Iberia (117 page)

XIII
SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

Any reader who has come with me so far through the Iberian
peninsula should be prepared for a pilgrimage across northern
Spain to the sanctuary at Santiago de Compostela, the finest
journey in Spain and one of the two or three best in the world. It
is a twofold pilgrimage to a long-dead form of art and to a living
religious shrine. To understand the latter, certain things must be
known.

Fact
. Two of the earliest disciples chosen by Jesus were the
brothers James and John, sons of the Galilee fisherman Zebedee
and his wife Salome. So energetic in their support of the new
religion were the brothers that Jesus gave them the honorary
second name of Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder. Salome, sister
of the Virgin Mary, which meant that her sons were cousins of
Jesus, appears to have been a woman of some wealth, for she
underwrote many of the expenses of the group and may have paid
the tavern bill for the Last Supper. At any rate, both Mark and
Matthew, in their gospels, relate the story of how Salome, hoping
to gain some return for the money she had spent, requested that
Jesus give her sons the positions on his right and left hand in
heaven, but he rebuked her, saying, ‘Ye know not what ye ask.
Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be
baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?…to sit on my
right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be
given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.’ In
A.D.
29
the brothers were present at the Crucifixion, and in 44, James,
having persisted in his energetic propagation of the faith, was
beheaded, perhaps at Caesarea, by order of King Herod Agrippa,
thus becoming the first of the followers of Jesus to attain
martyrdom.
Tradition
. In the Book of Acts it is suggested that after the death
of Jesus and before the martyrdom of James, the disciples scattered
to different portions of the world and proselytized for the new
religion, without specifying as to who went where and with what
results. Tradition, unsupported by documentation but strong in
folk persistence, claims that while Matthew went to Ethiopia,
Thomas to India, Jude to Persia, Simon to India and Bartholomew
to Armenia, James Boanerges came to Spain, where after extensive
labors he succeeded in converting nine Iberians to Christianity
and was rewarded by the supreme gift of being visited at Zaragoza
by the Virgin Mary, who was still living at the time. This tradition
is popular in Spain but textual and historical critics in other
countries find it difficult to accept. It should be noted, however,
that the tradition specifically states that after this missionary effort
in Spain, James returned to the Holy Land, where he suffered
martyrdom.
Legend
. Late in history a beautiful legend developed in Europe
to the effect that following the decapitation in Jerusalem and
burial in Caesarea of St. James, his body was mysteriously
disinterred and found to have its head once more intact. Into the
port of Jaffa, where shipping for Jerusalem customarily landed,
came a ship made of stone and manned by knights; the body of
James was rescued and brought in seven days to the harbor of
Iria Flavia (now Padrón) on the west coast of Spain in the region
now called Galicia. Here a willful pagan queen denied burial to
the cargo of the stone ship, but miracles awakened her to a
Christian understanding, and she allowed the saintly body to be
taken inland to an unlikely spot where a Roman burial ground
had long existed; here St. James was buried, sometime around
the year
A.D.
44. It was nearly eight hundred years later, in 812
(some say 814), that a hermit happened to see in the heavens a
bright star hovering over a vacant field, a phenomenon with which
we are familiar, and when he reported this fact to his religious
superiors, excavations were begun and the body of St. James was
brought to light, uncorrupted by the passage of time. As a saint
descended from heaven, he assumed personal leadership of the
Christian remnant who were battling the superior Muslims who
had overrun Spain, and at the crucial but legendary Battle of
Clavijo in 844, was clearly seen by the Spanish Christians, riding
before them on a white horse, swinging a great sword and killing
Moors by the thousands, from which he gained the name by which
he would henceforth be known in Spain, Santiago Matamoros.
It was under his banner that Christianity reconquered Spain; it
was following his white horse that Spaniards expelled the Moors,
drove out the Jews and conquered the Americas. St. James became
the patron saint of Spain, as well he deserved, and his burial place
became the most sacred spot in Spain, Santiago de Compostela,
the last word of which could have been derived from either the
Spanish Campo de la estrella (in Latin, Campus Stellae, meaning
Countryside where the Star Shone) or the latin Compost Terra
(from compostum, burying ground). In Spain the name James
appears in a variety of forms. In Latin it was, of course, Jacobus,
so that the pilgrims’ road we are about to follow has always been
known as the Jacobean route; in Old Spanish it was Iago and
evolved into Jacóme and Jaime, the latter of which is still preferred
along the eastern Mediterranean coast; as the name of our saint
it became the composite form Santiago, which is the prevailing
Spanish form today; through a false division this produced Diego;
and in nearby France it became, of course, Jacques. In some years
all these names could have been heard along the way.
History
. We have seen, during our visit to Córdoba, that the
Moors of southern Spain kept in a vault in that city a relic of
considerable emotional significance in their wars against the
Christians: the visible arm of the Prophet Muhammad, and there
are historians who believe that much of the advantage which the
Moors enjoyed in their triumphant sweep across Spain derived
from their belief that they were invincible as long as the arm of
the Prophet led them into battle. The Christians, on the other
hand, were supported by no comparable relic from their New
Testament, and we know from documents that a kind of fatality
overcame them when without heavenly assistance they had to
face Muslims who had such assistance. I think it neither
ungenerous nor unlikely to suggest that the body of Santiago was
found not by a hermit following a star but by hard-pressed soldiers
who needed a rallying point; certainly it arrived on the scene when
some kind of counter-balance to the Prophetic arm was needed,
and over the centuries this heavenly figure riding his white horse,
sword in hand, proved more potent and of farther-reaching
significance, if we consider his role in helping conquer the New
World, than the arm of the Prophet.

