(410–711)
St. Isidore seems to have foreseen that unity of religion and a comprehensive educational system would weld together the heterogeneous elements which threatened to disintegrate his country, and it was mainly thanks to him that Spain was a centre of culture when the rest of Europe seemed to be lapsing into barbarism.—Butler’s Lives of the Saints1
Modern-day Madrid offers, among countless cultural attractions, an enormous city block-sized complex containing Spain’s national library (Biblioteca Nacional de España) and archeological museum (Museo Arqueológico Nacional). Flanking the public entrances to these temples of Iberian learning and ancient heritage are six larger than life, 19th century statues of various Spanish artists, sages, and visionaries, including (among others) Cervantes, Velázquez, and King Alfonso “The Wise” (see Chapter 8). Pride of place, however, is given to Saint Isidore of Seville (560–636), situated at the outside entrance base of the library’s grand staircase.2 The highly visible placement of this particular personage is rather appropriate.3 Though not a household name outside of Spain, arguably fewer historical figures had more to do with carving out Spain’s national identity than Saint Isidore.4 As noted by the modern editors of Butler’s Lives, “It was said of St. Isidore by his disciple and friend St. Braulio that he appeared to have been specially raised up by God to stem the current of barbarism and ferocity which everywhere followed the arms of the Goths who had settled in Spain.”5 Appearing at a time and place in which western civilization itself seemed threatened with extinction, a good case can be made that Isidore was its most persistently civilizing influence. Beginning with Isidore, Spain would gradually become a center for learning and later a conduit of learning for the rest of Europe. He is also the first identifiable individual on record, and a rather distinguished one at that, credited with making a written specific link between Saint James the Greater and the Iberian Peninsula.6
Little is known of Isidore’s personal background, except that he appears to have hailed from a family of high-ranking Spanish clergy which seemed to move comfortably between the normally opposing spheres of the old Roman nobility and more recent Visigoth conquerors.7 By age 40, he had succeeded his older brother as Bishop of Seville, a post held for the remainder of his long life. By the end of that life, he had become widely recognized as the greatest educator in all of Iberia. His Latin writings were extensive, and many still survive. Theologically, Isidore is given undisputed credit for leading the ongoing conversion of Visigoth monarchs from Arianism to Catholicism, and hence most of their subjects as well. This was no small accomplishment, given that Rome and Constantinople had failed to make any similar headway with the Gothic Kingdoms during previous centuries. As observed in Butler’s Lives (see header quote), Isidore achieved this in no small part by expediently advocating religious conformity as a strong unifying factor for an unstable barbarian kingdom showing signs of political disintegration at a relatively early stage. Combined with his respected personal integrity and great learning, all during an era in which both qualities were in very short supply, Isidore’s efforts probably helped to preserve the Spanish Visigoth Kingdom much longer than it otherwise would have lasted, and for that matter, longer than many other European monarchies during the Dark Ages. His example also set an interesting precedent on how exactly this might be accomplished, and his positive influence continues to be felt in contemporary 21st century Spanish society.
Isidore’s relatively overlooked Latin treatise De Ortu et Obitu Patrum (“Birth and Death of the Fathers”), probably composed near the end of his life circa 630, conveniently provides short biographies for leading figures of the early church. These include two brief mentions of Saint James the Greater, both expressly made in connection with his supposed evangelization of Spain. The idea of James having physically been in Iberia fell squarely within an already established tradition of the 12 apostles being each assigned a geographic field of activity after the Pentecost (see Chapter 1). Isidore, however, was the first church authority to expressly acknowledge it; more importantly, his was considered a highly respectable and reliable source of learning. His opinions carried great weight both within and without the institutional church, and it was highly fortunate for the Iberian Santiago cult that it received his early endorsement. Part of the reason that the teachings of the Bishop of Seville were (and remain) so esteemed is that he was known typically not to just make things up, and indeed his repeated reference to “Iacobus Spaniam” was likely drawn from an existing, but far less authoritative source.8 The best earlier candidate for this tradition was the anonymous Breviarium Apostolorum, dating from perhaps a century earlier and itself tapping into older, less specific Greco-Byzantine sources. Isidore also incorporated from the Breviarium the highly ambiguous phrase acha marmarica to identify James’ burial place, without necessarily insisting this location was in Spain (or anywhere else specifically).9 The important thing is that by the late sixth or early seventh century, the most prestigious living Doctor of the Roman Catholic faith was publicly associating, however tentatively, the life and acts of Saint James the Greater with the Iberian Peninsula.
