“You see us walking we are the foot-sloggers . . . “
____ Charles Peguy[i]
Leave Santa Catalina
On the Way: Santa Catalina to the Cruz de Ferro
The walk to the town of Rabanal del Camino via the town of El Ganso was kind and peaceful to us. The terrain had markedly changed, and with it the manner of building. For the people are not fools, at least not when it comes to their dwellings, and they generally work with the materials around them. The air was cool, refreshing; the ground about us green with wild grass, brush, broom, and other shrubs. Oaks and pine abounded as we walk through forest land. Birds sang their cheery and random melodies.
We continued westwards and met with the town of El Ganso. There were some homes here, called teitadas, with simple, pitched roofs of straw thatching instead of clay tile. The walls were made of piled stones. They appeared abandoned, and were in a terrible state of repair. We were slowly leaving the land of the Maragatos and heading to the land of the Bierzo, and things were getting greener.
El Ganso
Over the Puente de Pañoto into Rabanal del Camino
(1106 m.)
El Ganso had a church dedicated to Santiago, with a statute of the saint as pilgrim, and a chapel of Christ of the Pilgrims. From here we traveled through a woods of pine, spotted with groves of robles (oak) and encinas (live oak), over the arroyo Rabanal Viejo through the kind service of a bridge called the puente del Pañote. The peak of the monte Teleno hovered proudly southwest of the Camino, and off we continued to the hermitage dedicated to Santo Cristo de la Vera Cruz, Holy Christ of the True Cross. From the hermitage we walked into Rabanal del Camino, the city called the captive, Picaud tells us as an aside and without explanation. At Rabanal del Camino begin the spurs of the Montes de León, and the Camino will begin its ascent to the puerto de Foncebadón, the divide between la Maragatería and el Bierzo. We had clearly left the land of the meseta, the time of passion and suffering, and entered into the green lands of the Bierzo valley, land of resurrection and ascension. The land instills in the pilgrim’s heart a sense of his imminent triumph.
I I I
Rapha-nellus, qui captivus cognomi-natus est
k
Santa María
As we entered Rabanal del Camino, we passed on the right of the calle Real (which is the name of the street into the town) the remains of a hospital, dedicated they say to St. Gregory. We looked for, but never found, the casa de las Cuatro Esquinas, the house of the four corners which housed the great Phillip II when he made pilgrimage to Compostela. I’m sure other buildings housed the great Phillip II on his way to Compostela, and I’m not sure why this house, of all the others, has been singled out of the many others as honorable mention. Besides, almost all houses have four corners, so the name strikes me as insufficiently descriptive: a tautology, perhaps even a lampoonery.
We next came upon the church at Rabanal del Camino. The church in Rabanal had no corners—at least in its twelfth-century apse, which is round. It was built in the twelfth century by the knights Templars, and dedicated to St. Mary.
It was still early. We waited at the pilgrim’s refuge (which is run by the English Confraternity of St. James) for the cafe to open. When the first café opened we had breakfast and worried about the day, for the clouds in the sky were swollen, heavy, and gray; and the way ahead showed clear signs of imminent rain.
I I I
Depart Rabanal del Camino
Through aban-doned Fonce-badón
Through the Puerto de Irago
(1504 m.)
D
The Cruz de Ferro
(1490 m.)
On the Way: Rabanal to Ponferrada
From Rabanal we traveled up a narrow dirt path through the brush of the mountains. The more we climbed, the more beauty the Camino yielded our eyes. The air was cool, and, as expected, rain began to fall. We donned our ponchos, and I kept walking in my sandals. My feet quickly turned cold and numb—which neutralized to some degree the pain. We traveled on the east side of the monte Irago and came upon the town of Foncebadón. It is described in the guides as abandoned, but it was not abandoned, as we saw much sign of permanent life. Outside the town, by some ruins, some young French pilgrims were packing up their tents. We were later to meet these pilgrims and befriend them in Santiago.
