THE CHRISTIAN REALMS 233over the Asturians, Galicians, Basques and the newly arrived Mozarabs,
had the necessary qualifications for imperium or imperial rule, and
the ideology of 'the Spanish Emperor' that was developed during
the reigns of his successors Alfonso VI and Alfonso VII is thought to
make its first appearance in his time. Any such conception of the
imperium of the Asturian king was probably most influenced by Frank-
ish ideas and the example of the Carolingians. It has no real roots in
the Visigothic past or in Roman tradition as applied to Spain. An
interesting letter survives from Alfonso III sent in 906 to the monks
of the Abbey of St Martin at Tours in which he expressed interest in
purchasing a Carolingian imperial crown that he believed them to
possess; he also offers to send them what from its description can
only be a copy of the Lives of the Fathers of Merida. 17 No reply is known.
One of the most striking visual survivals from the times of Alfonso
III is the monastic church of San Salvador de Valdedios in the eastern
Asturias, founded by the king in 893 and where, according to a very
late tradition, he spent his last days. It retains traces of its original
wall paintings which are stylistically akin to those of Alfonso II's church
of St Julian in Oviedo. Alfonso III also continued the work of his
namesake in respect of the cult of Stjames. He also built the second
church at Santiago de Compostela (c. 879-896) to replace the smaller
one erected by Alfonso II a century earlier. This, however, was to be
destroyed by Al Man~iir in 997 and eventually succeeded by the present
magnificent Romanesque cathedral.
The question of the cult of St James, the brother of St John, and
its significance in the period of the Asturian kingdom is a very vexed
one.^18 The principal source for the early history of the cult and the
reverence it received is the twelfth-century Historia Compostelana
(Compostelan History), which is a prejudiced witness. The belief that
St James preached in Spain and that after his death in Jerusalem his
body was brought back to the peninsula for burial near Iria Flavia
in Galicia has left no trace in the Roman and Visigothic periods,
although from outside of Spain there is a reference in a poem of the
English monk Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne (d. 709) to St James
having preached in the peninsula.
In the ninth century, traditionally in 813, but it may have been two
or three decades later, Bishop Theodemir of Iria Flavia (now ,called
Padron) claimed to have discovered the body of the saint buried in
a rural site a few miles from his see. Successive churches, as has been
mentioned, were erected on the spot to honour and house the relics,