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I am busy writing a historical novel set in the year 814 about the first pilgrimage of Alfonso II to the burial site of James the Apostle. When the headless body was discovered in the Roman Cemetery in the year 814, James was not yet a Saint.
Two post mortem miracles are required for Sainthood and since his body was hidden these could not have occurred until his body was found.
Wikipedea list the Canonization date of Saint James as "Pre-Congregation" or before 1100 AD when the process was formalized by the Catholic Church. My understanding is that Bishops were naming Saints at the time. Was it Bishop Teodomiro who recorded the miracles required for Sainthood and what were those miracles? After 1100 the Pope had the final determination of Sainthood.
The other requirements are that the candidate led an "exemplary life of goodness and virtue worthy of imitation". As one of Jesus Christs' most trusted Apostles this certainly would have been the case.
The death of a martyr is also highly regarded in the question of Sainthood and James was in fact the very first martyr. All but one of the Apostles died a martyr's death. So James the Fisherman became Saint James some time after 814 but before 1100. Does anyone know more about the details?
I don't think there are any contemporaneous accounts of this happening, are there?However, when miraculous occurrences (sweet smell of roses opening the sarcophagus) and miracle cures of those touching the relic began to occur, King Alfonso and Bishop Teomodiro could conclude that the identity of the relic, had to be a Saint. Only a Saint could perform such miracles from the grave.
I think that Priscillian is a strong contender. A forum member posted a lot about this in the earlier days of the forum and wrote a book about it.Of course the biggest clue is that King Alfonso and Bishop Teomodiro have found a be-headed skeleton. How many Saints were beheaded and then buried in Galicia?
Actually the fact that there is almost nothing recorded about Alfonso II or about his First Pilgrimage from Oviedo to the Roman cemetery has allowed me a great deal of literary license to re-create the events.Anyway, make something up long after the facts had happened- that is in the best centuries-old Jacobean and narrative tradition.
Erm ... a bold guess: Charlemagne from the Frankish Empire founded a lot more churches and gave them a financial start-up push than Alfonso from the kingdom of Asturias ☺? As to the biographies: I remember that I actually looked up what Einhard wrote about the last battle and death of the guy from the North of France aka Roland. A single line or two, that's all. Very disappointing. And are Saint James and Compostela even mentioned in these two biographies? Anyway, best of luck for your novel - will Charlemagne be in it?Both men had long reigns and both oversaw much building of Churches
“Emperor Charlemagne was one of the tallest men I have ever seen. He was not a robust man, but lean and strong and when I first met him presiding over his court at Aachen, he was wearing an otter coat covered by a cobalt blue cloak. He always seemed to carry a sword with a decorated silver hilt at his side.will Charlemagne be in it?
Which is what I realized with the aid of folks who posted helpful comments.It's a completely anachronistic question, as the earliest Saints were simply accepted as being so.
“Emperor Charlemagne was one of the tallest men I have ever seen. He was not a robust man, but lean and strong and when I first met him presiding over his court at Aachen, he was wearing an otter coat covered by a cobalt blue cloak. He always seemed to carry a sword with a decorated silver hilt at his side.
“In the morning, he loved to take one of his many horses out for a ride and he was said to be an excellent horseman and an expert judge of equine bloodlines. Like his Frankish warrior ancestors, his favorite activity was hunting, but he also loved to swim and to visit the hot baths, sometimes with dozens of other men accompanying him.
“He always seemed to be jovial and laughed out loud a great deal. And while he was of a lofty height and slender, he had a prominent belly that jostled up and down when he laughed. His eyes were bright and large, his eyebrows were bushy and his nose was a bit long. He wore his hair long in the manner of Frankish royalty.
“Charlemagne loved to eat, particularly a roast from the day’s hunt. He did not drink very much and he showed much displeasure with some of the priests from Gascony and Toulouse who drank too much wine while at the synod in Aachen. At the diner table, he liked to either listen to music or to have a book read to him. He particularly liked the stories of the heroic deeds of olden times. It was said that his favorite book was The City of God by Saint Augustine.
“Charlemagne maintained many private estates about his kingdom. During his life, he had eighteen children with eight of his ten wives and concubines. He surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant scholars of our day including Alcuin of York who taught him astronomy. Charlemagne was fascinated by the movement of the stars and of the phases of the moon. He brought learned men into his circle from all over Western Europe, there was Paul the Deacon from Lombard, Einhart of Reichenau, Peter of Pisa an Italian and the Visigoth Theodulf from Septimania. And yet, as I have said Charlemagne himself could not write! It is such an irony.
“He was the greatest King in so many respects. He was the greatest warrior and tactician and brought territories under his control from the Danish March in the north all the way down to Rome in the south, a distance of one thousand miles. He was the greatest administrator, reforming the monetary system and creating the silver denier at 240 coins to a pound of silver. He was the greatest supporter of the Catholic Church and he expanded monastic schools and increased to production of books at their scriptoria. He protected the poor and revived hospitals all over his kingdom.
Your suggestion would require that the events of my novel take place in the Carolingian Empire perhaps at Aachen. My narrative starts in Oviedo and ends at the Roman cemetery in what would become Santiago de Compostela. The entire novel is set in Asturias and Galicia.I would personally suggest weaving all of that into the narrative, rather than such bland description.
example : Not "Charlemagne loved to eat, particularly a roast from the day’s hunt", but depict such events within the story.
Have you written any books?
I have one Character who is not a Christian, who is King Alfonso's "foreign minister" and who is my skeptic about Saint James not being buried in the Roman cemetery. From the very beginning of the novel I drop hints and suggestions about how things "don't add up", have been invented about the mythology of Saint James. The King Alfonso character and his Benedictine Confessor are on the other hand totally bought into the myth.The problem is that we have the tendency of being too explicit and obvious about characters and situations; we don't let the reader *imagine* things. IMHO, suggestions, indirects, dropping hints here and there, make for a more interesting narrative.
This is a statue of Alfonso II that I took photo of outside Oviedo's Cathedral - "The First Pilgrim"I liked your description of the king. It is clear, and it flows.
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