We continued past Foncebadón through the puerto Irago, the port or pass of Irago, which is 1504 meters in altitude. The path flirted with the winding carretera as it climbed up by outcrops of slate, woods of oak and pine, and undergrowth of broom and brush. The brush scratched my legs as I walked by, and dumped cold water on my feet. The sky was overcast, foggy, and the weather alternated between fine drizzle and outright rain. The wind was likewise fickle, and changed from calm to tempestuous. The temperature was in the low 50s.
After a bitter and cold walk, we caught sight of the hermitage of Santiago and the famed Cruz de Ferro, the simple monument of the iron cross atop a wooden mast of oak decorated with ribbons and other pilgrim votives. It traditionally marks the division between the Maragatería and the Bierzo regions.
Portus montis Yraci
The Cruz de Ferro was surrounded by a pile of stones thrown here by pilgrims perennial. Perhaps, as they say, the tradition is of pagan origin—a cult devoted to Mercury. I don’t know. What rocks have to do with Mercury I do not know either. What I do know is that there was no paganism, latent or patent, in my mind when I participated in the custom. My sentiments here were by paganism unsullied, and my intendment wholly Christian and Catholic.
Two stones here are not from Spain, but from the New World. I threw two stones here ex voto, in remembrance of each of my parents now dead and each bearing one of my parents’ initials and my prayers for them: D.K.G.-R.I.P. and M.D.G.-R.I.P. Though the heavy rocks fell back to earth as expected (that is a law of Nature), the prayers written on them which are in my mind rise to Heaven (that is a law of Grace). You may search for these stones among the thousands there, and if you are lucky you shall find one of them and if you are luckier still you shall find them both. But under the penalty of my personal anathema and all principles of human decency leave them there. And whether you search for them or whether you don’t, I bid you say a prayer for the souls of my parents. Requiescant in pacem. But do not pray to Mercury, who is unreal and capable neither of judgment nor of mercy, but to the God of Jacob who Is.
After praying for the souls of my parents, I paused to thank God for the beauty of the Bierzo, the privilege to be alive and on pilgrimage here, and the chance to pray for the repose of my parents’ souls. We shielded ourselves from the wind by crouching by the wall of the tiny hermitage, and ate cookies, cherries, almonds and hazelnuts to fortify our tired, wet and cold bodies. We also talked to some Danish pilgrims who shared our plight. But it was a weak formula against the cold and the wet, for the rain and cold bothered us and hunger gnawed on us until we walked under a roof and ate a hot meal at El Acebo, some hours ahead.
I I I
D.K.G. et M.D.G.
Pie Iesu, Domine, Dona eis requiem
Deus Iacob
On the Way: Cruz de Ferro to Manjarín
and the Templar Knight Errant
From the Cruz de Ferro we descended to the village of Manjarín, abandoned and in ruins now, although it boasted a sizeable pilgrim hospital in the past. It did, however, have a somewhat nonconformist refugio for the pilgrim disposed to spend the night here. We stopped inside to get out of the rain, for the refugio had a fire, but felt unsettled in the place. The hospitaller, a man named Tomás, thinks himself a Templar Knight. He was dressed in fatigues and boots, and wore a dirty white tunic emblazoned with the red Templar cross. The Beau Seant waved on a flag pole in the entrance.
This man is a Knight Templar errant, for the Knights Templar were supressed by the Pope. The Pope gave them life through his legate Matthew of Albano at the Council of Troye in 1129. The Pope killed them when Clement V suppressed the order in 1312 by the bull Vox in excelso. And whether it right or wrong the Pope gave and the Pope took away. And it will take another act of the Pope to make the Templars live. For a Templar has no life outside of the Church. Besides, I read that this man left a wife and two teenage daughters in the lurch, to go about his errant way, which makes him an infidel in my book, a cad and a foolish dreamer, and certainly not a Poor Soldier of Christ. As we walked in and as we walked out the refugio, the Knight Templar Errant did not greet us, for he appeared busy flirting with a gaggle of foolish and gullible Spanish women who were on vacation.