This was far from the first instance in which an important historical personage was connected to Spain, or Roman Hispania, as it was known during ancient times. Hispania, though rich in its own prehistoric artifacts, entered the stage of European (and world) affairs during the epic Punic Wars of the third and second centuries BC when it became a regular Carthaginian staging ground for military operations against Rome. The most notable example occurred when the Spanish-trained Carthaginian general Hannibal launched his initially-successful invasion of Italy from Spain via Gaul in 218 BC, which included a numerous contingent of Spanish infantry loyal to Carthage.10 Later, after the defeat of Carthage and Hispania had been annexed by Rome, its most serious insurrections often came from that same province, particularly the one led by Quintus Sertorius in 80–72 BC. Not long after this in 62 BC, a young and still untested Julius Caesar was given his first major military command in Spain; 17 years later (in 45 BC), Caesar fought his final, victorious battle of the Roman Civil War at Munda in Spain. Later still, during the imperial era, Spain produced some of Rome’s most powerful and dominating emperors, including Hadrian, Trajan, and the Galician-born Theodosius. The latter was in fact the last Roman emperor to wield any kind of meaningful authority on a continental scale, before his death in 395 triggered a final period of decline. Overall, it might well be said that Hispania, as the westernmost edge of the Roman Empire, was a constant political-military protagonist and instigator of sweeping change throughout the history of Western Europe. This dynamic role would carry over into the Middle Ages and well beyond. In this sense, Isidore’s direct linkage of Hispania with the apostolic tradition represented only one chapter in a very long story.
The Visigoth era in Hispania, though lasting over 300 years, for purposes of this study may be briefly summarized in a few sentences. After an initial period of truce, the Iberian Visigoths gradually gained ascendency over their rival Germanic tribesmen (the Suebi and the Vandals), and by the late sixth century controlled most of the peninsula, except for narrow portions of the Mediterranean coast still held by the Byzantine Empire. By the early seventh century, the Visigoths dominated all of Iberia and most of Gaul as well. Toulouse, France, and Toledo, Spain, became twin Visigoth capital cities located on opposite sides of the Pyrenees. In 589, King Riccared, with encouragement from Isidore’s older brother, Bishop (and Saint) Leander, became the first Visigoth monarch to publicly renounce Arianism in favor of Catholicism at the Third Council of Toledo. After Isidore succeeded his brother as head of the Spanish church at the turn of the century, he presided over the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, in which it was established that public education—such as it existed during that time—would be administered by designated cathedral schools, based on the model of Seville, the same institution that had so successfully educated the young Isidore. With Iberian religious and political hegemony, however, soon came severe military decline and internal division, both eventually proving fatal to the Visigoth realm.
