VERY few of the pilgrims who journeyed to Santiago de Compostela during the Middle Ages failed to include in their pilgrimage a visit to Padron. There is an ancient refrain which says—

Padron, Iria Flavia, is a town with a long history. Not only can she boast of having been a flourishing Roman settlement in the days of Augustus, but she is believed by Spanish archÆologists to have been the site of one of the great emporiums of Phoenician trade.[223] The town is situated on the right bank of the river Ulla and on the left bank of the river Sar, nineteen kilometres from Santiago and sixteen from the sea, with which it is connected by a ria (loch). In 1836, Borrow found it a flourishing little port, with rather an extensive commerce, “some of its tiny barks occasionally finding their way across the Bay of Biscay, and even as far as the Thames and London.” A story was in circulation that some twenty years before Borrow’s visit, certain Padron fishermen, who had found their way to England, had been converted to Protestantism during their stay there, and not only brought Bibles back with them, but actually began to speak with irreverence of the bones of St. James, with a result that a commission was despatched to punish them and burn their books. We often speak of separation caused by the sea, but in reality it has always been a far closer link than land.

The Roman name for Padron was Iria Flavia, and it belonged to the Convento Lucense; it was raised to the rank of a municipal town by the Emperor Vespasian in the year 69. Flavia was Vespasian’s family name; it occurs a number of times in Galicia. Iria is mentioned in the Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus, and Ptolemy also speaks of it; there is also a reference to this town in the Ravenate, the anonymous manuscript of Ravenna. Pliny mentions a river and a town of the name of Iria in Italy.[224] Several interesting Roman inscriptions have been found in the neighbourhood of Padron; there is one which tells that a senator of Iria died at the age of fifty.[225] A stone with an inscription to the Emperor Gratian (375-379) has also been discovered, and another bearing the name of Sulpicius Severus.[226] Coins of the reigns of Augustus and Constantine have recently been turned up with the soil; it is more than probable that extremely interesting excavations might be made there.[227]

Iria was, without doubt, one of the most flourishing and important of the towns which existed before the days of Christianity in the territory which we now call Galicia. One of Spain’s most noted archÆologists—Fita—thought that the so-called castro de la Rocha, or rock fortress, where St. James is supposed to have resided, was in the old capitol of Iria, and therefore the most suitable spot for the commencement of excavations. Villa-Amil points out that the tradition of St. James’s having preached from the Rocha de Padron is a very old one. Castella Ferrar thought that the original cathedral of Iria had stood within this castro, and believed that he had discovered some of the ruins of its eastern wall; and others have thought that this was the site of the episcopal palaces of the diocese. There are numerous references to la Rocha Blanca del Padron in historical documents of the Middle Ages. All that remains of it to-day is a trench eight or nine yards long enclosing a circle of about fifty yards in diameter, most of which is now planted with potatoes and other garden produce.

We have seen in a preceding chapter how popular is the belief that the boat which brought the body of St. James from Joppa to Spain landed it at Padron. To this event is attributed the fact that one of the first bishoprics in Galicia was founded at Iria. The arms of Padron are a boat, with the body of the Apostle, and two disciples, one at the prow and the other at the stern.

It takes about an hour to go by train from Santiago to Padron, but we preferred to drive, as the road is excellent and the scenery delightful. It was the last week in March, and many of the trees were still in bud, but the furze (ulex europÆus), which covered great stretches of the undulating country through which we passed, was a mass of brilliant yellow blossom; there were as yet no leaves upon the oak trees, but they did not look bare, for ivy covered their stems, and ferns luxuriated among their gnarled branches, while fresh green fronds spread out in all directions, with as much grace as if they had been specially arranged by the hand of an artist; even the tallest trees were decorated in this way, and the crannies in which the ferns nestled were often eight or ten yards above the ground.