From the height of Manjarín we began our descent into the verdant Bierzo valley, which was still before us a distance, and into the village of El Acebo. The Bierzo was considered to be the narthex to Galicia, the sanctuary of St. James. It was a beautiful and fertile land, filled with every shade and hue of green. On the left slightly ahead of the Camino we observed Monte de Compludo where the monastery of Compludo is located, one of a string of monasteries in the Bierzo region founded by San Fructuoso in the 7th century. We walked through and between outcrops of slate, dark gray and dull auburn in color.
Into aban-doned Manjarín
Descent
To El Acebo
(1145 m.)
We entered the town of El Acebo, passing by the río Poijol and the fuente de la Trucha. This hamlet’s homes are of gray stone and have painted wooden balconies that extend past the boundaries of the house over the streets. Their roofs are shingled with black, silver, and brown slate.
At a restaurant in El Acebo I had sopa del Bierzo, a rich vegetable soup, and some veal with some red wine. The red wine was a grevious mistake, a great folly, for it stole any resolve to face the storm, and even the strong coffee could not re-inspire in me any pilgrim fortitude. So around two o’clock, the wine having stolen all our determination, we quit for the day, and settled in the city by the restaurant that had so bountifully fed us for a fair price, yet robbed us of our hardihood.
That night I slept horribly. I had to resort to cigarette butts because of the snorers. My body was cold and never felt warmth. The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable. My feet hurt in a manner I cannot describe. Their constant throbbing kept me awake. I may have been able to lull myself to sleep had I been able to moan. But being that I was in a common bedroom, I could not moan as an anodyne to pain. Instead I had to suffer in a stoic, wakeful silence.
k
[i] quoted by Francis Bourdeau, “Pilgrimage, Eucharist, Reconciliation”, Lumen Vitae 39 (1984), 403, quoted in Robinson, Anthology, p. 42. “You see us walking we are the foot-sloggers . . . “
____ Charles Peguy[i]
Leave Santa Catalina
On the Way: Santa Catalina to the Cruz de Ferro
The walk to the town of Rabanal del Camino via the town of El Ganso was kind and peaceful to us. The terrain had markedly changed, and with it the manner of building. For the people are not fools, at least not when it comes to their dwellings, and they generally work with the materials around them. The air was cool, refreshing; the ground about us green with wild grass, brush, broom, and other shrubs. Oaks and pine abounded as we walk through forest land. Birds sang their cheery and random melodies.
We continued westwards and met with the town of El Ganso. There were some homes here, called teitadas, with simple, pitched roofs of straw thatching instead of clay tile. The walls were made of piled stones. They appeared abandoned, and were in a terrible state of repair. We were slowly leaving the land of the Maragatos and heading to the land of the Bierzo, and things were getting greener.
El Ganso
Over the Puente de Pañoto into Rabanal del Camino
(1106 m.)
El Ganso had a church dedicated to Santiago, with a statute of the saint as pilgrim, and a chapel of Christ of the Pilgrims. From here we traveled through a woods of pine, spotted with groves of robles (oak) and encinas (live oak), over the arroyo Rabanal Viejo through the kind service of a bridge called the puente del Pañote. The peak of the monte Teleno hovered proudly southwest of the Camino, and off we continued to the hermitage dedicated to Santo Cristo de la Vera Cruz, Holy Christ of the True Cross. From the hermitage we walked into Rabanal del Camino, the city called the captive, Picaud tells us as an aside and without explanation. At Rabanal del Camino begin the spurs of the Montes de León, and the Camino will begin its ascent to the puerto de Foncebadón, the divide between la Maragatería and el Bierzo. We had clearly left the land of the meseta, the time of passion and suffering, and entered into the green lands of the Bierzo valley, land of resurrection and ascension. The land instills in the pilgrim’s heart a sense of his imminent triumph.
I I I
Rapha-nellus, qui captivus cognomi-natus est
k
Santa María
As we entered Rabanal del Camino, we passed on the right of the calle Real (which is the name of the street into the town) the remains of a hospital, dedicated they say to St. Gregory. We looked for, but never found, the casa de las Cuatro Esquinas, the house of the four corners which housed the great Phillip II when he made pilgrimage to Compostela. I’m sure other buildings housed the great Phillip II on his way to Compostela, and I’m not sure why this house, of all the others, has been singled out of the many others as honorable mention. Besides, almost all houses have four corners, so the name strikes me as insufficiently descriptive: a tautology, perhaps even a lampoonery.
