Iberia (118 page)
Authors: James Michener
We can speak with accuracy of this vast movement of
people—the incredible number of more than half a million moved
along the road each year—because in 1130 what is generally held
to be the world’s first travel guide was written, describing the
glories and hardships of this route. It was written at the request
of the Church, which hoped thereby to encourage pilgrimages,
by a French priest, Aymery de Picaud, who lived along one of the
pilgrim routes and set the pattern for future travel writers: things
near at home he praised, those farther away he questioned, while
those distant he condemned. Of the Poitevins, who lived near at
hand, he says: ‘They are vigorous and fine warriors, courageous
at the battlefront, elegant in their fashions of dress, handsome in
appearance, spiritual, very generous and easy in their hospitality.’
Of the Gascons, who lived suspiciously close to Spain, he writes:
‘They are nimble with words, great babblers, mockers. They are
debauched, drunkards, gluttons, dressed in tatters, and destitute
of money. They are not ashamed to sleep all together on one
narrow bed of rotten straw, the servants beside the masters.’
But when he reaches the peasants of Navarra, whom he does
not consider Frenchmen at all, he says with scorn: ‘These people
are badly dressed. They eat poorly and drink worse. Using no
spoons, they plunge their hands into the common pot and drink
from the same goblet. When one sees them feed, one thinks he is
seeing pigs in their gluttony; and when one hears them speak, he
thinks of dogs baying. They are perverse, perfidious, disloyal,
corrupted, voluptuous, expert in every violence, cruel and
quarrelsome, and anyone of them would murder a Frenchman
for one sou. Shamefully they have sex with animals.’
This ancient book can still be read with interest, for it evokes
the dangers faced by the pilgrims: the water in most of the rivers
is contaminated and brings certain death; in many regions food
is almost impossible to come by; hospitals are infrequent; and
rogues lie in wait to ambush and murder.
In one group of twenty-five, all but two will perish because
they drink from the rivers. Of another, half will be slain by
brigands. One morning in Spain we wake to find all our animals
stolen. But still we push on, the pilgrims of the cockleshell, en
route to salvation.
of the pilgrims we might have met upon it:
778 Charlemagne, legend says, but tomb not discovered till 812
In the blazing summer of 1966 my pilgrimage along the Way
of St. James began at a spot south of Pamplona, on a bare and
lonely plain marked only by dusty weeds, where the various routes
converge for the long westward thrust to Compostela. On this
plain I came to the forsaken church of Eunate, surrounded only
by haunting emptiness, and I could not have found a more
appropriate introduction to the dead art form that was to
dominate my pilgrimage. The architecture of this church is
Romanesque—that is, it dates from sometime after the beginning
of the eleventh century, that transition period when the ancient
Roman style of architecture had not yet been replaced by the
Gothic. Rome had almost nothing to do with Romanesque; it
developed principally from northern sources, but before we try
to define what the new style was, or where it came from, let us
see how it looks in the church at Eunate.
The principal characteristic of the church is its low, sturdy
weight. It is a church that relates to the soil: its arches are low and
rounded, as if they preferred to cling to the earth; its pillars are
heavy and rooted in the earth; it does not provide enormous
Gothic perspectives. It is solid, well proportioned, weighty with
the judgment of intellect. The capitals of its pillars are simple and
straight-forward: walls are neither adorned nor soaring; windows
are small and interior vistas are intimate; there is an impression
of almost Scandinavian modernity. It has a tower, but not a tall
one; it is built with eight sides, for some reason that no one now
remembers, and is surrounded by a curious unroofed cloister of
austerely beautiful construction.
The church remains a mystery. To what organization was it
attached? What priests served here, what peasants formed its
congregation? Who built it and when? Is there truth in the local
tradition that it once pertained to the Knights Templars, that
tragic order whose memorials we shall see again on this
pilgrimage? Was it, as some think, a kind of Valhalla for knights
who died fighting the Muslims? There it stands, a simple, lovely
Romanesque construction in weathered brown stone, a forgotten
memorial to the millions of pilgrims who passed it during its eight
or nine hundred years of existence.
The Romanesque style, which is the master design of northern
Spain, was introduced from France, but once it crossed the
Pyrenees it was subjected to Visigothic and Moorish influences,
so that it became something new and peculiarly Spanish, especially
in the sculpture that came to festoon the semicircular arches that
topped the massive doorways. Of all the beautiful things I have
seen in Spain, I suppose I liked best the Romanesque churches of
the north. To me they were a form of poetry both epic and elegaic;
the rows of human beings carved in the doorways were people I
have known; the use of space and simple forms produced an
impression as modern as tomorrow; and if on my various trips
to Spain I had found only these quiet and monumental buildings,
I would have been amply rewarded.
Technically, I suppose one should think of the Spanish portion
of the Way of St. James as beginning a little farther to the west,
where that remarkable six-arched bridge at Puente la Reina unites
the main roads leading down from France. It is one of the most
beautiful bridges I know, exactly right for the little town that
supported it in pilgrim days. It has two sets of arches, large ones
over the river and smaller ones set into the pillars, so that rising
waters can pass through in time of flood. The resultant design is
so pleasing that I, like many others, have often been content to
sit and study its perfection. Thus, at the start of the route we have
two handsome structures to serve as a kind of foretaste of what
we are to enjoy on this pilgrimage.
