This took place in the year 42. Of the nine years which intervened between the Ascension of our Lord and this event the Holy Scriptures say nothing, and tradition is our only source of information. According to this, St. James departed early from Jerusalem, and, directing his course towards the western countries of Europe, arrived in Spain, where he preached the Gospel and appointed some of the first bishops. Here also, according to an ancient and constant tradition, he caused to be built at Saragossa a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, known as “Our Lady of the Pillar,” and, on the termination of his sojourn in the west, returned to Jerusalem, where, a few days after his arrival, about the time of the Jewish Passover, Herod caused him to be seized and slain.[35] It is certain that the apostles delayed not in obeying the divine command to “go and teach the nations”; neither can one explain in any other manner how the light emanating from Syria so rapidly illumined (as even the infidel critic, Renan, confesses) the three great peninsulas of Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, and soon afterwards the whole coast of the Mediterranean, so that in a short space of time the Christian world was co-extensive with the Roman—_Orbis Romanus, orbis Christianus_. St. Jerome and Theodoret both affirm that Spain was evangelized by some of the apostles. The Gothic liturgy, which is considerably anterior to the Mozarabic, and which dates from the fifth century, is the most ancient interpreter of this tradition. “The illustrious Sons of Thunder,” it says, “have both obtained that which their mother requested for them. John rules Asia, and, on the left, his brother possesses Spain.” The great doctor St. Isidore, who lived in the first half of the seventh century, writes: “James the son of Zebedee ... preached the Gospel to the peoples of Spain and the countries of the west.” The Bollandists furnish a number of additional witnesses.[36] The breviary of St. Pius V. and the enactments of Urban VIII. corroborate their testimony, the Roman Breviary saying also that St. Braulio not only compared St. Isidore to St. Gregory the Great, but declared that he had been given by Heaven to Spain as her teacher in the place of St. James.[37] Whatever opinion may be adopted with regard to the mission of St. James, it does not affect the facts relating to the translation of his body to the Iberian peninsula. The following account of this event is given in the curious _History of Compostella_, written previous to the twelfth century by two canons of that church, and confirmed by a letter of Leo III. which is quoted in the Breviary of Evreux. The facts as there given appear to be free from the legendary embellishments, more or less probable, with which, in certain other manuscripts, they have been adorned.