We next came upon the church at Rabanal del Camino. The church in Rabanal had no corners—at least in its twelfth-century apse, which is round. It was built in the twelfth century by the knights Templars, and dedicated to St. Mary.
It was still early. We waited at the pilgrim’s refuge (which is run by the English Confraternity of St. James) for the cafe to open. When the first café opened we had breakfast and worried about the day, for the clouds in the sky were swollen, heavy, and gray; and the way ahead showed clear signs of imminent rain.
I I I
Depart Rabanal del Camino
Through aban-doned Fonce-badón
Through the Puerto de Irago
(1504 m.)
D
The Cruz de Ferro
(1490 m.)
On the Way: Rabanal to Ponferrada
From Rabanal we traveled up a narrow dirt path through the brush of the mountains. The more we climbed, the more beauty the Camino yielded our eyes. The air was cool, and, as expected, rain began to fall. We donned our ponchos, and I kept walking in my sandals. My feet quickly turned cold and numb—which neutralized to some degree the pain. We traveled on the east side of the monte Irago and came upon the town of Foncebadón. It is described in the guides as abandoned, but it was not abandoned, as we saw much sign of permanent life. Outside the town, by some ruins, some young French pilgrims were packing up their tents. We were later to meet these pilgrims and befriend them in Santiago.
We continued past Foncebadón through the puerto Irago, the port or pass of Irago, which is 1504 meters in altitude. The path flirted with the winding carretera as it climbed up by outcrops of slate, woods of oak and pine, and undergrowth of broom and brush. The brush scratched my legs as I walked by, and dumped cold water on my feet. The sky was overcast, foggy, and the weather alternated between fine drizzle and outright rain. The wind was likewise fickle, and changed from calm to tempestuous. The temperature was in the low 50s.
After a bitter and cold walk, we caught sight of the hermitage of Santiago and the famed Cruz de Ferro, the simple monument of the iron cross atop a wooden mast of oak decorated with ribbons and other pilgrim votives. It traditionally marks the division between the Maragatería and the Bierzo regions.
Portus montis Yraci
The Cruz de Ferro was surrounded by a pile of stones thrown here by pilgrims perennial. Perhaps, as they say, the tradition is of pagan origin—a cult devoted to Mercury. I don’t know. What rocks have to do with Mercury I do not know either. What I do know is that there was no paganism, latent or patent, in my mind when I participated in the custom. My sentiments here were by paganism unsullied, and my intendment wholly Christian and Catholic.
Two stones here are not from Spain, but from the New World. I threw two stones here ex voto, in remembrance of each of my parents now dead and each bearing one of my parents’ initials and my prayers for them: D.K.G.-R.I.P. and M.D.G.-R.I.P. Though the heavy rocks fell back to earth as expected (that is a law of Nature), the prayers written on them which are in my mind rise to Heaven (that is a law of Grace). You may search for these stones among the thousands there, and if you are lucky you shall find one of them and if you are luckier still you shall find them both. But under the penalty of my personal anathema and all principles of human decency leave them there. And whether you search for them or whether you don’t, I bid you say a prayer for the souls of my parents. Requiescant in pacem. But do not pray to Mercury, who is unreal and capable neither of judgment nor of mercy, but to the God of Jacob who Is.
After praying for the souls of my parents, I paused to thank God for the beauty of the Bierzo, the privilege to be alive and on pilgrimage here, and the chance to pray for the repose of my parents’ souls. We shielded ourselves from the wind by crouching by the wall of the tiny hermitage, and ate cookies, cherries, almonds and hazelnuts to fortify our tired, wet and cold bodies. We also talked to some Danish pilgrims who shared our plight. But it was a weak formula against the cold and the wet, for the rain and cold bothered us and hunger gnawed on us until we walked under a roof and ate a hot meal at El Acebo, some hours ahead.
I I I
D.K.G. et M.D.G.
