The first care of King Alfonso was to raise a sanctuary on the spot where the tomb had just been miraculously discovered. Built in haste, and at a time when, owing to the unsettled state of the kingdom, the royal resources were very limited, the edifice was of a very humble character as regarded both size and materials: “Petra et luto opus parvum” is the description given of it in the Act of Erection of the second church, built later by Alfonso III. The king was nevertheless able to endow it with a certain revenue, and to secure a permanent provision to its ministers. The archives of Compostella long preserved a privilege granted by Alfonso the Chaste, in virtue of which all the lands with their villages, for three miles round, were made over to the church. Spain was speedily made aware of the discovery; the neighboring nations, and in particular the Gauls, heard of it also, and the faithful from both countries flocked in great numbers to the tomb, drawn by the fame of the miracles which immediately began to be wrought there, and of which Valafrid Strabo, who died in the year 849, makes mention: _Plurima hic præsul patravit signa stupenda_. The relations of Gaul with Christian Spain were at that time very frequent. The infidels were the common enemy. Charles Martel had driven them from Gaul, but the struggle that still went on south of the Gallic frontiers had an intense interest for all Christendom. Charlemagne was allied in friendship with Alfonso the Chaste, though it is doubtful whether he ever made the pilgrimage of Compostella, as some have said. It is, however, certain that he joined his entreaties to those of the king of Leon to obtain from Pope Leo III. the transfer of the bishopric of Iria to Compostella. This was the name already borne by the town which had rapidly risen round the apostle’s tomb, and which was given in remembrance of the starlike lights which had revealed its locality—_Campus Stellæ_. The pope granted the request of the two monarchs. Compostella replaced the bishopric of Iria and remained suffragan to the archbishop of Braga until the town of St. James should be raised to the metropolitan dignity. King Alfonso, who had no children, offered to bequeath his throne to Charlemagne, on condition that that monarch would drive the Moors out of Spain. Charlemagne accepted the terms and crossed the Pyrenees; but the Spanish princes, disapproving of Alfonso’s proposal, leagued together against the emperor, and some of them, later on, allied themselves with the Moorish king of Saragossa, and destroyed at Roncesvaux the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army, in which perished Roland, the hero _par excellence_ of the lays and chronicles of the time.