The _Salve Regina_ made its first appearance in history as the product of Galician soil. We have seen that that royal troubadour of the thirteenth century, King Alfonso _el Sabio_, introduced a legend of the origin of the _Salve_ into his _Cantigas_.[69] “Where,” asks Dr. Oviedo, “did he get that legend?” It is precisely those of his cantigas which have to do with this legend that give us the most difficulty, and whose source we are to-day unable to trace.[70] The fact is, that the source of all _Canciones_ of the _Salve_, no matter whose name they bear, is popular tradition, which had its rise in Santiago, at the tomb of St. James, at the sepulchre of St. Pedro de Mezonzo. From this source the story spread, first all over Galicia and then all over Spain. In the last decade of the eleventh century the _Salve_--carried by the pilgrims--was being intoned in countries far from the land of its birth. But it gained such an early popularity in Spain as to be reflected in Spanish lyric poetry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at which time it had not yet begun to influence the poetry of France.
The reader cannot fail to be struck, while perusing the pages of Dr. Oviedo’s thesis, with the patient perseverance and the stubborn determination with which these battles over the authorship of the _Salve_ has been carried on by French, German, and Spanish patriots wishing to claim the glory for their own respective lands. But now, if fresh combatants enter the lists, their efforts will have to be superhuman indeed if they are to refute the proofs brought forward by this valiant Gallegan to show that Galicia rightfully claims the authorship of the _Salve Regina_.
In the summer of 1906 there appeared a startling article in the newspapers of Galicia,[71] entitled “The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.” It began with the question, “Who was the first Western Theologian to Defend the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception?” “Dr. Eladio Oviedo,” it continued, “has brought about quite a revolution in history by affirming that before Eadmer must be mentioned Pedro de Compostela.” “Eadmer,” wrote Dr. Oviedo, “was an English monk of the twelfth century, educated under the rule of St. Anselm in the celebrated school of philosophy at Canterbury. He wrote about the year 1151 _De Conceptione Sanctae Mariae_--in which he argued, against all the most learned doctors of his time, that the Virgin Mary was born immaculate. Not only England, but France, Belgium, Germany, and even Spain believed till now that Eadmer was the first to defend this theory. But they were all wrong. About the year 1140, Pedro Compostelano (Petrus Micha, according to Lopez Ferreiro) wrote a treatise entitled _De Consolatione Rationis_, of which a manuscript, possibly the original, is still preserved in the Escurial Library, but, alas, unpublished. In this treatise Pedro presents, in the form of an allegory to Catholic Reason, the questions which occupied his mind, and, among them, that of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. It is in the form of a dialogue, and begins thus--