Pie Iesu, Domine, Dona eis requiem
Deus Iacob
On the Way: Cruz de Ferro to Manjarín
and the Templar Knight Errant
From the Cruz de Ferro we descended to the village of Manjarín, abandoned and in ruins now, although it boasted a sizeable pilgrim hospital in the past. It did, however, have a somewhat nonconformist refugio for the pilgrim disposed to spend the night here. We stopped inside to get out of the rain, for the refugio had a fire, but felt unsettled in the place. The hospitaller, a man named Tomás, thinks himself a Templar Knight. He was dressed in fatigues and boots, and wore a dirty white tunic emblazoned with the red Templar cross. The Beau Seant waved on a flag pole in the entrance.
This man is a Knight Templar errant, for the Knights Templar were supressed by the Pope. The Pope gave them life through his legate Matthew of Albano at the Council of Troye in 1129. The Pope killed them when Clement V suppressed the order in 1312 by the bull Vox in excelso. And whether it right or wrong the Pope gave and the Pope took away. And it will take another act of the Pope to make the Templars live. For a Templar has no life outside of the Church. Besides, I read that this man left a wife and two teenage daughters in the lurch, to go about his errant way, which makes him an infidel in my book, a cad and a foolish dreamer, and certainly not a Poor Soldier of Christ. As we walked in and as we walked out the refugio, the Knight Templar Errant did not greet us, for he appeared busy flirting with a gaggle of foolish and gullible Spanish women who were on vacation.
From the height of Manjarín we began our descent into the verdant Bierzo valley, which was still before us a distance, and into the village of El Acebo. The Bierzo was considered to be the narthex to Galicia, the sanctuary of St. James. It was a beautiful and fertile land, filled with every shade and hue of green. On the left slightly ahead of the Camino we observed Monte de Compludo where the monastery of Compludo is located, one of a string of monasteries in the Bierzo region founded by San Fructuoso in the 7th century. We walked through and between outcrops of slate, dark gray and dull auburn in color.
Into aban-doned Manjarín
Descent
To El Acebo
(1145 m.)
We entered the town of El Acebo, passing by the río Poijol and the fuente de la Trucha. This hamlet’s homes are of gray stone and have painted wooden balconies that extend past the boundaries of the house over the streets. Their roofs are shingled with black, silver, and brown slate.
At a restaurant in El Acebo I had sopa del Bierzo, a rich vegetable soup, and some veal with some red wine. The red wine was a grevious mistake, a great folly, for it stole any resolve to face the storm, and even the strong coffee could not re-inspire in me any pilgrim fortitude. So around two o’clock, the wine having stolen all our determination, we quit for the day, and settled in the city by the restaurant that had so bountifully fed us for a fair price, yet robbed us of our hardihood.
That night I slept horribly. I had to resort to cigarette butts because of the snorers. My body was cold and never felt warmth. The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable. My feet hurt in a manner I cannot describe. Their constant throbbing kept me awake. I may have been able to lull myself to sleep had I been able to moan. But being that I was in a common bedroom, I could not moan as an anodyne to pain. Instead I had to suffer in a stoic, wakeful silence.
k
[i] quoted by Francis Bourdeau, “Pilgrimage, Eucharist, Reconciliation”, Lumen Vitae 39 (1984), 403, quoted in Robinson, Anthology, p. 42.
____ Charles Peguy[i]
Leave Santa Catalina
On the Way: Santa Catalina to the Cruz de Ferro
The walk to the town of Rabanal del Camino via the town of El Ganso was kind and peaceful to us. The terrain had markedly changed, and with it the manner of building. For the people are not fools, at least not when it comes to their dwellings, and they generally work with the materials around them. The air was cool, refreshing; the ground about us green with wild grass, brush, broom, and other shrubs. Oaks and pine abounded as we walk through forest land. Birds sang their cheery and random melodies.
We continued westwards and met with the town of El Ganso. There were some homes here, called teitadas, with simple, pitched roofs of straw thatching instead of clay tile. The walls were made of piled stones. They appeared abandoned, and were in a terrible state of repair. We were slowly leaving the land of the Maragatos and heading to the land of the Bierzo, and things were getting greener.
