Note 35 — VOL. XXVI., No. 152.—NOVEMBER, 1877.

The fact of St. James having taken this journey has been generally considered indubitable, although Baronius held it as uncertain. Mariana, in his history, affirms that all written documents were destroyed in Spain, first by the persecution of Diocletian, and afterwards by the Moorish invasion and its attendant wars. The silence of ancient testimony is thus fully explained, and the learned Suarez, writing on the subject, says: “It matters little that the local histories of the time make no mention of this journey of St. James; for, besides that nothing happened in it so extraordinary or notorious that the renown thereof would necessarily spread abroad, Spain had at that period no writers careful to collect the facts of her history, and strangers would not be likely to know anything about it, especially as being of a religious nature, concerning which men would not trouble themselves at all.... If St. Luke had not left in writing the acts of St. Peter and St. Paul, many of their journeyings would be forgotten, or rest only upon such traditions as might be preserved by the churches they founded.”