Making pilgrimages to the shrines of holy persons is a
Common practice in many religions. Christian shrines often contained a body understood to be that of a saint or objects that had been in physical contact with the saint; thus believers perceived shrines as places where Heaven and earth met. A visit to a shrine and veneration of the saint’s relics, Christians believed, would lead to the saint’s intercession with God. After Jerusalem and Rome, the shrine of Saint James (Sant’Iago in Spanish) at Compostela in the Iberian peninsula became the most famous in the Christian world. Saint James was one of the twelve apostles and was said to have carried Christianity to Spain. Santiago de Compostela was situated in the kingdom of Galicia, close to the west coast of Spain.
In the twelfth century an unknown French author put together a sort of guidebook for the streams of pilgrims who travelled to Santiago from all over Europe. This excerpt from the Pilgrim’s Guide details the characteristics of people one would meet on the way.
After this valley is found the land of Navarre [nuh-VAHR] , which abounds in bread and wine, milk and cattle. The Navarrese and Basques [baskz] are held to be exactly alike in their food, their clothing and their language, but the Basques are held to be of whiter complexion than the Navarrese. The Navarrese wear short black garments extending just down to the knee, like the Scots, and they wear sandals which they call lavarcas made of raw hide with the hair on and are bound around the foot with thongs, covering only the soles of the feet and leaving the upper foot bare. In truth, they wear black woollen hooded and fringed capes, reaching to their elbows, which they call saias. These people, in truth, are repulsively dressed, and they eat and drink repulsively. For in fact all those who dwell in the household of a Navarrese, servant as well as master, maid as well as mistress, are accustomed to eat all
Pilgrims' badge from Santiago de Compostela. Enterprising smiths began making metal badges for pilgrims to buy as proof of their journey and evidence of their piety. The scallop shell became particularly associated with St. James and eventually with pilgrimages in general. Pilgrims who had visited many shrines would clink from the badges worn on their hats or capes, sometimes becoming objects of satire just as tourists laden with souvenirs are today. (Institut Amatller d'Art
Hispanic)
Pilgrims' routes: monasteries in Cluny, Vezelay (vay-zuh-LAY), Saint-Gilles, and Moissac served as inns for pilgrims.
Their food mixed together from one pot, not with spoons but with their own hands, and they drink with one cup. If you saw them eat you would think them dogs or pigs. If you heard them speak, you would be reminded of the barking of dogs. For their speech is utterly barbarous. . . .
This is a barbarous race unlike all other races in customs and in character, full of malice, swarthy in color, evil of face, depraved, perverse, perfidious, empty of faith and corrupt, libidinous, drunken, experienced in all violence, ferocious and wild, dishonest and reprobate, impious and harsh, cruel and contentious, unversed in anything good, well-trained in all vices and iniquities, like the Geats and Saracens in malice. . . .
However, they are considered good on the battlefield, bad at assaulting fortresses, regular in giving tithes, accustomed to making offerings for altars. For, each day, when the Navarrese goes to church, he makes God an offering of bread or wine or wheat or some other substance. . . .
Then comes Galicia [guh-LISH-ee-uh] . . . this is wooded and has rivers and is well-provided with meadows and excellent orchards, with equally good fruits and very clear springs; there are few cities, towns or cornfields. It is short of wheaten bread and wine, bountiful in rye bread and cider, well-stocked with cattle and horses, milk and honey, ocean fish both gigantic and small, and wealthy in gold, silver, fabrics, and furs of forest animals and other riches, as well as Saracen treasures. The Galicians, in truth, more than all the other uncultivated Spanish peoples, are those who most closely resemble our French race by their manners, but they are alleged to be irascible and very litigious. . . .
Questions for Analysis
1. How would you evaluate the author’s opinion of the people of Navarre? of Galicia? How do these people compare with his own countrymen, the French?
2. Pilgrimages were in many ways the precursors of modern tourism. How would you compare the two in terms of economic effects and the expectations of the travelers?
Sources: From The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela, critical edition and annotated translation by Paula Gerson, Jeanne Krochalis, Annie Shaver-Crandell, and Alison Stones. Reprinted by permission of the authors. Data for map from Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975).
World History