El Ganso
Over the Puente de Pañoto into Rabanal del Camino
(1106 m.)
El Ganso had a church dedicated to Santiago, with a statute of the saint as pilgrim, and a chapel of Christ of the Pilgrims. From here we traveled through a woods of pine, spotted with groves of robles (oak) and encinas (live oak), over the arroyo Rabanal Viejo through the kind service of a bridge called the puente del Pañote. The peak of the monte Teleno hovered proudly southwest of the Camino, and off we continued to the hermitage dedicated to Santo Cristo de la Vera Cruz, Holy Christ of the True Cross. From the hermitage we walked into Rabanal del Camino, the city called the captive, Picaud tells us as an aside and without explanation. At Rabanal del Camino begin the spurs of the Montes de León, and the Camino will begin its ascent to the puerto de Foncebadón, the divide between la Maragatería and el Bierzo. We had clearly left the land of the meseta, the time of passion and suffering, and entered into the green lands of the Bierzo valley, land of resurrection and ascension. The land instills in the pilgrim’s heart a sense of his imminent triumph.
I I I
Rapha-nellus, qui captivus cognomi-natus est
k
Santa María
As we entered Rabanal del Camino, we passed on the right of the calle Real (which is the name of the street into the town) the remains of a hospital, dedicated they say to St. Gregory. We looked for, but never found, the casa de las Cuatro Esquinas, the house of the four corners which housed the great Phillip II when he made pilgrimage to Compostela. I’m sure other buildings housed the great Phillip II on his way to Compostela, and I’m not sure why this house, of all the others, has been singled out of the many others as honorable mention. Besides, almost all houses have four corners, so the name strikes me as insufficiently descriptive: a tautology, perhaps even a lampoonery.
We next came upon the church at Rabanal del Camino. The church in Rabanal had no corners—at least in its twelfth-century apse, which is round. It was built in the twelfth century by the knights Templars, and dedicated to St. Mary.
It was still early. We waited at the pilgrim’s refuge (which is run by the English Confraternity of St. James) for the cafe to open. When the first café opened we had breakfast and worried about the day, for the clouds in the sky were swollen, heavy, and gray; and the way ahead showed clear signs of imminent rain.
I I I
Depart Rabanal del Camino
Through aban-doned Fonce-badón
Through the Puerto de Irago
(1504 m.)
D
The Cruz de Ferro
(1490 m.)
On the Way: Rabanal to Ponferrada
From Rabanal we traveled up a narrow dirt path through the brush of the mountains. The more we climbed, the more beauty the Camino yielded our eyes. The air was cool, and, as expected, rain began to fall. We donned our ponchos, and I kept walking in my sandals. My feet quickly turned cold and numb—which neutralized to some degree the pain. We traveled on the east side of the monte Irago and came upon the town of Foncebadón. It is described in the guides as abandoned, but it was not abandoned, as we saw much sign of permanent life. Outside the town, by some ruins, some young French pilgrims were packing up their tents. We were later to meet these pilgrims and befriend them in Santiago.
We continued past Foncebadón through the puerto Irago, the port or pass of Irago, which is 1504 meters in altitude. The path flirted with the winding carretera as it climbed up by outcrops of slate, woods of oak and pine, and undergrowth of broom and brush. The brush scratched my legs as I walked by, and dumped cold water on my feet. The sky was overcast, foggy, and the weather alternated between fine drizzle and outright rain. The wind was likewise fickle, and changed from calm to tempestuous. The temperature was in the low 50s.
After a bitter and cold walk, we caught sight of the hermitage of Santiago and the famed Cruz de Ferro, the simple monument of the iron cross atop a wooden mast of oak decorated with ribbons and other pilgrim votives. It traditionally marks the division between the Maragatería and the Bierzo regions.
Portus montis Yraci
The Cruz de Ferro was surrounded by a pile of stones thrown here by pilgrims perennial. Perhaps, as they say, the tradition is of pagan origin—a cult devoted to Mercury. I don’t know. What rocks have to do with Mercury I do not know either. What I do know is that there was no paganism, latent or patent, in my mind when I participated in the custom. My sentiments here were by paganism unsullied, and my intendment wholly Christian and Catholic.