I had been gone from the famous bridge only a short time when
I saw ahead of me a small town which has always excited both
my imagination and my pleasure. It is the only town in Spain
where women are permitted to fight bulls, and because its ancient
buildings have been so well preserved it is better able than most
to evoke a sense of what life was like in the apex years of
pilgrimage. It is the little Navarrese town of Estella, and if I were
to live anywhere in Spain, I suppose it would have to be here.
Prior to 1966 I had made two other pilgrimages to Santiago de
Compostela and on one of them had met the distinguished scholar
who now greeted me at the edge of town, Don Francisco Beruete
Calleja, president of the Center of Jacobean Studies and leading
authority on the Way of St. James. Each year he convenes a
seminar of scholars from European and American universities
and for two weeks conducts discussions on life along the pilgrims’
route.
The Cult of the Bull in Navarra
, in Spanish
, in French
, in Italian
, in Spanish
The Way of St. James in Portugal
, by Dr. José Filgueira-Valverde,
alcalde of Pontevedra, whom we shall meet later
On this bright morning Don Francisco took me to the high
plateau of El Puy, where on the night of May 25, 1085, occurred
once more the familiar miracle: two shepherds saw a group of
lights which formed themselves into a star. They said nothing,
but on successive nights the star reappeared; so they warned the
authorities, who as usual dug at the indicated spot, this time
coming up with a delectable wide-eyed statue of the Virgin. The
archaic and highly pleasing statue is now enshrined in one of the
most beautiful churches in Spain, a silken web of a building
constructed of slim stone pillars and wood in 1930 to replace an
older one and to show how the Gothic style can be adapted to
modern tastes. As one might guess, stars of various size dominate
the interior: on the backs of benches, in the chandeliers, on the
candlesticks, in the cupola over the ancient statue of the Virgin
and in the wooden ceiling. The Virgin of El Puy, as she is called,
has always been an object of extreme veneration and in her bright
new home, is more so.
But this morning we did not talk about this old pilgrim shrine,
because Señor Beruete had other things on his mind. ‘Is there a
more exciting spot in Spain than this?’ he asked. ‘Below us the
little city with its great wealth of monuments which the pilgrims
knew. Around us the rim of hills and small mountains which have
always been the protection of Estella. And everywhere the echoing
march of pilgrims’ feet, by the thousands and thousands, as they
came into this important stopping point.’
height,’ I asked, ‘which would you suggest?’
Señor Beruete is a congenial man whose love for the old days
shimmers in his eyes, and now he grew excited as he talked.
‘Imagine you are approaching the city in the year 1262, when
pilgrimage was at its height. Last night you slept at Puente la Reina
and early this morning you crossed the bridge. Now as you enter
Estella you pass a circle of stout walls and find fourteen separate
hospitals and dormitories awaiting you. If you should be Jewish,
as many of the business travelers were, you’d find over in that
quarter a fine synagogue. It’s a church now, Santa María Jus del
Castillo, but in 1262 it was the center of a Jewish quarter which
occupied much of the city. But I suppose you’d be a Christian,
so you’d walk down the Street of the Pilgrims, which still stands,
and ask at the plaza, which today looks exactly as it did then, for
the best place to stay. If you were a Frenchman, you’d be sure to
halt before the carving on the Palace of the Kings of Navarra
showing Roland jousting with Moor Ferragut. Oldest
representation of Roland in the world. And as you stood staring
at it, some fellow Frenchman would take you in charge.
‘What did you look like in 1262? You wore very heavy shoes
and would probably wear out two pairs walking to Santiago. You
wore a linen undershirt with a heavy woolen robe over it. And
you displayed the four essentials. Long staff. Gourd. Big hat and
cockleshells.’
‘How many pilgrims a year might have reached Estella in those
days?’
within the city, and outside the walls a series of large monasteries.
On some days a thousand arrived, on others less than a hundred.
Who can estimate the total? Perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand,
year in and year out. We do know that in 1965, which was a special
holy year for Compostela, two and a half million pilgrims
appeared at Compostela, but of course they didn’t all pass through
Estella. Eight hundred thousand, perhaps.’
built around 1200, and there I was to see a carving which
captivated me. The door of San Miguel presents the typical
Romanesque arch composed of five receding semicircles, each
containing a wealth of carving and a chain of human figures.
Some critics have called it Spain’s major Romanesque work, but
I prefer the portico we shall be visiting at Compostela. Here the
door is guarded by a large stone panel depicting the Three Marys
at the tomb of Jesus. The stone drapery of these figures is
extraordinary and the gestures of the women so real that many
critics consider this plaque the masterpiece of the doorway, but
it was a less conspicuous part that attracted me.
adorned with scenes from the life of Christ. The one which
appealed to me was the scene showing King Herod at the moment
when his scribes are endeavoring to unravel the significance of
the birth of Jesus. It is a tableau so brilliant, so handsomely
preserved and so psychologically sound that it seems a marvel.
The capital has two faces at right angles to each other, and on the
left-hand face a worried soldier reports what has happened at
Bethlehem. On the right-hand face two excellently differentiated
scribes consult the omens, while on the corner where the two
faces meet, a worried King Herod ponders the news. The face of
Herod is as fine as anything I have seen in stone, a masterful
presentation of a bewildered and anxious king.
read almost everything in print about this ugly and fascinating
king, and I suppose I then knew him as well as a layman could;
but nothing I encountered gave me a better understanding of
Herod than I acquired from this statue in Estella. The variation
between the two faces of the stone, the penetrating quality of the
human countenances and the subtle arrangement of the tense
bodies make this one of the finest statuary groups I have seen,
and for me it surpasses even the Three Marys.