Background Information

Here is some background information from my journal of last years trip. It should explain some stuff.

A pilgrim you ask? How did this come about? I am not so sure of its genesis. I clearly remember studying the children’s crusade in sixth grade and poring over an illustration in a history text that featured a long haired knight on a mighty steed. That certainly stirred some sort of pubescent longing that may not have been purely religious. My quite vivid memory had the knight surrounded by a bunch of ragamuffin children. He was a sort of amalgam of those very lordly men featured in the recent LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy—so surely other forces were at work in my current quest.

Our nun/teacher at the time truthfully pointed out that few if any of those children made it to their heroic destination. Rather most perished ignominiously in Europe. But she left us with the impression that it was a valiant enterprise nonetheless. Since I would also have learned about medieval pilgrimages around the same time, I think I may have conflated the two in my imagination. Walking barefoot for months on end while relying on the kindness of strangers would not have held the same allure as following an intrepid knight into battle, but I think that the seed was planted that at least there was a wider world beyond my little Midwest town.

This little seed was watered and nurtured by one of my first but enduring love affairs in university. That was with medieval architectural history. I learned about itinerant stonemasons, the borrowing and flourishing of building styles around Europe, and even the political and religious background to church building in those years. And I have maintained a long, though faithless, relationship with the Roman Catholic Church that mainly entailed looking at lots of churches in my travels. And there were lots and lots of those along the way I would be going.

There were many ways to do a pilgrimage, essentially a trip for religious purposes. Rome, the Holy Land, and anywhere that the Virgin Mary has made appearances were popular destinations. But ever since the 10th century, untold thousands of people have made Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain their target. The route was generally known as El Camino, Spanish for “the road” or “the way.” And that was where I was headed.

The theological underpinnings of this rested on the fact that Santiago was Spanish for St. James. According the New Testament and augmented by many a legend, before he was crucified Jesus instructed the original apostles to spread the gospel throughout the known world and assigned them different locales. St. James headed off to the Iberian Peninsula. Though he had an ultimately rather unfruitful mission, converting only a few while performing some miracles, he did establish a foothold for Christianity.

He returned to the Holy Land, was promptly beheaded and so became the first martyred apostle. His friends and colleagues ferried his body off to a ship that may or may not have been manned or even had sails. At any rate, that ship made its way to the shores of Galicia in northwest Spain where his somehow-alerted few disciples took his body and buried it nearby. Thus he became the only apostle to be interred in Western Europe outside of Rome.

His grave remained undisturbed and, it seems, unknown for about 750 years as the dreaded Moors took over the land. Then one day a pious hermit heard music and saw either stars above a field or lights emanating from a cave. (Accounts differed.) He dug around and found some bones and had them authenticated as St. James’s. They were reburied thereabouts and the site became the venerated location known as Compostela (campo = field and stela = star).

But James was not yet finished with his work. He was said to have appeared on a white charger leading the soon-to-be-victorious Christians in a decisive battle against those Moors around 852. So James got the sobriquet of “The Moor Slayer.”

After the infidels were finally expelled, the faithful started to come in great numbers. In painting and sculpture James morphed from warrior to the kindler and gentler pilgrim with staff, dried gourd water jug, woolen cloak and scallop shell on his tri-cornered hat and/or breast.

Poor James still could not rest in peace. There was still a lot of jockeying for power in Spain not unlike the current situation in Afghanistan with the warlords and strife until Ferdinand and Isabella united and Christianized most of Spain. Still Spain continued to be embroiled in many wars at home and abroad. Even Napoleon and his men had a nasty stay.

James’s very valuable bones were spirited away for safe keeping numerous times, always returning to their roost—until the day someone messed up and forget where they were stashed. That still did not deter the pilgrims who kept on coming. In 1878-9 a man excavated some bones (I assume near the cathedral) and went temporarily blind. Pope Leo XIII issued a bull verifying that the bones were St. James’. Now they rested in a silver box in the crypt under the main altar. And anyone could go visit the crypt and the bones.

Now wasn’t that explanation enough to trudge 500miles from southern France to Santiago?

Now, as I said, I expected see a lot of churches and villages on the way. In addition, I wanted to eat a lot of good hearty food, learn a bit more Spanish, meet some interesting people and have some fun and adventure. Furthermore, I fully anticipated augmenting my collection of tacky postcards through the travels.

In far off times, people did the camino for many reasons. They did it hoping for a miracle or a wish to be granted. Criminals were able to do it in lieu of spending time in jail. Sometimes the residents of a village suffering a drought or plague would all chip in and send off a representative to Santiago to petition for relief. A rogue’s gallery was always present and took advantage of those for whom the spirit instead of the purse was paramount. Rich and poor, the fit and the infirm, and the good and bad walked the walk, if not talked the talk. I couldn’t help but conclude that some of them, in those pre-Club Med days, were also thinking, “Wow, this sounds like more fun than staying at home. Let’s just do it.”

Nowadays, a lot of people became pilgrims for more, to me, amorphous reasons having to do with human consciousness and self-fulfillment. My local booksellers had shelf loads of spiritual and inspirational books. A number of them advocated the physical journey of a pilgrimage as a way to reach inner peace. Even Shirley MacLaine walked pretty much the same trip I was planning and wrote about it too.

