In this article from 1948, Dr Richard Hayes provides a brief history of the deep religious, military, and educational links between Ireland and Spain, via the Camino de Santiago de Compostella.
Richard Hayes was a medical doctor, nationalist, historian, and film censor. Further information on his accomplished life can be found at his entry on the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Richard Hayes, ‘Ireland’s links with Compostella’, Studies: An Irish Review, Vol. 37, No. 147 (September, 1948), 326 – 332. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30100220
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Spain, so intimately associated in various ways with Ireland through several centuries, has few places that call up so many Irish memories as Compostella (Santiago de Compostella) in Galicia. With a picturesque setting amidst its circle of hills, it was in the middle ages one of the great pilgrimage centres of western Christendom. A romantic tradition attributes its musical-sounding name to the place, campus stellae, where the city rose up in the ninth century. The tradition tells that Theodomis, bishop of Iria, guided by a star, journeyed to the spot and, discovering there the long-lost relics of Saint James the Apostle, made it the most famous shrine in Europe. To it during the succeeding centuries came the faithful, rich and poor, prince and peasant, merchant and beggar, from distant nations. In their pilgrims’ dress – loose frock or long smock with belt and wallet, low-crowned, broad-rimmed hat, staff and sandal shoon – they travelled together on foot in companies, the highways resounding with their hymns and prayers. Passing across southern France, they crossed the Spanish frontier over a high mountain road to Roncevalles with its welcoming hospice; and then from Puenta la Reina near-by the road led westwards to Compostella in the last stage of a long and fatiguing journey. A perilous journey too, for they were not infrequently attacked by lawless bands who robbed them without compunction; and for their protection from this danger a Spanish association was formed, which became the foundation of the Military Order of Santiago, one of the Four Orders of Chivalry of Spain.
The thirteenth century marks the earliest recorded association of Ireland with Compostella. In the year 1210 Archbishop Henry of Dublin issued a decree to establish a hospital for pilgrims preparing to go to the city of Saint James at Compostella. A contemporary record gives some details regarding it as follows: “For the benefit of those whose departure for Compostella might be delayed by adverse weather a hospital was erected in Dublin on the sea shore at the Steyn, where they might find bed and board until they could sail. They were to be attended by ten chaplains, who were to wear black cloaks with a white cross on the breast, and this rest house was to be endowed with part of the revenues of the suppressed diocese of Glendalough.” In 1216 Pope Innocent III confirmed the union of the sees of Dublin and Glendalough on condition that with part of the revenues of the see of Glendalough a hospice should be erected near the priory of All Hallows beside the Steyn.
In the succeeding centuries down to the Reformation, various Irish annals contain records of the pilgrimages to Compostella made by notable Irish chiefs of different parts of Ireland. The Annals of Lough Ce tell that in the year 1428 Aedh, son of Philip MagUidhir, died at Ceann-Saile on his journey home from the Rock of Saint James and was interred at Corcach “after the triumph of unction and penance.” The Annals of Ulster describe the same event with slightly more detail: “1428. Aedh, son of Philip MagUidhir, went on his pilgrimage to the city of Saint James; to wit, the son of a sub-king that was best of hospitality in his own time and that was most spoken of in Ireland. And he died this year after cleansing of his sins in the city of Saint James. And the night that he came to land in Ireland he died in Kinsale with victory of penance on August 11.” In the next generation the Four Masters write that another Maguire, Thomas Og of the same great house of Fermanagh, “the most charitable and pious and hospitable man of his day, the protector of his country against external tribes, the founder of monasteries and churches and the maker of chalices, a man who had been once at Rome and twice at the city of Saint James on his pilgrimage, died and was interred in the monastery of Cavan, which he had selected as his burial place.” The Annals of Ulster, too, sing his requiem: “MagUidhir died this year (1480), a man of greatest charity and piety and hospitality that was in his own time, and a man that made churches and monasteries and Mass chalices and who died with the victory of penance.”