At the time of Isidore’s death around 636 (three years after the Fourth Council of Toledo), the Iberian Visigoth Kingdom had less than 75 years of survival remaining. Curiously enough, the last great Spanish churchman of the seventh century following Isidore appears to have contradicted him in the matter of Saint James the Greater, at least in terms of James as the assigned evangelist of Hispania. Saint Julian of Toledo (642–690) was the first designated Archbishop of Toledo and, like Isidore before him, a learned and accomplished writer. In Julian’s polemical De Comprobatione Aetatis Sextae (“Concerning the Sixth Age”), he recites the biblical facts surrounding James the Greater but willfully ignores any aspect of the Spanish connection.11 The omission is striking. To suggest that Julian was unaware of the newer tradition at this point in history is a highly unlikely scenario, given Isidore’s previous authoritative testimony and ongoing circulation of the Breviarium Apostolorum.12 Far more likely (if not certain) is that Julian knew of the Santiago tradition quite well and simply rejected it, or at best, did not feel comfortable endorsing it. There were also likely strong political and religious motivations behind his views. Even by this early stage, Julian’s home seat of Toledo—future stronghold of the Spanish Inquisition—had become a dual bastion for both the Roman Catholic faith and Visigoth monarchy. Any religious viewpoints coming from outside of Toledo, good or bad, especially any related to an apostolic figure the stature of James, would have been reflexively viewed as a threat to its civic authority.13 On top of this, it was probably well known that Julian himself came from a family of Christianized Jews. As such, he would have been constantly compelled to stick to a more conservative line of doctrine, one less tainted by anything perceived as external novelties. This would especially include unnecessary reminders that Christianity was originally an offshoot of Jewish religion, even though that is precisely what it was.14 Pointedly, however, a mere 21 years after Julian’s death, the Visigoths would need all the nationalist zeal they could muster for mere survival (see Chapter 3).
Notwithstanding Julian’s silent reticence, it was clear by the turn of the eighth century that the popular notion of Saint James preaching in Spain had gained a strong foothold, even beyond Spain itself. Far to the north in Saxon-dominated Great Britain, Saint Aldhelm (639–709), Abbot of Malmesbury and later Bishop of Sherborne, fully embraced the tradition, praising James as the first bishop of Spain who evangelized that country, without making any mention of his alleged burial there.15 Aldhelm, like Isidore before him, was not the type of person to simply regurgitate anything that he had heard. Having been a student of some of the finest Latin scholars then active in the British Isles, the young Aldhelm was steadily promoted within church ranks. By the time he was in his mid–30s, as a newly-appointed abbot, he became the very first in England to adopt the Benedictine Rule, which later during the High Middle Ages would extend its sway across Western Europe with crucial impact on the Santiago pilgrimage customs of Spain (see Chapter 6). Thus, as evidenced by the reliable testimony of Aldhelm, Saint James the Greater seems to have been accepted by church authorities in Great Britain as the original evangelist of Spain, centuries before even the more historically recent King Arthur had become adopted as symbolic hero of England.16
Meanwhile, far beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the West, within a New World long yet to be discovered by Europeans, other civilizations were tentatively taking shape. Around the Four Corners Region of the modern day United States, the Ancient Pueblo Peoples, also called the Anasazi (or “Ancient Ones”) by their traditional enemies and territorial rivals, the Navajo, were entering the final phase of what later was dubbed by archeologists as the Late Basketweaver Period (c.500–c.750). During this same era, the previously nomadic Pueblos were now beginning to settle down, with far less reliance on hunting and more on agriculture, arts and crafts, tentative building activities, and stationary communal living in general. This was not unlike the manner western civilization had first developed in prehistoric Mesopotamia long before. Unbeknownst to the Pueblo (or the Navajo for that matter), within less than a thousand years from this time the images of Saint James the Greater and Santiago Matamoros would be stamped upon their religious shrines by Spanish conquerors of the Americas. At the turn of the eighth century, however, the Iberian Peninsula was not even Spain; rather, it was a decaying Visigoth Kingdom on the verge of itself being overrun by foreign invaders from other continents. These invaders fervently adhered to an alien religious creed, and in many respects represented a more advanced civilization than the one they were about to dominate. Once cannot help but to be struck by certain ironies. Perhaps the Spanish had to be conquered themselves before conquering others.17 On the other hand, this transformative process, if in fact there was one, would take another eight centuries to complete its cycle.
