tones the final touch to one of the most dramatic scenes ever witnessed in a Christian church. It reminded me of the moment when I saw the aged Pope Leo X. carried to his throne in St. Peter’s at Rome (on the occasion of his Jubilee), while clarion music imitated the singing of angels in the great cupola of Michael Angelo. Señor Villa-Amil has discovered that Sergius I. (687-701) provided a censer, according to the biography of this pope quoted by Anastasius the librarian: “_Thymiamaterium aureum columnis, ... quod suspendit arte eandum imaginum S. Petri, in quo incensum et odor suavitatis festis diebus missarum solemnia celebrantur omnipotenti Deo opulentius mittitur_.” Villa-Amil believes, with Ferreiro, that of this class of suspended censers that of Santiago was probably one of the first. For many years the swinging censer of Santiago was thought to be the only example of the kind, but Señor Benito Alonso has published the following paragraph, which he recently discovered among the Proceedings of the Corporation of Orense, by Inocencio Portabales: “On December 21, 1503, the Corporation of Orense appointed Juan Diaz, a citizen of the town, to the office of administrating and swinging the censer (_botafumeiro_), which was provided with ropes and enormous cords. It was swung in the transept of the Cathedral suspended from the roof of the lantern on Christmas Day, at Easter, Pentecost, Ascension, Corpus, St. John the Baptist’s Day, St. Peter’s Day, etc.”[92] It is clear, then, that in the Cathedral of Orense, as well as in that of Santiago, there was a swinging censer in use during the Middle Ages. But to return to the pilgrims: the roads of Christendom were so crowded with them that Dante exclaims-- “Mira mira ecco il Barone Per cui laggiu si visita Galizia.” “At the marriage of our Edward I., in 1254, with Leonora, sister of Alfonso _el Sabio_, a special bodyguard for English pilgrims was demanded; but they came in such numbers that the French took alarm, and when Enrique II. was enabled by the aid of France to dethrone Don Pedro, he was compelled to prevent any English whatever from entering Spain without the French king’s permission. The capture of Santiago by John of Gaunt increased the difficulties.... Rymer mentions 916 licences granted to English in 1428, and 2460 in 1434. In the Middle Ages the duty of a pilgrimage to Compostela was absolutely necessary in many cases to take up an inheritance.”[93] A guide-book for the use of English pilgrims was published in the fourteenth century, entitled _The Way from the Lond of Engelond unto Sent Jamez in Galiz_.[94]