“As they were walking along the road.”
____ Luke 9:57
Depart Órbigo
Climb dry, rugged land, scarred by gullies and scrub
On the Way: Hospital de Órbigo to the Cross of Turibius
We had planned an easy day out of Hospital, intending to go to Astorga only 17 kilometers away. We left early, westwards on the Camino, on another painful road full of rock, until we reached a dirt road more comfortable for our feet. This road joined with a paved road which appeared to be the old abandoned León/Astorga highway and it took us to the cross of Turibius.
This cross is named after the 5th century bishop-saint of Astorga and enemy of the Priscillianists, Saint Turibius. St. Turibius was bishop, a great bishop, a bishop uncommonly rare, a bishop inerrant and true, a bishop holy. Here it was that Turibius, so our guides say, was chased out of the town of Astorga by the Priscillianists, and following the injunction of the Gospel, shook the dust from his feet. Eventually he returned to claim his see, for he is buried in the Cathedral. The followers of Priscillian were prevalent in the regions of Galicia in particular during the fourth through the seventh centuries. Indeed, Astorga was a see occupied by a Priscillianist bishop, a certain Dictinus, who later abjured his Priscillianist heresies. St. Turibius championed the Faith, and worked sedulously to correct the theological, moral, and liturgical errors of this persistent pseudo-Manichean sect. He asked the great Pope St. Leo for help in addressing some doctrinal issues. Peter spoke through Leo by means of epistles, which, as might be expected, sided with the bishop of Astorga on the side of truth and in opposition of error.
Between Sant Ibáñez and Estebañez
D
Crucero Santo Toribio
I I I
I did not know it at the time as I surveyed the town of Astorga from the heights by the Cross of Santo Toribio, but the Spirit of God hovered in Astorga that day. He waited by the old Episcopal Palace, by the Cathedral, to speak through the mouth of a prophet. This was no ordinary prophet, for the prophet was a Maragato and he prophesized by means of a guitar.
Through San Justo de la Vega
k
San Justo
Over the río Tuerto
Into Astorga
(878 m.)
On the Way: Into Astorga
From the cross of St. Turibius we descended into the town of San Justo de la Vega. At San Justo de la Vega we stopped for a rest, and in the café we encountered José. As he departed, he said, “Agur Bai.” I responded “Agur Bai.” It was the only words of Basque I learned on pilgrimage.
Once we left the café we crossed the río Tuerto and not much later the río Arganoso over a three-arched Roman bridge. We crossed over some railroad tracks, and entered into Astorga, Pliny’s urbs magnifica, for it was a city of gold mines to the Romans. The city is centered on the east-west ridge of the mountains, and was an important station on the Roman road between Bordeaux in Gaul and Braga in Hispania. We entered the city from the southeast, on the travesia de Minerva, which led us to the calle del Perpetuo Socorro into the plaza de Santa María and the location of where at one time was the entry into Astorga, the puerta del Sol, which no longer exists.
We walked by the ancient walls of Roman foundation and medieval accretion. Despite their old age, the walls are sound and hale, especially around the region of the Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace. Of mottled rock, the walls stood high. They were, at least in this area, without battlement, but were memorable for their ponderous, semi-cylindrical buttresses.
I I I
Osturga
N
Catedral de Santa María
The Cathedral of St. Mary was a wonder of yellow and ochre rock; a perfect, balanced blend of Renaissance towers, Gothic nave, and Baroque—if not borderlink Plateresque—façade. Its yellow and ochre stone blended in the light of the sun, which gave the building a stolid, but welcoming warmth. Atop was an effigy of Pero (or Pedro) Mato, the Maragato hero of Clavijo. The church is known for the baroque frontispiece on the west front, which is framed in so-called columnas ajarronadas, or solomonic columns. The main retable on the interior, by Gaspar Becerra, is a guilded splendor of a mannerism, scenes of the lives of Christ and of Mary, under arched and standard pediments.