The fields were a beautiful green, some pale with waving maize almost ready to be harvested, others covered with fresh grass or young potatoes. In many a plot of green we passed a peasant woman in charge of two or three cows, all attached to a rope which she held in her hand. As we passed the villages we noted behind every house a quaint Gallegan maize barn (Gal. horreo), raised on four or six stone pedestals, and built like a diminutive stone house with a gabled roof. The trellis porch of almost every cottage was covered with a vine, and vine-covered verandahs hid most of the lower walls; the vine leaves had not begun to appear, but their knotted and spreading branches were very picturesque. Spring flowers were peeping from the banks beneath the hedges, and we descended several times from our carriage to gather flowers we had never seen in England, and of which we did not know the names. Ever and anon we passed groves of chestnut and walnut trees, and apple orchards not yet in blossom, while behind them rose green hills alternating with rocky mountain crags, which had for their background the blue outlines of more distant mountains. The highest peak that we could see on this journey was the Pico Sacro,[228] whose pointed cone looks at a little distance somewhat the shape of Fugiama; the view from its summit amply rewards the climb. Some think that the name Monte Sacro or Pico Sacro is of earlier date than the introduction of Christianity into Galicia, and as this mountain has numerous dolmens and other prehistoric ruins on its slopes, it has been suggested that the Celts may have once made it a centre of their religious worship: even in our own day the peasants have many superstitious notions connected with it. Lopez Ferreiro wrote in 1868 that sick people used to take an offering of bread up to one of its high ridges, and leave it there after calling on the mountain to cure them with the following words:—

Molina, quoting Justin, says that the ancients considered it unlawful to touch this mountain with iron, and they had a tradition that great sheets of gold were found upon its surface; these were supposed to result from the fact that the mountain was constantly struck by lightning, which turned everything it touched into gold. Molina attributes another name that this mountain went by—Mons acer—to the violent tempests which raged around its cone, and which, he adds, “make the fortress that is built upon it quite uninhabitable.” Old documents bear witness to the fact that there was, in the eleventh century, a monastery upon one of its slopes, and that its church was called San Sebastian del Pico Sacro; on its summit there are still the ruins of a strong fortress built there by Archbishop Alonso Fonseca (1463-1506).[229]

The nearest mountain to Padron is green to its summit even in winter; while I was there some ladies climbed to the top in a little less than three hours. Below stretches the valley of the Ulla, one of the most fertile valleys in the province. Everything seems to thrive there,—flax, maize, wheat, the walnut, the filbert and the chestnut, the orange, the lemon, and almost every kind of European fruit tree; bamboos are also grown there; the trellis-work over which the vines are trained is mostly made of them, but the two things that are chiefly grown there are onions and flax. A great deal of linen is spun by the poor women of Padron, but all by hand, not by machinery.

About half-way between Santiago and Padron we stopped to look at a church which faced the road, the church of La Virgen de la Esclavitude. We found its inner walls covered with pictures, or rather glaring daubs, representing sick people in bed. The bedsteads were of all kinds, wooden beds, iron beds, and children’s cots; all these were thank-offerings brought by people who had been cured in answer to prayer. One picture, representing a sick man in bed, had a prancing horse standing by the bed, because, I was told, the invalid had recovered after making the church a present of a horse; beside another bed three nuns were praying. People make pilgrimages to this church in such crowds that special trains have to be run for them.

As we approached the town we passed comfortable-looking houses on both sides of the road with gardens attached. In the gardens we noted fine rhododendrons and tulip trees covered with blossom; the cherry and apple trees were also in blossom. Padron, lying much lower and being much more sheltered than Santiago, is nearly a month ahead in spring-time. We saw orange trees with oranges that looked ripe enough to pick.

At length we reached a church with pyramidal towers like the one over the treasury of Santiago Cathedral; this was the Colegiata de Iria, Santa Maria de Iria. From the earliest days of Christianity in Galicia this church, or the one that preceded it on this spot, has been the seat of a bishopric; it numbers the names of many illustrious men among its bishops. It was a bishop of Iria, Teodomiro, who discovered the sepulchre of St. James. In the days of Miro, King of the Sueves (569-583), there was a bishop here with the name of Andrew, who played a conspicuous part in the church councils of Lugo and Braga.[230] The principal entrance of this edifice, which is Romanesque, does not date further back than the thirteenth century, and the rest of the building (all but the sarcophagi in the capilla major and the towers) is work of the eighteenth century. There was formerly a bishop’s palace attached, but not a trace of it now remains. Twenty-eight bishops who fled here for refuge at the time of the Mohammedan invasion are buried inside the church. On the chief altar there is a very old Byzantine statue of the Virgin, in stone. An archbishop of Santiago, Rodrigo de Luna, was also buried here (1450-1460); his sarcophagus is opposite that containing a bishop of Orense, which is much more ancient.

