Despite all of Oviedo and not the Lord,” and artifacts that are as contentious as they are firmly entrenched in the public consciousness, such as the Holy Shroud or the hydra of the wedding at Cana, it is still important to keep in mind that the capital of Asturia was crucial to the formation and strengthening of the Jacobean routes, which have been traversing the northwest of the peninsula since the Middle Ages in pursuit of the ancestral domains of the finis terrae. In the ninth century, a growing kingdom The Kingdom of Asturias was expanding rapidly in the ninth century. In order to build a new Toledo and a royal see whose stronghold would frighten the Muslims who controlled more than half of the Peninsula, the monarch Alfonso II The Chaste relocated the court from Pravia to Oviedo/Uviéu. In this regard, Bishop Teodomiro, who oversaw the diocese of Iria Flavia, sent an embassy to the city with ominous news: a hermit named Paio had recently found a tomb in a Gallaecian woodland that contained the relics of the Apostle St. called Paio had recently found a tomb containing the remains of St. James, the apostle. The first Pilgrim’s Way to Santiago was born shortly after the monarch and his warriors decided to travel and witness the discovery for themselves. That’s what the mythology says, anyway. Even if the reality was more mundane, it was nonetheless fascinating. Given this, the appearance of an entire apostle’s body within the Asturorum Regnum’s borders was a foreboding political move that simultaneously served two purposes: first, to bring a nation together where minor uprisings and internal conflicts still occasionally occurred; second, to gain allies overseas and portray itself as a center of strength with the strongest support. The message was unmistakable: if Santiago himself lies beneath our land, then the divine is undoubtedly on our side.
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