The church here is in replacement of the Romanesque structure that preceded it. It is a pity that the Romanesque cathedral church of St. Turibius was not preserved. But we may find another temple, built not by human hands, which once housed the soul of the bishop. I speak of the temple of his body. The relics of St. Turibius are here, and I was beckoned by something within me to pause before his sepulchre, in the heart of his ancient see, and pour out my soul to the bishop. I asked that he shepherd it to the Lord as he shepherded the souls of the Christian faithful in his diocese. I don’t suppose my prayers in English are an impediment to him now although without doubt they would have been an impediment to him then. I am the product of my society, and was not taught good Latin when young, and so I cannot speak to good Turibius with much facility in Latin extempore.
I I I
On the Way: The Maragato, Guitar-Playing Prophet
The Bishop’s Palace next to the Cathedral is of Gaudí. Though of relatively modern conception, the palace is a work of genius, and, like all Gaudí’s works a fantastic, creative and eclectic symphony of old and new. It is a warped Gothic. There, at the steps, I had my encounter with a prophet. I do not know his name, but he prophesizes by means of his guitar.
As I walked up the steps into the palace, which is now a pilgrim’s museum, I threw a 100 peseta coin into his coat, which he used as a receptacle for coins. He strummed his guitar and sang a common song about the Camino for me. Then something changed in his mannerisms. He took the guitar placed it on his back, and brought it back in front of him. He saw in me with the eyes of his soul, and he told me of a secret burden that I carried in my pack and a like one that I carried in my heart. He sang:
“En el segundo año de tu peregrinaje
Iras a la Cruz de Ferro;
Allí tiraras tus piedras
Y tu mochila se pondra ligera.”
The guitarist sang this refrain twice. I was confused by his statement that it was the second year of my pilgrimage. What did this mean?
I pondered this unusual prodigy as I walked through the Museo del Peregrino housed in Gaudí’s palace. What had this guitar-playing Maragato meant by these words? It suddenly dawned on me. I was working on the second year of my father’s death, and I carried with me two stones, one with my father’s initials, and one with my mother’s. I had carried them with me since St. Jean Pied-de-Port, and intended on the morrow to throw them upon the heap of stones of the Cruz de Ferro, a monument atop the mountains that we had to cross on our way into Galicia. What gratia gratis data had the All-Knowing poured into this man’s brain that he should know this? I had not told a soul of the burden in my pack nor of the burden of my soul, and only God could have let the Maragato in on my secret.
When I walked out of the museum, and looked at the steps, the prophet had gone. I would have thought him an angel, and not a prophet, but he showed up in a photograph I took of him and he did not have wings.
I I I
On the Way: The Mystery Most Pedestrian
Every pilgrimage has a mystery. Some have more than one. One of the mysteries of my pilgrimage was to be found on the second floor of the Bishop’s Palace. On the second floor of the Bishop’s Palace, the bishop had his refectory built. It was a lovely dining hall, with yellow and green stained glass windows. The windows contained a mystery, and the mystery was found in the words etched on the windows. These were not ordinary words, for though they appeared similar to the classic Catholic grace, “Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty,” in Latin, they did not read thus. Instead, I read:
What could this mean? What version of grace did the Bishop Juan Bautista Grau Vallespinós place on the windows of his refrectory? What latent heresy, gnostic mystery, magic spell, or esoteric kabbala was contained in these mysterious words? This was not Latin. Of what mysterious language were these words transliterations? What magic spell would be wrought if this formula were pronounced when the moon was full? Was the Bishop of Astorga a wicked heretic? A gnostic? A magician? A crypto-Jew? Was this perhaps proof that both the architect Gaudí and the bishop were masons or secret followers of Priscillian?
