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their struggle against the Indians as it had been in the past against the Moors. On March 12, 1519, when Cortes was in danger of perishing in the mud by the River Grijalba, in the words of Bernal Diaz the soldier chronicler: ‘We were in mortal danger until we reached the bank, but then calling upon My Lord Santiago we charged the enemy fiercely and drove him back.’ On the march towards the mysterious city of Montezuma, when the small force of Cortes was attacked ceaselessly by the Indians in overwhelming numbers, Cortes shouted the war-cry, “Santiago y a ellos” (“St. James and at ’em”), and with the help of the Apostle the Indians were driven back with great slaughter.
    The help of the Apostle again was sought in the misadventures of the ‘sad night’, when the bridge over the lake collapsed and men and horses fell into the water amidst a shower of arrows from the Indian bowmen. ‘What dismay and horrors we felt’, says Bernal Diaz, ‘when in the dark we heard the cries of the victims calling upon Our Lady and My Lord Santiago for help’.
    A supreme instance of the intervention of St. James took place in the Battle of Otumba, when the Spanish survivors, during their harassed retreat from Mexico, had to turn at bay against the huge army of Guatemoc. Bernal Diaz, in the course of his description (for sheer epic grandeur, unequalled in literature) adds that the Apostle was seen in the battle on horseback driving back the enemy. And in the South American continent Francisco Pizarro, in preparing his daredevil enterprise at Cajamarca against the Inca Atahualpa and his army, gave the cry “Santiago” as the sign to attack. With the help of the Apostle, in half an hour, an army of forty thousand Indians was routed by Pizarro’s handful of men on horse and foot.
    A proof of the prestige won by the Apostle in America is the number of cities, towns and villages in the new world which bear his name. He became as great a celebrity among the Portuguese as among the Spaniards, and protected their explorers and conquistadors as devotedly as he did the Spaniards, and the cult of the Apostle was especially strong in the Archdiocese of Braga. From the Jesuit historian, Father Juan Pedro Maffeo’s History of the East Indians, we learn that the Portuguese attributed their conquest of Goa not only to the Cross but also to ‘the Apostle St. James, the president of the Spaniards’. *

ST. JAMES REACHES THE APOGEE

    The capture of Granada and the fall of Moorish power in Spain marks the apogee of St. James’s influence, for at that time the number of pilgrims who flocked to Compostella was greater than ever before; so great in fact that Ferdinand and Isabel, knowing how poor was the accommodation provided for pilgrims in Compostella, devoted funds raised on the occasion of the capture of Granada to the erection of a Royal Hospital close to the Cathedral, where pious pilgrims might find shelter and the sick be nursed. This was a scheme particularly dear to Isabel, who had followed her army into battle, spurring on the soldiers, raising the courage of those who were faint from long exposure and tending the sick and wounded. She had been the first to establish military hospitals at the front, and we might look upon her as the Florence Nightingale of her time. It was thus natural that she and Ferdinand should manifest their gratitude for the conquest of Granada by attributing the success of their enterprise to the national hero-saint, St. James, and by exacting as other monarchs had done from time to time, the tribute of a bushel of grain on every pair of oxen, horses, mules and asses used in agriculture throughout Spain. This tribute was to be devoted to the erection of the Royal Hospital at Compostella and the repair of the Cathedral.
    The foundations of the Royal Hospital were laid in 1501 and it was ready to receive pilgrims in 1511. Not only was their building with its beautiful sculptures and sublime decorations one of