All over Europe, the discontent are stirring. They leave their homes, hop on trains or planes--some just walk out their front doors, putting their lives in the hands of God, or Fate, or the Spirit of Adventure. They are seeking something more than what their lives have provided them—something spiritually significant in a dry, rational world, which they can then bring home to give their lives greater significance.
In the summer of 2009, just finishing up a semester of studying in Paris, I joined the ranks of the seeking discontent and found my way to the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James), a thousand-year-old pilgrimage veining its way across Western Europe and through Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela in the far Western reaches of what, in the Middle Ages, was considered the known world.
As they say: this is my story.
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The urge to leave our complex and busy lives--frustratingly rooted in wealth and goods—is a sympathetic urge for many living in today’s rational, irreverent, commercial society. In fact, leaving worldly things behind has long been a part of the Catholic religion that so influenced European culture, and I’d like to think my own American culture as well. As early as the late Roman Empire, a small number of Christians were unhappy with the way their newly-accepted religion was being incorporated into a more worldly mainstream society. In the East, they followed the example of hermits like St. Anthony and made their way into the wilderness of the Egyptian desert. These were the first Christian monks, the "Desert Fathers" who sought a clearer connection to God, free from the distractions of everyday life. A pilgrim can identify with these guys.
Still, a move to the desert does more than remove distraction. Theoretically, a person may “de-clutter” his or her life without leaving home—by changing his or her lifestyle, quitting a stressful job, or by breaking ties with less than desirable companions. “Going out into the desert”, however—which for me became a symbol of my own pilgrimage through the harsh climate of North-Central Spain—also means leaving the unconsecrated ground of everyday existence for a brief walk through sacred territories. The path is a liminal state, a place between worlds, where time seems to stop and we are left to experience something that unifies us as human beings and to learn as much as we can in the few kilometers given to us.
A pilgrimage such as the Camino de Santiago, then, is a particularly effective means of regulating this “place” into a manageable process. The path is laid out for us, so we needn’t worry about where we are going. It’s about trust—on the path, you stop worrying about what decision you want to make next and instead just trust the path will lead you where you want to go. This leaves you with far more time to truly experience life. Jesus, who wandered much like a pilgrim himself, put it best: "Do not worry about tomorrow”, he says, “for tomorrow will care for itself” (Matt 6:34). In doing so, a pilgrim begins to live in the moment, focused, noticing things they have never noticed before. Speaking from experience, such focus brings great peace—the kind you can bring home and experience regularly, with some effort. This is why many people, and more and more every day, are going on pilgrimage.
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But where did this particular pilgrimage come from? Tradition has it that in the period after Jesus' death and before James' martyrdom, James left Jerusalem and made for the Iberian Peninsula, or modern day Portugal and Spain. He spent many years trying to spread the Word to the people there but was met with no success, and eventually he returned to Jerusalem, where the New Testament says he was martyred.
The legend continues. A group of James' disciples spirited away his body in the night, and made it to the sea, where they boarded a small boat and began to drift, borne by the hand of God. And as with what normally happens in stories like these, they drifted until reaching the North-Western coast of, you guessed it, the Iberian peninsula. It seems James, even after his death, had a destiny to fulfill there.
One version of the story says that just off the coast their little boat got caught in a storm, and the body of the saint was washed overboard. It was borne over the waves by a bed of scallop shells which miraculously brought it to shore, where his disciples found him. They took him inland and buried him, and everybody forgot about James for a long, long time.
Hundreds and hundreds of years passed. The Muslim armies came to invade the peninsula and remained there for many years, until, in the ninth century, a spirit of Christian reconquest gripped many in Western Europe, including the mighty Frankish King, Charlemagne. At one decisive battle in the Pyrenees, when things, of course, looked grim for the Christian forces, a gleaming figure appeared overhead. He rode on a white horse high above the men, bearing a standard and leading them into battle, slaying many. Inspired by the vision, the Christian armies overcame their foes, and eventually came to drive the entire Muslim host out of Spain. The white rider they saw of course was Saint James, who was known in the Iberian dialects by this time as Santiago, from a combination of “Santo” and “Iago” (“Santo” meaning saint and “Iago” being the shortened form of the Latin “Iacobus”, which means James). And not long after, the Christians returned, the saint’s remains were found in the little town of Compostela where his disciples had buried them.