As I struggled with this conundrum, I realized I had been duped by the slip up of a careless workman. For some workman had reversed the hinges on the doors of the refectory and thereby tampered with the message. Had these been placed aright, the mystery would be all out of it:
I I I
Leave Astorga through the Fonce-badón route
By Valde-viejos
k
San Verisimo
To Murias de Rechivaldo
Castrillo de Polva-zares
Through the moors into Santa Catalina de Somoza
On the Way: Astorga to Santa Catalina
We left Astorga and fully entered into the land of the Maragatos, a people whose ancestry is the source of controversy among scholars, rivaled in controversy only by the still more inscrutable origins of the Basques. Between Astorga and Molinaseca, several days ahead, is their land, which is called the Maragatería. The land of the Maragatos in the region of the Camino is arid, depopulated, and is characterized by many a ruined and abandoned village. This is the land once of semi-nomadic muleteers, who in this arid and hostile land spent little capital and little labor in the art of building. They say that the name Maragatos is derived from the Latin mercator, or merchant. I suppose that these folks would have remained merchants but for the railroad, which overnight made the mule an obsolete engine of commerce. The railway, which helped the rich man in Madrid, hurt the poor man in the land of the Maragatos, and so many of these towns are now abandoned, or nearly so. The land and the towns were to be this way until we reached the fertile Bierzo valley as we neared Galicia.
I was reminded of Ezra Pound and his cryptic Cantos where he refers to this region:
No symptoms of commerce or even of internal traffic
Between Galice and Leon 1780.
All of color made of black sheep’s wool undyed
The river Valcaire between two rows of mountains
Not a decent house since Corunna.[i]
This, I understand, was before the Railroads, as Pound based this Canto upon the diary of John Adams, when the latter visited this land in the late 1700s. Ezra Pound in his Cantos also relates that the Maragato women are as fine as squaws but a great deal more nasty.[ii] But I found that it was not the Maragato women, but the bartenders that were so. For there was not a bar or café that I entered in the land of the Maragatos that did not have some obscene picture, cartoon, or figure in it.
I I I
We left Astorga from the north of the city, traveling by the church of St. Peter, on the road to the town of Santa Colomba de Somoza. Our path proved to be a climbing one as we neared the mountains of León. We passed the small hermitage of Ecce homo by the semi-abandoned town of Valdeviejas, once named Villa Sancti Verissimi, after its patron, St. Verisimus. The town of Valdeviejas sat on the banks of the arroyo Jerga. From Valdeviejas we parted leftwards from the river and into Murias de Rechivaldo. At Murias the Camino left the road for a while, although it met the road once again two or three kilometers ahead, where it forked into two. At the split, we followed the right fork, and it led us up a slight ascent into Santa Catalina where we stopped for the evening.
Ahead and to our left was monte Teleno, and it had two patches of what we thought was snow. That it was snow was confirmed by the bartender at the only Bar open in town. He fed us a simple meal of a bocadillo of lomo and queso and some red wine. He had straight dark hair, was small in stature, and wore a dirty blue shirt and soiled pants. He had a mustache, and a two-day growth on the rest of his face. He had a bad eye, which he could not use. He was gruff at first, but worked very hard to serve us. When we asked him if the patches up ahead were snow, he answered, “yes,” and warmed up considerably. Before the evening finished, he patted me on the back and wished me well.
I I I
The little village of Santa Catalina has a rustic church, and the rustic church has a treasure, not of the earth but of the spirit. For in the church of St. Mary at St. Catherine’s there is preserved for the benefit of all good men and all good women who have the disposition and the need for it, the relics of San Blas, known to us as St. Blaise. I am not sure if anyone has traced how the town acquired a relic of the Armenian bishop-martyr. To this saint many years ago in a place many leagues away, was brought a boy who had a fishbone lodged in his throat, and the saint healed the boy, gave great joy to the mother, and assured his entry into the halls of the popular hagiographical cultus.
T
Last quarter moon
Per interces-sionem Sancti Blasii liberet te Deus a malo gutturis et a quovis alio malo
k
[i] Ezra Pound, Cantos, Canto LXV.