Beneath the chief altar of the church is preserved the rock to which the disciples are supposed to have fastened their boat when they brought St. James’s body from Joppa. On the rock are some letters of a Roman inscription to which various archÆologists have devoted much time and thought. Pilgrims to Santiago hold this boulder in great veneration, and feel it their bounden duty to visit it; the name for it is el pedron, the big rock, and some derive the name of the town from it, though it is more likely that Padron is from el padron, i.e. St. James the Apostle. Close to the church is the bank of the river to which the disciples moored their boat; it is still called Barca in memory of that event.

Rising from the slope of the mountain on the opposite side of the river is a hillock, or ridge, on which stands a little chapel to mark the spot where St. James is supposed to have dwelt during his sojourn in Iria; below the altar is a spring of delicious pure water: Morales remarked he had not tasted better water in all Galicia; its flow never ceases summer or winter. The townsfolk informed me that St. James preached to the people of Iria from this spot. Sanchez relates that in 1484 the traveller Nicolas PopiÉlovo came here to see the spring; and he gives his readers the traveller’s own words about his visit. A little higher up the mountain, which is called Monte San Gregorio, is the actual boulder upon which St. James stood when he preached. There is an opening here between two pieces of rock through which a thin person can manage to pass, and the Portuguese, who come here in great numbers, believe that good fortune will befall those who can get through, consequently it sometimes happens that fat persons also try to get through, but get stuck in the middle and find it difficult to extricate themselves. There are many legends connected with this rock, one of which is that it opened on several occasions to receive and shelter St. James when he was chased by the pagans. Another rock a little farther on is known as the Altar of St. James, and he is there supposed to have offered up bloodless sacrifices; and yet another rock is shown as St. James’s couch. The view of Padron from here is very beautiful among its fields and gardens, and with its two rivers, the Sar and the Ulla.[231] The highest building in the town is an old Carmelite nunnery, now inhabited by Dominican friars.

To the south-east of Padron, at a distance of about a mile, is situated the Convento de San Antonio de Herbon, a Franciscan monastery founded in the end of the fourteenth century by Gonzolo MariÑo, a relative of the first Count of Altamira. Among its monks may be reckoned the famous trovador poet, Rodriquez de Padron, who retired thither in his old age and adopted the conventual garb. When the monks were all expelled, this monastery became for a time an ecclesiastical seminary. In the church there is a beautifully carved wood statue of St. Francis of Assisi, which some think to be the work of Adolfo Cano; there is wonderful character in the face, and for that alone its celebrity would be deserved.

Opposite the monastery and on the other side of the river are the remains of an ancient fortress, whose walls are two yards and a half wide. Sanchez calls it Castro Valute, and states that an ara was found there in which there was a cavity to receive the blood of victims sacrificed.[232]

We drove on beyond Padron for about a couple of miles, crossing the bridge over the Ulla near the village of Cesures, which in the Historio Compostellana is called Cesuris. Some think that this fine old Roman bridge is from the time of Octavius Augustus, and that it was called, in his honour, CÆsar’s Bridge, and they believe this to be the origin of the present name. The Ulla is an historic river. It is mentioned by Ptolemy, and by Pomponius Mela, and its name occurs in numerous Gallegan documents of the Middle Ages, for on its waters were borne the ships that brought both Moorish and Norman invaders into Galicia, invaders against whom the fighting archbishops defended their people most courageously.

About two miles beyond Cesuris there stands on a ridge in the slope of a green hill a quaint little church belonging to a little village called Janza. I particularly wished to see it, because I had heard archÆologists say that on account of its elegant simplicity and beautiful proportions it was thought to be the work of Mateo, the architect of the PÓrtico de Gloria, or at least that of one of his pupils. I got out of the carriage, and, meeting the village priest’s maid-of-all-work, asked her to show me the easiest path by which I could ascend to the church. As we went along, my guide, who had dropped her boots over the hedge into a field, and was proceeding barefoot, informed me that, as the priest’s servant she had a great many duties, one being to fetch all the water required for household purposes from a neighbouring spring. It was a beautiful day, and the air and scenery resembled that of some of the finer parts of the Yorkshire moors.

“How exhilarating it is here,” I remarked.

“Yes, you are right,” replied the maid. “It’s very beautiful. A Padre who came here a few weeks ago preached us a sermon about it, and said that, for any one whose heart was right with God, there could not be a more beautiful or a

PADRON