Accepting at face value Isidore’s matter-of-fact assertion that James had evangelized Spain, without necessarily conceding the saint’s final interment there, one is led directly to one of the more attractive and durable legends attaching to the Santiago cult. According to this beloved tradition, around the year 40 CE, as a tired and discouraged James, accompanied by a meager handful of followers, paused near the Roman city of Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza) along the River Ebro, a vision of the Virgin Mary appeared at the top of stone column to offer encouragement, assuring James that a great Christian nation would one day there arise, and furthermore instructing him to build a chapel upon that exact location. Therefore, according to this legend, James the Greater is credited with the signal honor of receiving the first Marian vision in recorded church history, notwithstanding that Mary was, according to most non-biblical sources, still alive at that point in time. As for documented literary sources for the Marian Pillar of Zaragoza, these reach a dead end before the 12th century (see Chapter 6). On the other hand, while today’s magnificent Catedral-Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza dates from the 17th century, evidence shows that this had been a church site since at least the days of Constantine the Great, which in turn suggests it had been a church long before that era as well. It is certainly possible (and impossible to prove otherwise) that Isidore drew cumulative support for the Spanish Santiago mission journey postulated in the Breviarium Apostolorum from an extant Marian Pillar tradition at Zaragoza.18 While the event itself is alleged to have occurred on January 2, the designated church feast day is October 12, the same day that Christopher Columbus later first spotted landfall in the New World from his flagship Santa María in 1492, and later still formally becoming the national holiday of Spain (see Chapter 11).
One of the most intriguing sidebars to the history of James the Greater is a minority of modern scholarly opinion, though a fairly respectable one, holding that James and his brother John were biological first cousins to Jesus on their mother’s side; hence, under this theory, the Virgin Mary would have been James’ maternal aunt.19 This writer sees nothing in this idea to contradict orthodox Christian teaching; therefore, it might be an interesting possibility to keep in mind, especially given the apparent close rapport between Mary and James in longstanding traditions such as that found in Zaragoza, particularly within the framework of western art history. On the other hand, it might be argued that James was granted the honor of the first Marian vision (as well as that of building the first Marian church) for the same reasons that he eventually became the patron saint for all of Spain, namely, that he was the first of the original 12 apostles to be martyred for his faith. In either event, Our Lady of the Pillar provides yet another convenient and plausible link between James and Spain—one which seems likely to have existed during the Visigoth era—but again, not necessarily allowing Spain as his final place of interment. Although this latter item may well have been in circulation by that time as well, it would take yet another century of dramatic events and changes on the Iberian Peninsula for the idea to really take hold and receive wider circulation in the popular European consciousness (see Chapter 3).
As one might expect, the Nuestra Senora Del Pilar theme has inspired many a memorable work of art over the last millennia and surviving down to the present day. Among Spanish-born painters, arguable the most distinguished to tackle this ethereal subject matter was Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), whose two youthful but splendid works deserve brief mention, although bearing little resemblance to the artist’s later, more famous, and far more darker style. Goya’s father had reputedly worked as an artisan at the Zaragoza Cathedral during its rebuilding, and his famous son Francisco was later commissioned to paint spectacular frescoes for the dome vaults. Apart from these larger scale works, however, the 23-year-old Goya had produced the first of his two Santiago paintings in 1768–1769, the Aparición de la Virgen del Pilar a Santiago y a sus discípulos zaragozanosa, a magnificent exercise in the Rococo style, possibly while in Rome or travelling to Rome. A few years later, after Goya had established himself in Madrid, he returned to the same theme, but with a noticeably different take. His El apóstol Santiago y sus discípulos adorando a la Virgen del Pilar (1775–1780) puts far more emphasis on the person of Saint James by enlarging his figure to the forefront while, in contrast, placing a definitely more statuesque, iconic Virgin (and Christ child) on a distant pedestal.20 It is possible, or at least we would conjecture, that Goya had taken some flak from the church establishment for earlier daring to portray the Virgin in a highly classical, humanist manner, and then wanted to rectify this perceived problem with a more strictly conservative approach.