[ii] Id.
____ Luke 9:57
Depart Órbigo
Climb dry, rugged land, scarred by gullies and scrub
On the Way: Hospital de Órbigo to the Cross of Turibius
We had planned an easy day out of Hospital, intending to go to Astorga only 17 kilometers away. We left early, westwards on the Camino, on another painful road full of rock, until we reached a dirt road more comfortable for our feet. This road joined with a paved road which appeared to be the old abandoned León/Astorga highway and it took us to the cross of Turibius.
This cross is named after the 5th century bishop-saint of Astorga and enemy of the Priscillianists, Saint Turibius. St. Turibius was bishop, a great bishop, a bishop uncommonly rare, a bishop inerrant and true, a bishop holy. Here it was that Turibius, so our guides say, was chased out of the town of Astorga by the Priscillianists, and following the injunction of the Gospel, shook the dust from his feet. Eventually he returned to claim his see, for he is buried in the Cathedral. The followers of Priscillian were prevalent in the regions of Galicia in particular during the fourth through the seventh centuries. Indeed, Astorga was a see occupied by a Priscillianist bishop, a certain Dictinus, who later abjured his Priscillianist heresies. St. Turibius championed the Faith, and worked sedulously to correct the theological, moral, and liturgical errors of this persistent pseudo-Manichean sect. He asked the great Pope St. Leo for help in addressing some doctrinal issues. Peter spoke through Leo by means of epistles, which, as might be expected, sided with the bishop of Astorga on the side of truth and in opposition of error.
Between Sant Ibáñez and Estebañez
D
Crucero Santo Toribio
I I I
I did not know it at the time as I surveyed the town of Astorga from the heights by the Cross of Santo Toribio, but the Spirit of God hovered in Astorga that day. He waited by the old Episcopal Palace, by the Cathedral, to speak through the mouth of a prophet. This was no ordinary prophet, for the prophet was a Maragato and he prophesized by means of a guitar.
Through San Justo de la Vega
k
San Justo
Over the río Tuerto
Into Astorga
(878 m.)
On the Way: Into Astorga
From the cross of St. Turibius we descended into the town of San Justo de la Vega. At San Justo de la Vega we stopped for a rest, and in the café we encountered José. As he departed, he said, “Agur Bai.” I responded “Agur Bai.” It was the only words of Basque I learned on pilgrimage.
Once we left the café we crossed the río Tuerto and not much later the río Arganoso over a three-arched Roman bridge. We crossed over some railroad tracks, and entered into Astorga, Pliny’s urbs magnifica, for it was a city of gold mines to the Romans. The city is centered on the east-west ridge of the mountains, and was an important station on the Roman road between Bordeaux in Gaul and Braga in Hispania. We entered the city from the southeast, on the travesia de Minerva, which led us to the calle del Perpetuo Socorro into the plaza de Santa María and the location of where at one time was the entry into Astorga, the puerta del Sol, which no longer exists.
We walked by the ancient walls of Roman foundation and medieval accretion. Despite their old age, the walls are sound and hale, especially around the region of the Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace. Of mottled rock, the walls stood high. They were, at least in this area, without battlement, but were memorable for their ponderous, semi-cylindrical buttresses.
I I I
Osturga
N
Catedral de Santa María
The Cathedral of St. Mary was a wonder of yellow and ochre rock; a perfect, balanced blend of Renaissance towers, Gothic nave, and Baroque—if not borderlink Plateresque—façade. Its yellow and ochre stone blended in the light of the sun, which gave the building a stolid, but welcoming warmth. Atop was an effigy of Pero (or Pedro) Mato, the Maragato hero of Clavijo. The church is known for the baroque frontispiece on the west front, which is framed in so-called columnas ajarronadas, or solomonic columns. The main retable on the interior, by Gaspar Becerra, is a guilded splendor of a mannerism, scenes of the lives of Christ and of Mary, under arched and standard pediments.