At any rate, we can be certain that after the year 812 Christian
fortunes took an upward swing, but not all the miracles connected
with Santiago were military. A bridegroom riding his horse along
the sands to his wedding was swept into the waves and drowned,
but his bride appealed to Santiago and from the sea rose the
groom, his garments covered with white cockleshells, after which
this beautiful symbol of the shell shaped like human hands
extending alms became the mark of all who fought the infidel and
the badge of those who made the pilgrimage to Compostela.

It is not surprising that at the scene of such miracles a series of
churches should have risen to mark the grave, culminating in the
early 1100s in a cathedral of majestic proportions, much of which
can be seen today. It was to this ancient site that pilgrims from
all over Europe made their way for more than eleven hundred
years.

It is difficult to describe, in a scientific age, the spiritual hold
that pilgrimage had on citizens of the Middle Ages. There was, of
course, in those days but one Church, and so far as the Christian
world was concerned, it was truly universal. Existence outside the
membership of this religion was unthinkable, and the three
physical locations upon which the imagery of the Church
depended were Jerusalem, where Christ was crucified; Rome,
where Peter founded the organization of the Church; and
Compostela, from which point Europe had been evangelized. Any
Christian who made a pilgrimage to one of these places was
assured of extraordinary blessing, but a man who had journeyed
to all three had a right to consider himself in an almost heavenly
state. Those who went to Jerusalem were called palmers, since
they returned with palm branches; those who went to Rome were
romeros; it was only those who made the terribly hazardous trip
to Compostela who were entitled to be called pilgrims, and no
devout man in that age bothered to estimate which of the three
journeys was most important, for in sanctity they were equal.

The Way of St. James, as it is customarily referred to in English,
was primarily a French road, and I suppose that in its years of
maximum greatness some eighty out of every hundred pilgrims
who traveled it were from outside of Spain, and of these the bulk
came from France, although the road was also popular with
Englishmen and Germans. In the famous monasteries we shall
see, French was spoken, and in the cathedrals French priests
officiated. Indeed, the road started at that curious tower in the
middle of Paris which still stands to excite the imagination of the
visitor, the Tour St. Jacques on the right bank of the Seine not far
from Notre Dame. Here, in all ages, pilgrims from various parts
of Europe used to convene to form bands for the long march to
Compostela, some nine hundred miles away. Kings and beggars,
queens and cutthroats, butchers and knights, poets and
philosophers all met here, and for a wild variety of reasons.

