in 1098. One of these three must have been the author of the Salve. In the eighteenth century the famous poet-priest of Fruime, in Galicia,[67] published a little work entitled Who Wrote the Salve? and he brought all his erudition, all his power of literary criticism, to bear upon the subject, with the result that he was able to successfully combat the theory upheld by Florez, that St. Bernard was its author, as well as to prove that it was not written by Contractus or by Monteil. His judgment has been upheld by the most eminent writers of Galicia in our own time, including Lopez Ferreiro.[68] Among foreign authorities who have held this view may be mentioned Mabillon, Du Cange, and Pope Benedict XIV. Dr. Oviedo in his recent thesis brings forward two important witnesses. The first is Guillermo Durando, a canon of the school of Bologna, who became bishop of Menda in 1285, best known as the author of a book on ancient ecclesiastical institutions, entitled Rationale Divinorum Officeorum. The second is Ricobaldo de Ferrara, canon of the cathedral of Ravenna, who was a contemporary of Durando, and who is best known as the author of a Universal History. Both these writers clearly affirm that St. Pedro de Mezonzo was the author of the Salve Regina. Dr. Oviedo has copied out their words on the subject with full contexts. I have them before me as I write. “If anyone should ask,” says Dr. Oviedo, “how it comes that the Salve was known in France and Italy in those remote times, I reply that it was from Provence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the greater number of the pilgrims who visited Galicia came. Thence also there came those pious caravans who, attracted by the throngs of French, Belgians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, juglares and troubadours, who animated the streets and palaces of Compostela, the Holy City of the West, the emporium and centre of a powerful movement which carried multitudes of clever men from Galicia to occupy the professional chairs of the most celebrated schools of the Middle Ages, and multitudes of inspired Gallegan poets to sing before the most splendid courts of Europe. Who doubts that by means of these troubadours, of these scholars, the glorious traditions which join the name of Salve to that of St. Pedro de Mezonzo should have been spread far and wide?”

The Salve Regina made its first appearance in history as the product of Galician soil. We have seen that that royal troubadour of the thirteenth century, King Alfonso el Sabio, introduced a legend of the origin of the Salve into his Cantigas.[69] “Where,” asks Dr. Oviedo, “did he get that legend?” It is precisely those of his cantigas which have to do with this legend that give us the most difficulty, and whose source we are to-day unable to trace.[70] The fact is, that the source of all Canciones of the Salve, no matter whose name they bear, is popular tradition, which had its rise in Santiago, at the tomb of St. James, at the sepulchre of St. Pedro de Mezonzo. From this source the story spread, first all over Galicia and then all over Spain. In the last decade of the eleventh century the Salve—carried by the pilgrims—was being intoned in countries far from the land of its birth. But it gained such an early popularity in Spain as to be reflected in Spanish lyric poetry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at which time it had not yet begun to influence the poetry of France.

The reader cannot fail to be struck, while perusing the pages of Dr. Oviedo’s thesis, with the patient perseverance and the stubborn determination with which these battles over the authorship of the Salve has been carried on by French, German, and Spanish patriots wishing to claim the glory for their own respective lands. But now, if fresh combatants enter the lists, their efforts will have to be superhuman indeed if they are to refute the proofs brought forward by this valiant Gallegan to show that Galicia rightfully claims the authorship of the Salve Regina.

In the summer of 1906 there appeared a startling article in the newspapers of Galicia,[71] entitled “The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.” It began with the question, “Who was the first Western Theologian to Defend the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception?” “Dr. Eladio Oviedo,” it continued, “has brought about quite a revolution in history by affirming that before Eadmer must be mentioned Pedro de Compostela.” “Eadmer,” wrote Dr. Oviedo, “was an English monk of the twelfth century, educated under the rule of St. Anselm in the celebrated school of philosophy at Canterbury. He wrote about the year 1151 De Conceptione Sanctae Mariae—in which he argued, against all the most learned doctors of his time, that the Virgin Mary was born immaculate. Not only England, but France, Belgium, Germany, and even Spain believed till now that Eadmer was the first to defend this theory. But they were all wrong. About the year 1140, Pedro Compostelano (Petrus Micha, according to Lopez Ferreiro) wrote a treatise entitled De Consolatione Rationis, of which a manuscript, possibly the original, is still preserved in the Escurial Library, but, alas, unpublished. In this treatise Pedro presents, in the form of an allegory to Catholic Reason, the questions which occupied his mind, and, among them, that of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. It is in the form of a dialogue, and begins thus—

“Compostellanus.—One doubt occupies my mind. Tell me, Was she who merited the honour of becoming the mother of Christ conceived without original sin, or with it? Truly, the former appears the most likely, because I think that to the glorious Virgin Mother of our Lord were granted all the virtues it was possible for Her to have; from this I infer that Mary was sanctified in Her conception, and thus immune from original sin.

“Reason.—No one can deny that the Virgin was given every virtue, and this is a sufficient answer to thy question. Further, it is evident that before life she could not be sanctified, as she was not yet a rational being, which alone is capable of receiving Divine grace, but I do not vacillate an inch in affirming the fortunate Mary was enriched with the plenitude of sanctity in the precise instant that her soul had its birth, in ipsa animae infusione omnium gratiarum plenitudine Eam beari non ambigo.”

“It was the seed sown,” wrote Dr. Oviedo, “by Pedro Compostelano, of the Galician school of the twelfth century, that produced Cantiga 5 of the Festas de Sancta Maria, which begins thus—

lines which appear to be a romanced version of part of the book De Consolatione Rationis, which was written in Galicia by Pedro before he became a priest, and at least ten years before Eadmer in England took up his pen to defend an opinion which was subsequently upheld by a host of eminent Catholic writers, including FeijoÓ, and which has since been incorporated among the unalterable dogmas of the Catholic Church.”