In 1445 the Four Masters record the pilgrimage of an illustrious Irish-woman, Margaret O’Carroll of Ely, who was renowned as the generous supporter of native culture in the days of the Gaelic renaissance in the fifteenth century: “Margaret, daughter of O’Carroll, Lord of Ely (patron of all the learned men of Ireland), wife of Calvagh O’Connor Faly, Lord of Offaly. In 1445 she with a company of patriots, MacGeoghegan and others, hardened by long fighting against the English, went on pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella.” For this same year it is recorded that several chiefs of the Irish of Ireland, with many noble and ignoble persons, went to the city of Saint James, while seven years later Margaret O’Carroll’s husband, Calvagh, “defender of his country for sixty years”, set out on the same journey. In 1472 Fineen O’Driscoll Mor, lord of Baltimore, died after returning from Compostella; his son Tadhg too, after performing the same pilgrimage, died penitently before the end of a month after his father’s death. In the same year the Corporation of Waterford passed an act enabling the mayor and officials to leave the city, either to parley with the Irish enemy or English rebels or in time of pestilence or to go to Saint James’s in Spain. A few years later the same body permitted James Rice the mayor to go there “according to a vow made before he took office.” And finally the Four Masters chronicle the tragic fate of a Cork chieftain on his way home from Spain in 1507: “The Barry Roe went on a pilgrimage to Spain attended by many of the chiefs of his people; and after having performed their pilgrimage they went into a ship to return, and their death or their living has not been known ever since. Upon the pilgrimage aforesaid along with The Barry (An Barraigh) was drowned Donnell, the son of Tiege, son of Gilla-Michíl O’Fiaich, qualified by his knowledge of Latin and poetry to become chief professor of history for Ireland and Scotland.”
The Irish chiefs and merchants who went to Compostella frequently combined business with their pilgrimage. The great annual Fair of Saint James in that city was specially patronised by them, and these visits contributed materially to the establishment of close commercial relationships between their country and Spain. That relationship during the Middle Ages and on to the seventeenth century was extensive. While Irish merchants met at Compostella traders from all parts of Spain, the merchants of the latter country on the other hand came and went to and from Ireland. “The Irish chiefs,” writes Mrs. Green, “were used to make the pilgrimage to Compostella two or three times, and commerce followed the road of pilgrimage and intercourse”. Frequent references to this intercourse are found in English State Papers. Complaints were made especially of the business carried on between Irish rebels and the Spanish fishing fleets, which paid no tax or duty to the royal coffers of England. All round the Munster and Connacht coasts it was reported that the Spaniards had the entire trade in fishing and the buying of hides and that they supplied the natives with salt, iron, guns and powder. One result was that, during and after the Middle Ages, Spanish coin was practically the only currency of Ireland – “the Spanish gold and silver is the coin that most aboundeth (in Ireland) and is chiefly concerned in that nation, especially Connaught and Munster.” (Cal. of State Papers, Eliz. 1600-01). Another result was the Spanish influences of various kinds on seaports like Dublin, Galway, Drogheda, Dingle, Waterford, Limerick, etc.
As early as the twelfth century, during the episcopacy of Saint Laurence O’Toole, a church dedicated to Saint James was erected near Kilmainham. The “Calendar of the Records of Dublin” tells too of the great fair of Saint James in the Irish capital, to which came Spanish merchants and traders; and in the church of Old Townsend Street beside the Steyn, where the hospital for pilgrims was erected, a number of Spaniards were baptised and married. At Galway James Lynch FitzStephen, mayor of the city, built at his own expense the Chapel of Saint James in 1510 – a few years previously his wife Margaret had performed the pilgrimage to Compostella…And at Dingle, with its houses of Spanish architecture – stone balcony windows, marble door and window frames – merchants from Spain built in the sixteenth century the old chapel dedicated to the patron saint of Compostella; while at Limerick, Waterford and other towns similar dedicatory chapels show how widespread the fame and cult of Saint James were throughout Ireland.