Whatever the motivation, the ongoing mantra along the way was that everyone had to do his or her own camino. This was whether you were starting in far off Muscovy or nearer to Santiago. Whether young or old, fat or thin. Whether doing it on a shoe string budget or going first class. Whether searching for answers to life’s eternal questions or just for the next party. Fellow pilgrims were to respect and help each other. It was a little bit kindergarten, a little bit summer camp, and a lot of “Wizard of Oz.”

So which route? There were many ways to go—just be able to prove that you walked more than 60 miles or 100km (about double that if going by bicycle) and end up in Santiago. One could even do a pilgrimage in stages over a number of years. All were recognized as “official” pilgrimages for which you could receive the “compostela” or certification of completion in Santiago if you met those two requirements.

There were routes from Portugal, Seville, Madrid, and eastern Spain. Major routes went through France from as far away as Russia. Local historians and pilgrimage buffs were establishing paths in their own countries that hooked up with some of the major European ones. All funneled into the ultimate destination.

Probably the most popular was the Camino Frances which started in St. Jean Pied de Port in southwestern France, went quickly over the Pyrenees, and on through northern Spain via Pamplona, Burgos, and Leon. It was well marked and well traveled. It also had an established system of albergues, or hostels, exclusively for the use of pilgrims. They were inexpensive, clean if a bit primitive, and convenient. All had hot showers. Enough were open year round, though lacking in vigorous heating, to enable one to do the camino in the winter.

In fact, the camino had gotten so popular in recent years that non-summer travel was becoming a preferred option to avoid the heat and crowds. The number of pilgrims who arrived in Santiago had been increasing each year to about 70,000 a year. (Although in Holy Years in which the Feast of St. James on July 25 falls on a Sunday, the number swelled. In 2004 it was almost 180,000. The next Holy Year would be 2010.) Now the majority of these finished in July and August—the yearly distribution pretty much follows a classic Bell curve. And most started somewhere in Galicia and walked considerably less than 800 km or 500 miles I was looking at.

The day-to-day guide I took along was John Brierley’s A PILGRIM’S GUIDE TO THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO. It was subtitled “A Practical and Mystical Manual for the Modern Day Pilgrim.” He emphasized the need to “dive into the mysteries of our individual soul awakenings, without which all journeying is purposeless.” I liked the book because it was compact, had good maps for the daily walks with elevations, included little photos of the buildings you were trying to locate at the end of the day, was recently updated and tough enough for constant handling.

I had a little problem, though, with the sermonettes in each chapter or leg of the journey. These were labeled The Practical Path and The Mystical Path. The former, while giving helpful information, tended to be repetitious screeds against any kind of modern intrusion on the camino. But we modern day pilgrims insisted on having hot water. And we graciously welcomed washers and driers, central heat, microwaves and internet access. And most of us carried an arsenal of synthetic fabrics and highly engineered footwear and backpacks that made the going much easier. I didn’t think you could have the pleasures of modern conveniences while decrying the infrastructure required to support them.

He railed against any section not along pleasant country roads or paths. But in my opinion he did not sufficiently warn of the hazards of taking off cross country, sometimes up to 10 to 20 miles, in the heat of the day without access to water and much shelter. As my fellow travelers and I found out, a crippling stress-induced injury could come on very suddenly. Even more puzzling were those mystical path sections. They would be paeans to the simple life, nature, or the mystical life of the soul. I may have been a jaded New Yorker for whom irony was still not dead. But I found those little homilies to be rather tendentious, sophomoric, or pointless. But they were easy enough to ignore.

I preferred and relied on THE PILGRIMAGE ROAD TO SANTIAGO by David Gitlitz and Linda Davidson. It was aptly subtitled “The Complete Cultural Handbook Including Art, Architecture, Geology, History, Folklore, Saints’ Lives, Flora and Fauna.” It too was broken up into sections that roughly correspond to the daily hikes. But it was written with knowledge, flair, and—most importantly—humor. I really did read parts of it most every day. It was a thick book but not all that heavy. The pleasure and insights it gave me while on the trail more than made up for its bulk and weight in my backpack.

I chose to begin in St. Jean Pied de Port in southwestern France. I liked the idea—if not the reality—of doing 500 miles (officially 496.1 miles but close enough—and that didn’t include the added mileage of going up and down the many hills). The challenges of the route were appealing—I was relishing the thought that I could casually drop an “I crossed the Pyrenees on foot….” like some modern day Hannibal at some future cocktail party.

I certainly wanted to go to Pamplona which I was sure had loads of fabulous postcards featuring bull gorings that would be welcome additions to my collection of tacky cards. And I was easily able to get in a visit to nearby Bilbao prior to starting the camino.

A trip like this, you would think, took a lot of planning and preparation. But I had two weeks advance notice in which to buy and break in a new pair of boots, get all my gear together, book plane tickets, get in a few long hikes and tie up loose ends (like post-camino employment). I had done a lot of the research a few years ago and so had some idea of what to expect. I noticed that a lot of my fellow travelers also were doing this pretty much on the spur of the moment. Maybe it was not a bad thing to be impetuous. Common sense might dictate that such a trip was rather foolhardy otherwise.