The church here is in replacement of the Romanesque structure that preceded it. It is a pity that the Romanesque cathedral church of St. Turibius was not preserved. But we may find another temple, built not by human hands, which once housed the soul of the bishop. I speak of the temple of his body. The relics of St. Turibius are here, and I was beckoned by something within me to pause before his sepulchre, in the heart of his ancient see, and pour out my soul to the bishop. I asked that he shepherd it to the Lord as he shepherded the souls of the Christian faithful in his diocese. I don’t suppose my prayers in English are an impediment to him now although without doubt they would have been an impediment to him then. I am the product of my society, and was not taught good Latin when young, and so I cannot speak to good Turibius with much facility in Latin extempore.
I I I
On the Way: The Maragato, Guitar-Playing Prophet
The Bishop’s Palace next to the Cathedral is of Gaudí. Though of relatively modern conception, the palace is a work of genius, and, like all Gaudí’s works a fantastic, creative and eclectic symphony of old and new. It is a warped Gothic. There, at the steps, I had my encounter with a prophet. I do not know his name, but he prophesizes by means of his guitar.
As I walked up the steps into the palace, which is now a pilgrim’s museum, I threw a 100 peseta coin into his coat, which he used as a receptacle for coins. He strummed his guitar and sang a common song about the Camino for me. Then something changed in his mannerisms. He took the guitar placed it on his back, and brought it back in front of him. He saw in me with the eyes of his soul, and he told me of a secret burden that I carried in my pack and a like one that I carried in my heart. He sang:
“En el segundo año de tu peregrinaje
Iras a la Cruz de Ferro;
Allí tiraras tus piedras
Y tu mochila se pondra ligera.”
The guitarist sang this refrain twice. I was confused by his statement that it was the second year of my pilgrimage. What did this mean?
I pondered this unusual prodigy as I walked through the Museo del Peregrino housed in Gaudí’s palace. What had this guitar-playing Maragato meant by these words? It suddenly dawned on me. I was working on the second year of my father’s death, and I carried with me two stones, one with my father’s initials, and one with my mother’s. I had carried them with me since St. Jean Pied-de-Port, and intended on the morrow to throw them upon the heap of stones of the Cruz de Ferro, a monument atop the mountains that we had to cross on our way into Galicia. What gratia gratis data had the All-Knowing poured into this man’s brain that he should know this? I had not told a soul of the burden in my pack nor of the burden of my soul, and only God could have let the Maragato in on my secret.
When I walked out of the museum, and looked at the steps, the prophet had gone. I would have thought him an angel, and not a prophet, but he showed up in a photograph I took of him and he did not have wings.
I I I
On the Way: The Mystery Most Pedestrian
Every pilgrimage has a mystery. Some have more than one. One of the mysteries of my pilgrimage was to be found on the second floor of the Bishop’s Palace. On the second floor of the Bishop’s Palace, the bishop had his refectory built. It was a lovely dining hall, with yellow and green stained glass windows. The windows contained a mystery, and the mystery was found in the words etched on the windows. These were not ordinary words, for though they appeared similar to the classic Catholic grace, “Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty,” in Latin, they did not read thus. Instead, I read:
What could this mean? What version of grace did the Bishop Juan Bautista Grau Vallespinós place on the windows of his refrectory? What latent heresy, gnostic mystery, magic spell, or esoteric kabbala was contained in these mysterious words? This was not Latin. Of what mysterious language were these words transliterations? What magic spell would be wrought if this formula were pronounced when the moon was full? Was the Bishop of Astorga a wicked heretic? A gnostic? A magician? A crypto-Jew? Was this perhaps proof that both the architect Gaudí and the bishop were masons or secret followers of Priscillian?