Apart from its pilgrim and commercial associations, Compostella evokes other and more appealing Irish memories. Spain has the distinction of being the first continental country to establish Irish colleges for the education of Irishmen abroad. The Elizabethan religious and political persecutions at home, continued into the reign of James I, compelled numbers of them to seek that education abroad. Some settled at Compostella, and in 1605 an Irish college was established there. Philip the Third of Spain, who encouraged the enterprise, endowed it with a thousand crowns annually, while the prelates and nobles of Galicia guaranteed three hundred crowns. The college was placed under the control of Irish members of the Jesuit Order, and its first three professors were Thomas White, William White and Richard Conway three distinguished priests who deserve remembrance for their zealous labours in dark days when they founded Irish colleges in various cities of Spain…This arrangement continued till the expulsion of the Jesuit Order from Spain in 1762 when the institution at Compostella ceased to exist, its functions being transferred to that at Salamanca.
While the Irish College at Compostella thus served as a seminary for the training of priests for Ireland, it served also for some time, as has been, mentioned, as an educational establishment for laymen…there were among the students of the Irish college at Compostella at this time Thadeus O’Driscoll, son to the Lord of Castlehaven; Daniel O’Driscoll, son to the Lord of Baltimore and Thomas Geraldine FitzGerald, son to the Knight of Glin. All of them became soldiers in the Spanish army, while Philip O’Sullivan Beare received a commission in the navy and, in the interval of his official duties, wrote his History of Ireland. Another son of an Irish chief Dominick Collins (O’Coileán), who after a distinguished record as an officer in the French and Spanish armies abandoned his military career to join the Jesuit Order as a lay brother in 1598…
…Contemporary with these was another notable young Irishman who was received with honour on his visit to the city of Saint James. This was Henry O’Neill, son of the Earl of Tyrone, who a few years later achieved high distinction as commander of an Irish regiment in the Spanish Netherlands. In May 1600, while Henry was still a boy, the archbishop of Compostella wrote to Philip III: “In accordance with the royal decree that I should welcome any person sent from Ireland by F. Mateo de Oviedo to Spain, I have received in Santiago Henry, son of the Earl of Tyrone, who comes accompanied by Captain de la Cerda (Spanish agent in Ireland). I have welcomed them spiritually by confession, absolution and Mass, in which they showed themselves truly Catholic; and corporally to the best of my ability”.
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The college at Compostella was for a century and a half not only a seminary for the ecclesiastical education of young men for missionary work at home in Ireland, but was also a refuge for many of the outlawed priests and prelates of various Irish dioceses…A few years ago the Diary of a priest belonging to the archdiocese of Santiago two hundred and fifty years ago was discovered in an old country presbytery near Compostella. Dealing with contemporary events it records the coming to the town of Rianjo of a bishop from Ireland in the year 1586. He is described as a man of about forty-five years old, of good features and extremely pious, who carried out episcopal duties in Compostella on account of the illness of the archbishop. His name, it is added, was Don Thomas who had been forced to leave Ireland through fear of the Lutherans.
Half a century later Thomas Walsh, archbishop of Cashel, exiled during the Cromwellian period, died in 1654 in the city of Saint James where his body was placed in a vault of the cathedral…Round the visit of an Irish prince to Santiago de Compostella are interwoven tragic memories. When the Irish cause was broken at Kinsale in 1601, Red Hugh O’Donnell sailed away to seek fresh aid in Spain. In that country he was nobly received by Count Caracena, who invited him to lodge at his house, but he “being Sea sicke, in good manner refused his curtesie”. After a few days he set out for Compostella, accompanied by the Count and many captains and gentlemen of quality. At the city of Saint James he was received with magnificence by the prelates, citizens and religious persons, and his lodging was made ready for him at the Benedictine House of Saint Martin. But he first visited the archbishop, who instantly prayed him to lodge in his house. Next day the archbishop celebrated Mass with pontifical solemnity, administered Holy Communion to O’Donnell, after which he feasted him at his house. O’Donnell then set out for the King’s palace at Simancas, where again he was nobly received. But he did not get the help for which he sought. He died soon afterwards from poison administered by an English secret agent, and he was buried with pomp and princely honours in the Franciscan monastery of Valladolid.
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