IF YOU GO TO COMPOSTELA.
This year is a holy year. Año Santo.
Porta sancta or the holy door was blessedly opened on Sylvester Day by Archbishop
Barrio. A ceremonial repeated over the centuries every eleven years, then the
following sixth and finally the fourth. Following the cyclical intervals of the
two calendars of Christianity, the Gregorian almanac and the Julian. Under the
lintel of the Puerta del Pardon, the door to forgive, like in a fountain, the
waters of grace spill over the heads of the pilgrims. I am thinking exactly in
Chaucer. I have just read the Canterbury Tales. The Pardoners Tale. The great
London poet had his misgivings about the theory of indulgences. Can we buy
eternal life mustering a few paternosters or chanting the Creed? Luther said no
and for the Protestant world this is a matter of scandal. And I, orthodox
believer, say I don’t know but better to give the Jacobean the benefit of the
doubt. Thomas Kempis, the great catholic mystic of the XIV Century, sided with
the detractor of pilgrimage. Qui multo
peregrinantur nullo minus santificantur.
Would I gain the favour with God and the
forgiveness of my sins just because I embark on a very hazardous route full of
perils and adventures? Palmers were fugitives of justice: women found in adultery
escaping from dilapidation, unobservant or bad priests suspended a divinis , randy monks who left the cloisters and joined
the gangs of the bandits pillorying, raping, robing committing all sorts of
criminal acts.
That is why in the Basque provinces travellers
to the holy shrine of the Apostle were unwelcome. The Callixtinus warn the
dangers of the land of OC the lands of the Duke of Bearn north and South of the
Pyrenys. They are heathen bestial and they have sexual intercourse with mules
and donkeys and speak no Christian.
Alphonsus VII created the Military
Orders to protect pilgrims not only from the razzias of the Saracens but also
from the misbehaviour of those men who came travelling from the north, people
of not much respect, real marauders in disguise, who were escaping from the
Justice of their own lands.
Una
buena capa todo lo tapa[1]
and under the small cape always lays a
big booze, the big round hat and the shells or venera vagrants were hiding. Popular
lore had also some misgivings regarding that pious practice of procuring holy
sites where bones and relics of saints were venerated ( The holy Well in Wales
where is supposed to be the Holy Grial, Jerusalem of course, and Canterbury
where the tomb of Saint Thomas Beckett is, Rome, Compostela, Mont Sacre in
Toulouse; in modernity Fatima, Lourdes, El
Escorial etc.) minted in old sayings:- de aquellas romerías estas veneras. The adage
is referred to the maidens who lost their virginity during the pilgrimage.
There many old adages abounding in this idea that romerías as a way of debauchery and license.
-
Quien va de romería se arrepiente al otro día[2].
-
Todos los cojos van a Santa Ana. Arriba yo subo con mi
pata galana[3].
Other aspects are the search for the
magic and the pursuit of certain places where there for the feeling of an unexplained
presence of deity, like Sinai Mountain, the temple of Aphrodite in Cyprus, the stenos
the kaaba in Mecca.
The syncrestist belief, especially
among the Roans seared this vision of invisible forces working in Nature.
Greeks also pilgrimage to the temple of Asklepios to be healed from their
diseases. Christianity coupled such credence from the heathen gods to its
practices but never to its Moral.
In Russia the Palmers constitute a
whole sect inside the Orthodoxy most of them tolerated by the Holy Synod. There
were the “p a l o m n i k i” also
called los palomos because they flocked the highways of the step travelling
with a snapback a stick and inside their saddle a copy of the Gospel of Saint
John. The palomniki-most of them ex convicts, alcoholic, people beaten by the crudities of life and most of the losers,
tried to find the means of purification
( c h i s t a t i é) and
attrition tramping along the immensity of Russia and becoming the vagabonds of
Christ and fools in the name of the cross ( y
u r o d i v i), visiting monasteries and sometimes during the time of crops
helping the “ m u j i k s) for food and shelter. They were quite respected and
consulted as spiritual guilders. They were teetotallers. Couldn’t drink vodka
and didn’t eat meat ( m i a s o).
The sun
must go round eleven times the sphere of the ecliptic until the next holy year
comes again. I am a pilgrim through the nights who knows a lot about the
plenitude of solitude. The big dirty lips spat on me. You snore- you breath heavily.
You are too fat. The times of apocalypses always offer bitter word and cruel
laughs. If you go to Compostela say a pray for me. I see them crossing the bridle
path behind our field and they have been coming for centuries. They tracked in
barges over El Nalon and travel under the birch trees of Santa Ana.
They are building a motorway and a
high bridge over the valley of Artedo and they go strayed sometime losing the
stella for Compostela (a guidepost all of the showing a shell as it were a
dart). Some of them come thirsty, others limp of sore feet. They are tired and
senseless eager to reach the next refuge. The other day I sat on a stone near
the beach waiting for the pilgrims. In a couple of hours i counted a polish priest,
two American students, an English scholar who is doing the old route from
Canterbury to Santiago sojourning for three days in the church of Saint Sernin.
That church in Paris was the heart of the Jacobean pilgrimage. I offered them
water and milk and honey. They refused the water and wine and however accepted
wine. One Austrian was so thirty that he nearly drank a pitchel. Dear pilgrim
going to Compostela say a prayer and embrace the big brooded-shouldered Apostle
Jack for me.
Monday, 08 March 2010
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