Saint James' Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostella

by Richard Fletcher

Book by Fletcher, R. A.

Genres: History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1984

About the author

Richard Alexander Fletcher was a historian who specialized in the medieval period. He was Professor of History at the University of York and one of the outstanding talents in English and Spanish medieval scholarship.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having hiked the Camino from Le Puy to Santiago, and then from Porto north, I have long been curious about the cult of St. James. This long work does not disappoint.
Fletcher is marvelous as an historian. Humble, he is even self-effacing at times, eager to admit his contraints and usually unwilling to speculate. He apologizes at one point writing, "This is necessarily, perhaps distastefully, speculative."

[José Luís Fernandes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a nice and informative book on bishop Diego Gelmírez and medieval Galicia. Although some detail on Galicia was lacking (namely the evolution of the region as a space from Roman Gallaecia) and some informations are outdated by more recent scholarship, Richard Fletcher was very witty in his observations and this work is a valuable source on medieval Galicia (with quite some breakthroughs by the time it was written), besides being the only one available on Diego Gelmírez in English (if a work in the 1940's isn't counted).

By the way, a legal ebook version is housed here: Saint James' Catapult