Two stones here are not from Spain, but from the New World. I threw two stones here ex voto, in remembrance of each of my parents now dead and each bearing one of my parents’ initials and my prayers for them: D.K.G.-R.I.P. and M.D.G.-R.I.P. Though the heavy rocks fell back to earth as expected (that is a law of Nature), the prayers written on them which are in my mind rise to Heaven (that is a law of Grace). You may search for these stones among the thousands there, and if you are lucky you shall find one of them and if you are luckier still you shall find them both. But under the penalty of my personal anathema and all principles of human decency leave them there. And whether you search for them or whether you don’t, I bid you say a prayer for the souls of my parents. Requiescant in pacem. But do not pray to Mercury, who is unreal and capable neither of judgment nor of mercy, but to the God of Jacob who Is.
After praying for the souls of my parents, I paused to thank God for the beauty of the Bierzo, the privilege to be alive and on pilgrimage here, and the chance to pray for the repose of my parents’ souls. We shielded ourselves from the wind by crouching by the wall of the tiny hermitage, and ate cookies, cherries, almonds and hazelnuts to fortify our tired, wet and cold bodies. We also talked to some Danish pilgrims who shared our plight. But it was a weak formula against the cold and the wet, for the rain and cold bothered us and hunger gnawed on us until we walked under a roof and ate a hot meal at El Acebo, some hours ahead.
I I I
D.K.G. et M.D.G.
Pie Iesu, Domine, Dona eis requiem
Deus Iacob
On the Way: Cruz de Ferro to Manjarín
and the Templar Knight Errant
From the Cruz de Ferro we descended to the village of Manjarín, abandoned and in ruins now, although it boasted a sizeable pilgrim hospital in the past. It did, however, have a somewhat nonconformist refugio for the pilgrim disposed to spend the night here. We stopped inside to get out of the rain, for the refugio had a fire, but felt unsettled in the place. The hospitaller, a man named Tomás, thinks himself a Templar Knight. He was dressed in fatigues and boots, and wore a dirty white tunic emblazoned with the red Templar cross. The Beau Seant waved on a flag pole in the entrance.
This man is a Knight Templar errant, for the Knights Templar were supressed by the Pope. The Pope gave them life through his legate Matthew of Albano at the Council of Troye in 1129. The Pope killed them when Clement V suppressed the order in 1312 by the bull Vox in excelso. And whether it right or wrong the Pope gave and the Pope took away. And it will take another act of the Pope to make the Templars live. For a Templar has no life outside of the Church. Besides, I read that this man left a wife and two teenage daughters in the lurch, to go about his errant way, which makes him an infidel in my book, a cad and a foolish dreamer, and certainly not a Poor Soldier of Christ. As we walked in and as we walked out the refugio, the Knight Templar Errant did not greet us, for he appeared busy flirting with a gaggle of foolish and gullible Spanish women who were on vacation.
From the height of Manjarín we began our descent into the verdant Bierzo valley, which was still before us a distance, and into the village of El Acebo. The Bierzo was considered to be the narthex to Galicia, the sanctuary of St. James. It was a beautiful and fertile land, filled with every shade and hue of green. On the left slightly ahead of the Camino we observed Monte de Compludo where the monastery of Compludo is located, one of a string of monasteries in the Bierzo region founded by San Fructuoso in the 7th century. We walked through and between outcrops of slate, dark gray and dull auburn in color.
Into aban-doned Manjarín
Descent
To El Acebo
(1145 m.)
We entered the town of El Acebo, passing by the río Poijol and the fuente de la Trucha. This hamlet’s homes are of gray stone and have painted wooden balconies that extend past the boundaries of the house over the streets. Their roofs are shingled with black, silver, and brown slate.