A full century earlier than Goya, however, another prominent painter having no qualms about utilizing a classicist manner for religious themes, but reportedly paying dearly for it with a lack of church commissions, was the influential French-born artist Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Poussin was a near exact contemporary of Francisco de Zurbáran (see Chapter 1), but worked in a completely different environment. By the time he was in his mid–30s, Poussin resided in Rome, where he would remain, except for an unhappy two-year return to France in 1640–1642, as a base of operations for a very long and productive career. Circa 1628–1630, he painted his Virgin of the Pillar Appearing to St. James the Greater, today the property of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The work is a tour de force of Baroque mastery, executed during the culmination of the Counter-Reformation era and early stages of the Thirty Years War in Europe. It also represents a culmination of sorts for Poussin’s early period as a painter, a period in which he at one point fell seriously ill, recovered, and met his future wife-to-be in the process. In the immediate wake of his grisly Martyrdom of St. Erasmus (1628), Poussin probably realized that official church commissions would be scarce in coming thereafter, and earned his living mainly through the distinguished private patronage of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, along with Barberini’s sophisticated and discerning secretary, Cassiano dal Pozzo. For the Barberini circle in Rome, Poussin produced a dazzling series of works delving into both sacred and secular subject matter, oftentimes blurring the lines between these supposedly separate categories, all exhibiting his bracing style and highly accomplished manner.21
This kind of sacred-secular boundary crossing had in fact been a notable feature of western art since at least the Renaissance era, and early 17th century artists like Poussin could occasionally take it to new, almost ecstatic extremes. His Virgin of the Pillar provides one such example. Poussin, despite his Catholicism, and like many of the artists and writers surrounding the circle of Cardinal Barberini, was also steeped in the sensual, sometimes profane, pagan world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. His reposed Virgin, cradling the infant Jesus, appears much like one of Poussin’s classical goddesses, complete with supporting cherubim, while James could be easily mistaken for one of his rustic shepherds or smitten lovers of ancient times.22 The missionary saint is surrounded by a small but intrepid band of followers, all overwhelmed to varying degrees by the vision beheld. A serene Mary directs James to continue his efforts and to build her a church, with outstretched hand and pointing gesture reminiscent of Michelangelo’s God creating Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. James, overcome with emotion, hand on heart, intimately contemplates the Virgin and child Jesus almost at point blank range. A cowering disciple at James’ feet recalls Raphael’s earlier depiction of James himself during Christ’s Transfiguration.23 A feeling of swirling transformation or metamorphosis predominates. The young Francisco Goya, also journeying to Rome over a century later, may well have taken his inspiration from Poussin for his very first assay into the same subject matter. In any event, all subsequent depictions of the Marian pillar vision after Poussin appear stilted and tame by comparison.
Returning to the seventh century, by the time of Isidore’s death in 636, another notable passing had occurred not long before in the year 632, located thousands of miles away in the Arabian city of Medina. There, the Prophet Mohammad left behind a religious and cultural legacy that would soon enough leave its indelible stamp on civilization, including the Iberian Peninsula. With the death of King Recceswinth in 672, the last of the strong Visigoth monarchs had passed, and the rest of the century would be marked by civil strife, discord, and decline. Meanwhile, irresistible Islamic armies of the Umayyad Caliphate swept aside most of the decaying Byzantine Empire in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. To the shock of all Christendom, Jerusalem fell in 638. Not long after this in 674–678, a prolonged, all-out siege of Constantinople by the Umayyads was lifted only by the recent Greek invention and intensive, horrific use of naval flame throwers. It seemed a terrible and rather artificial way to preserve what little was left of the old Eastern Roman establishment. Otherwise, Islam was triumphant everywhere it opted to plant its standards. In hindsight, it was easy to see what was about to transpire, as Umayyad forces launched probing raids into southern Iberia from North Africa opposite Gibraltar during the latter part of the century. As Visigoth nobility quarreled amongst themselves for petty power and prestige, European history was about to undergo a major turning point. Nevertheless, with this unexpected shift would also come countless other unexpected results, setting the stage for even greater changes in the following centuries and beyond.