Myth or reality, this "discovery" was quickly magnified by the Galician-Asturian monarch, Alphonse II (791–842), who in the same year ordered build a church around the tomb "holy", spreading the news throughout Christendom. The diocese of Iria and her owner, became the most powerful ecclesiastical administration not only of high-medieval Gallaecia, but the entire Iberian Peninsula, increasing its power with the constant royal donations to the church of Santiago de Compostela. Transformed into the third pilgrim centre of Christianity, – just after Jerusalem and Rome – was from the 11th and 12th centuries especially when from many parts of Europe began arriving pilgrims, both from Occitania, France, Navarra and Aragon-Catalonia (by land) and from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and German territories (by sea).