To appreciate those reasons, let us gather with the crowd that
clusters around the Tour St. Jacques one spring morning in the
Middle Ages. Some two hundred pilgrims have assembled from
Germany, England, France and the Low Countries. A few have
even drifted down from Norway and Sweden, and all are divided
into seven fairly well understood groups. First are the devout
Christian laymen who seek salvation at the tomb of the saint;
since many are advanced in years, there will be frequent deaths
en route. Second are knights who in battle vowed to make the
journey if they survived; they ride horses and take their ladies
with them. Third are the monks and priests, and sometimes even
cardinals, who have dreamed for years of visiting Santiago as a
crown to their life within the Church.

Fourth are those criminals who were told by their judges, ‘Five
years in jail or pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James, whichever.’
These criminals, if it is proper to term them such, for many of
their offenses were petty, are required to get a certificate at
Compostela proving that they have completed the pilgrimage,
and in Spanish border cities like Pamplona a lively trade operates
in these ‘Compostelas,’ for venturesome businessmen make the
journey frequently, collect their certificates and sell them to those
who do not wish to undergo the hazards of western Spain. The
criminal, having laid out good money for the ‘Compostela,’ stuffs
it in his pocket, has a high time in Spanish inns and returns seven
months later to submit his proof to the sentencing judge. Fifth
are the beggars, forgers, thieves, robbers and others who hope to
make financial gain from the journey, and of this unsavory group
some move backward and forward along the endless pilgrims’
road, living off the devout for years at a time. Sixth are the
merchants, the architects, the itinerant painters, the weavers and
that horde of people who use the road as a marketplace. Finally,
there is a fairly constant movement back and forth of government
agents who keep watch on what is happening in northern Spain,
for this is an unquiet land coveted by France and England, by
Austrian adventurers and Italian, and among these watchful
persons are those French clerics who are inspired more by
colonialism than by religion. The buildings they erect are
outwardly monasteries and churches, but inwardly they are
intended as stepping stones for the French king.

But all groups this morning have one thing in common. All
wear the same uniform, famous throughout Europe: a heavy cape
which will serve as raincoat, comforter and nightly blanket; an
eight-foot stave with gourd attached at one end for carrying water;
the heaviest kind of sandal for hiking the nine hundred miles to
Santiago; and a curious kind of broad-rimmed felt hat, turned
up in front and marked with three or four bright cockleshells.

‘I shall take the cockleshell.’ becomes the pilgrims’ cry
throughout Europe, and already a famous dish has been invented,
scallops in wine sauce served in a cockleshell and known as
coquille St. Jacques.

On this medieval day, as we wait under the chestnut trees of
Paris, officials move out from the great buildings that cluster
about the Tour St. Jacques. Priests bless the throng, musicians
lead the pilgrims to the outskirts of Paris, and a detachment of
cavalry rides along to provide protection during the first days of
the journey.

Through the most beautiful river valleys of France moves the
sprawling army at the rate of nine or ten miles a day. Sandals wear
out and new ones are bought. At crossroad shrines the faithful
pray, and in each cathedral town the marchers crowd into
sanctuaries to offer thanks to local saints. Food is never plentiful,
and villages guard their stores with pikes and dogs. However, each
community has designated a small body of Christians whose duty
it is to bury those pilgrims who die within its gates.

And so our great, inchoate mass drifts southward through
France: Orléans, Tours, Poitiers mark one well-traveled road;
Vézelay, Nevers, Limoges define another; Arles, Montpellier,
Toulouse are on the famous southern route. And finally there are
the Pyrenees leading to Roncesvalles and Pamplona, where Spain
begins.