At length we reached a church with pyramidal towers like the one over the treasury of Santiago Cathedral; this was the _Colegiata de Iria, Santa Maria de Iria_. From the earliest days of Christianity in Galicia this church, or the one that preceded it on this spot, has been the seat of a bishopric; it numbers the names of many illustrious men among its bishops. It was a bishop of Iria, _Teodomiro_, who discovered the sepulchre of St. James. In the days of Miro, King of the Sueves (569-583), there was a bishop here with the name of Andrew, who played a conspicuous part in the church councils of Lugo and Braga.[230] The principal entrance of this edifice, which is Romanesque, does not date further back than the thirteenth century, and the rest of the building (all but the sarcophagi in the _capilla major_ and the towers) is work of the eighteenth century. There was formerly a bishop’s palace attached, but not a trace of it now remains. Twenty-eight bishops who fled here for refuge at the time of the Mohammedan invasion are buried inside the church. On the chief altar there is a very old Byzantine statue of the Virgin, in stone. An archbishop of Santiago, Rodrigo de Luna, was also buried here (1450-1460); his sarcophagus is opposite that containing a bishop of Orense, which is much more ancient. Beneath the chief altar of the church is preserved the rock to which the disciples are supposed to have fastened their boat when they brought St. James’s body from Joppa. On the rock are some letters of a Roman inscription to which various archæologists have devoted much time and thought. Pilgrims to Santiago hold this boulder in great veneration, and feel it their bounden duty to visit it; the name for it is _el pedron_, the big rock, and some derive the name of the town from it, though it is more likely that Padron is from _el padron_, _i.e._ St. James the Apostle. Close to the church is the bank of the river to which the disciples moored their boat; it is still called _Barca_ in memory of that event.