As I struggled with this conundrum, I realized I had been duped by the slip up of a careless workman. For some workman had reversed the hinges on the doors of the refectory and thereby tampered with the message. Had these been placed aright, the mystery would be all out of it:
I I I
Leave Astorga through the Fonce-badón route
By Valde-viejos
k
San Verisimo
To Murias de Rechivaldo
Castrillo de Polva-zares
Through the moors into Santa Catalina de Somoza
On the Way: Astorga to Santa Catalina
We left Astorga and fully entered into the land of the Maragatos, a people whose ancestry is the source of controversy among scholars, rivaled in controversy only by the still more inscrutable origins of the Basques. Between Astorga and Molinaseca, several days ahead, is their land, which is called the Maragatería. The land of the Maragatos in the region of the Camino is arid, depopulated, and is characterized by many a ruined and abandoned village. This is the land once of semi-nomadic muleteers, who in this arid and hostile land spent little capital and little labor in the art of building. They say that the name Maragatos is derived from the Latin mercator, or merchant. I suppose that these folks would have remained merchants but for the railroad, which overnight made the mule an obsolete engine of commerce. The railway, which helped the rich man in Madrid, hurt the poor man in the land of the Maragatos, and so many of these towns are now abandoned, or nearly so. The land and the towns were to be this way until we reached the fertile Bierzo valley as we neared Galicia.
I was reminded of Ezra Pound and his cryptic Cantos where he refers to this region:
No symptoms of commerce or even of internal traffic
Between Galice and Leon 1780.
All of color made of black sheep’s wool undyed
The river Valcaire between two rows of mountains
Not a decent house since Corunna.[i]
This, I understand, was before the Railroads, as Pound based this Canto upon the diary of John Adams, when the latter visited this land in the late 1700s. Ezra Pound in his Cantos also relates that the Maragato women are as fine as squaws but a great deal more nasty.[ii] But I found that it was not the Maragato women, but the bartenders that were so. For there was not a bar or café that I entered in the land of the Maragatos that did not have some obscene picture, cartoon, or figure in it.
I I I
We left Astorga from the north of the city, traveling by the church of St. Peter, on the road to the town of Santa Colomba de Somoza. Our path proved to be a climbing one as we neared the mountains of León. We passed the small hermitage of Ecce homo by the semi-abandoned town of Valdeviejas, once named Villa Sancti Verissimi, after its patron, St. Verisimus. The town of Valdeviejas sat on the banks of the arroyo Jerga. From Valdeviejas we parted leftwards from the river and into Murias de Rechivaldo. At Murias the Camino left the road for a while, although it met the road once again two or three kilometers ahead, where it forked into two. At the split, we followed the right fork, and it led us up a slight ascent into Santa Catalina where we stopped for the evening.
Ahead and to our left was monte Teleno, and it had two patches of what we thought was snow. That it was snow was confirmed by the bartender at the only Bar open in town. He fed us a simple meal of a bocadillo of lomo and queso and some red wine. He had straight dark hair, was small in stature, and wore a dirty blue shirt and soiled pants. He had a mustache, and a two-day growth on the rest of his face. He had a bad eye, which he could not use. He was gruff at first, but worked very hard to serve us. When we asked him if the patches up ahead were snow, he answered, “yes,” and warmed up considerably. Before the evening finished, he patted me on the back and wished me well.
I I I
The little village of Santa Catalina has a rustic church, and the rustic church has a treasure, not of the earth but of the spirit. For in the church of St. Mary at St. Catherine’s there is preserved for the benefit of all good men and all good women who have the disposition and the need for it, the relics of San Blas, known to us as St. Blaise. I am not sure if anyone has traced how the town acquired a relic of the Armenian bishop-martyr. To this saint many years ago in a place many leagues away, was brought a boy who had a fishbone lodged in his throat, and the saint healed the boy, gave great joy to the mother, and assured his entry into the halls of the popular hagiographical cultus.
T
Last quarter moon
Per interces-sionem Sancti Blasii liberet te Deus a malo gutturis et a quovis alio malo
k
[i] Ezra Pound, Cantos, Canto LXV.
[ii] Id.
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