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Rh dition of Christianity, and no doubt endeavoured, with but partial success, to convert their retainers to their faith. They collected around Pelagius or Pelayo, a Visigothic noble who was proclaimed King of the Asturias, and they succeeded in inflicting a defeat upon the Moors in 718, and so retained their small corner of the peninsula for the Christian faith. Pelayo's little band had at one time been reduced to thirty men and ten women, but they adhered to their cause, and in time wrested more land from the invaders; later Pelayo's son-in-law, Alfonso of Cantabria, united the few Christian elements in these north-western provinces, and in 751 began a series of brilliant campaigns against the Moors, thus recovering from them the provinces of Old Castile, Leon, Asturias and Galicia. Intermittent warfare between Christians and Moslems, known as the Holy War, continued for about two centuries, during which period neither side gained any appreciable advantage.

It seems to have been about this time that the cult of St. James was first introduced into the peninsula, for the first mention of it that can be found is in a book on the festivals of the Apostles by Ado, who lived from 800 to 875. Of St. James he relates "the sacred bones of this blessed Apostle, having been carried to Spain and to the uttermost confines thereof, namely those which are situated opposite to the British Sea, were honoured by the most distinguished worship of the people there." Pardiac, who published in 1863 a pamphlet on the Pilgrimages to Compostella, says that the remains of the Apostle were found there in 816, but he does not give his authority for that date, but Vasaeus, in his Chronicle of Spain, mentions the event under the date 798. It is said that pilgrimages to the shrine were undertaken as early as 849. It seems clear