Camino de Santiago de Compostela

[Priscillian]

The Santiago Enigma is gathering great speed and Geert tantalises us with hints! I recently returned from a research/book promo trip to Compostela, and while there I learned that the building work on the Cathedral was started by the Bishop Diego Pelaez. He was charged with treason - seemingly for trying to establish a separate Galician state - and thrown into jail. Work stopped for a while, then Pelaez was replaced by Diego Gelmirez, who was not, by all accounts, a very popular bishop, although a very powerful one who liked his luxuries. An uprising against him was overthrown, and work continued, along with the Portico de Gloria. Gelmirez seems to have destroyed a good part of the old church.
I am interested if there are any armchair historians out there who can point me in suitable directions to get started on my research about this man. My book on Priscillian (A "Novel of the Camino") - http://pilgrimagetoheresy.com begs for a continuation, and this might be a direction I will take, so all assistance would be very much appreciated.
Tracy Saunders

[PILGRIMSPLAZA]

Pilgrimage is of all people, faiths, sferes and ages - for hunters, gatherers and smorgasbordians:

[...to get started on my research about this man... ] Fletcher makes a good start with his book
'Saint James's Catapult : The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela' on http://libro.uca.edu/sjc/sjc.htm

and a fine follow up:
http://www.librarything.com/author/fletcherra&norefer=1 - 'Disambiguation Notice: "The R.A. Fletcher who wrote "Travelling palaces" (first published before 1914) is not the same person as Richard Alexander Fletcher, historian: born 28 March 1944; Lecturer in History, York University 1969-87, Senior Lecturer 1987- 91, Reader 1991- 98, Professor 1998-2001 (Emeritus); married Rachel Toynbee (one son, two daughters); died Nunnington, North Yorkshire 28 February 2005. Source: The Independent (London) 8 March 2005"'

http://www.librarything.com/work/213272 - by R. A. Fletcher - The cross and the crescent : Christianity and Islam from Muhammad to the…

http://www.librarything.com/work/97921 - by Richard Fletcher - The barbarian conversion : from paganism to Christianity

http://www.librarything.com/work/22088 - by Richard Fletcher - Moorish Spain
http://www.librarything.com/work/98222 - by Richard Fletcher - The quest for El Cid
http://www.librarything.com/work/5057474 - by Richard Fletcher - El Cid/ The Quest for El Cid

http://www.librarything.com/work/578070 - by R. A. Fletcher - Who's who in Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Fletcher - 'Richard A. Fletcher (born on March 28, 1944, died on February 28, 2005) was a historian who specialized in the medieval period. He was Professor of History at the University of York and one of the outstanding talents in English and Spanish medieval scholarship. • Christian-Muslim Understanding in the Later Middle Ages (2003).'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 424303.ece -
'(...) He became an increasingly assured master of the memorable historical judgment. His Saint James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (1984) exemplified his ability to create an exciting detective story from apparently intractable source material.
(…) Fletcher’s intellectual horizons were no longer confined to medieval Spain and Anglo-Saxon England; and in 1997 there appeared his longest and most remarkable work, The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity 371-1386.
(…) The World of El Cid (2000), an invaluable edition of the four principal chronicles of the Spanish Reconquista, published in collaboration with Professor Simon Barton, had proved that his formidable powers of minute textual analysis were undimmed.
(…) In the elegiac final paragraphs of The Conversion of Europe, he meditated on the mysterious way in which, a mile above his parish church of St Gregory’s Minster at Kirkdale — where he is buried — the little Hodge Beck plunges underground only to re-emerge down the valley as unpredictably as it had earlier disappeared.
In an image worthy of his greatest master, the Venerable Bede, Fletcher invited his readers to consider the thought that the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the progress of so-called “history” and even the enigma of human life itself are as inexplicable but as “numinous and sacred” as the course of that little Yorkshire stream.'