Now, I don’t ask you to forget the evils of racism and holy warfare that your grade-school teachers taught you (though it seems a number of our leaders were absent that day). I’m not pretending like the propagation of the cult of Santiago wasn’t at its inception a large bit of propaganda for Christian, in particularly French, influence in Iberia. I also don’t ask you to use your rational mind and believe that these miraculous events actually occurred at a certain time in a certain place. I do, however, ask that you try and understand what such a story meant to the people who lived at this time. That is the only way to understand the Middle Ages, after all. And to the greater population, James, who had long ago set out to convert Spain without success, was finally, after nearly a millennium, seeing his holy mission realized. In doing this, we may understand our own experiences as well, for those who flocked to Compostela in the High Middle Ages often went to experience a freedom and a feeling that modern pilgrims are still seeking today, even with the existence of tourist package-tours and resort-style hospitals that suck out a large percent of the spirituality.
Pilgrims started arriving in the city around 950 C.E, from all over Europe—some with better intentions than others, but nearly all of them seeking something. Men went on foot, on donkeys, or on horseback with entourages. Monks and canons and priests went. Criminals were sentenced to pilgrimage. Bored housewives occasionally saddled horses and bid their husbands adieu. Aging serfs left the manor for Santiago and were never heard from again. By the High Middle Ages, it was the third most popular pilgrimage in existence, second only to Jerusalem and Rome, and with the pilgrims came those who provided them food, shelter, and protection. Monasteries from France set up shop along the Camino, and with time, Templar Knights built castles with the original intention of protecting the peregrinoes (pilgrims). I read once that pilgrimage was so popular, it was like a traveling nation, governed and sustained by an intricate system nearly unto itself.
There were and are many paths to Santiago, but one, the Camino Frances (The French Route) became the most famous. Spanning from St. Jean-pied-de-port just across the French border in the Pyrenees, where the French routes all met up, all the way to Santiago. This is the path that I walked 1000 years later, from June 19th until July 12th, 2009.
Of course, I should also tell you that the Camino de Santiago had been a pilgrimage long before the Christians got a hold of it. The place where James' body washed ashore had been a Celtic, druidic holy place in prehistory. And the scallop shell, which had borne the saint's body ashore, and which was and is the symbol of the Camino, had been a holy pagan symbol for just as long.
The Camino, therefore, is old. Feet have walked it for thousands of years. And when you walk, you feel connected to these people. Scallop shells are everywhere, pointing you West. Each backpack seems to have one attached to it. And of course there are yellow arrows, painted on the road, on telephone poles, on houses, on trees. You're never lost and never far from someone to help you--usually. Images of the Saint pop up every day, and it is indeed almost as though James walks with you, as the legends say. Believe it or not, miracles become a daily occurrence. And in addition to feeling connected to the past, you feel connected to the others who walk around you--the most diverse, interesting crowd you could hope to meet. Each person is there for a different reason, each person has a story, even me. This story I captured feebly in my Camino journal as I went, which I hope to transfer into a blog for you now. So maybe you can feel a little bit of the magic.
Maybe you will even be inspired to make your own Camino.
I should warn you though: I didn't make it to Santiago itself. Instead, I walked from Pamplona, 2 days walking from St. Jean, until Ponferrada, 200k from Santiago. 500k total, 23 days. The reason why I didn’t get to Santiago—and why I do not regret it—will be revealed in due time. Anyway, it is most definitely the journey, not the destination, that matters.
And here's a map for you:
Buen Camino!
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