ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a specific, but fundamental, part of the construction of the legend of the Apostle St James over several centuries. It aims to identify the issues inherent in texts featuring the legend, contextualizes those issues through information brought to light by historical documents, and tries to order them. Logically, in certain circumstances, religious figures and monarchs played a lead role in developing the legend. They would put their diplomatic skills, strengths and resources into the development and transmission of an historical identity, an understanding of which would entail piecing together its past, real or not, with a prosperous future. The seventeenth century was a crucial period for the publication of studies about the evangelization, translation and interment of St James in Compostela, as much for the controversy surrounding the patronage of the Apostle instead of St Teresa of Avila as for the onset of editing of hagiographies at the hands of the Bollandists.