At a restaurant in El Acebo I had sopa del Bierzo, a rich vegetable soup, and some veal with some red wine. The red wine was a grevious mistake, a great folly, for it stole any resolve to face the storm, and even the strong coffee could not re-inspire in me any pilgrim fortitude. So around two o’clock, the wine having stolen all our determination, we quit for the day, and settled in the city by the restaurant that had so bountifully fed us for a fair price, yet robbed us of our hardihood.
That night I slept horribly. I had to resort to cigarette butts because of the snorers. My body was cold and never felt warmth. The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable. My feet hurt in a manner I cannot describe. Their constant throbbing kept me awake. I may have been able to lull myself to sleep had I been able to moan. But being that I was in a common bedroom, I could not moan as an anodyne to pain. Instead I had to suffer in a stoic, wakeful silence.
k
[i] quoted by Francis Bourdeau, “Pilgrimage, Eucharist, Reconciliation”, Lumen Vitae 39 (1984), 403, quoted in Robinson, Anthology, p. 42. “You see us walking we are the foot-sloggers . . . “
____ Charles Peguy[i]
Leave Santa Catalina
On the Way: Santa Catalina to the Cruz de Ferro
The walk to the town of Rabanal del Camino via the town of El Ganso was kind and peaceful to us. The terrain had markedly changed, and with it the manner of building. For the people are not fools, at least not when it comes to their dwellings, and they generally work with the materials around them. The air was cool, refreshing; the ground about us green with wild grass, brush, broom, and other shrubs. Oaks and pine abounded as we walk through forest land. Birds sang their cheery and random melodies.
We continued westwards and met with the town of El Ganso. There were some homes here, called teitadas, with simple, pitched roofs of straw thatching instead of clay tile. The walls were made of piled stones. They appeared abandoned, and were in a terrible state of repair. We were slowly leaving the land of the Maragatos and heading to the land of the Bierzo, and things were getting greener.
El Ganso
Over the Puente de Pañoto into Rabanal del Camino
(1106 m.)
El Ganso had a church dedicated to Santiago, with a statute of the saint as pilgrim, and a chapel of Christ of the Pilgrims. From here we traveled through a woods of pine, spotted with groves of robles (oak) and encinas (live oak), over the arroyo Rabanal Viejo through the kind service of a bridge called the puente del Pañote. The peak of the monte Teleno hovered proudly southwest of the Camino, and off we continued to the hermitage dedicated to Santo Cristo de la Vera Cruz, Holy Christ of the True Cross. From the hermitage we walked into Rabanal del Camino, the city called the captive, Picaud tells us as an aside and without explanation. At Rabanal del Camino begin the spurs of the Montes de León, and the Camino will begin its ascent to the puerto de Foncebadón, the divide between la Maragatería and el Bierzo. We had clearly left the land of the meseta, the time of passion and suffering, and entered into the green lands of the Bierzo valley, land of resurrection and ascension. The land instills in the pilgrim’s heart a sense of his imminent triumph.
I I I
Rapha-nellus, qui captivus cognomi-natus est
k
Santa María
As we entered Rabanal del Camino, we passed on the right of the calle Real (which is the name of the street into the town) the remains of a hospital, dedicated they say to St. Gregory. We looked for, but never found, the casa de las Cuatro Esquinas, the house of the four corners which housed the great Phillip II when he made pilgrimage to Compostela. I’m sure other buildings housed the great Phillip II on his way to Compostela, and I’m not sure why this house, of all the others, has been singled out of the many others as honorable mention. Besides, almost all houses have four corners, so the name strikes me as insufficiently descriptive: a tautology, perhaps even a lampoonery.
We next came upon the church at Rabanal del Camino. The church in Rabanal had no corners—at least in its twelfth-century apse, which is round. It was built in the twelfth century by the knights Templars, and dedicated to St. Mary.
It was still early. We waited at the pilgrim’s refuge (which is run by the English Confraternity of St. James) for the cafe to open. When the first café opened we had breakfast and worried about the day, for the clouds in the sky were swollen, heavy, and gray; and the way ahead showed clear signs of imminent rain.
I I I
Depart Rabanal del Camino
Through aban-doned Fonce-badón
Through the Puerto de Irago
(1504 m.)
D
The Cruz de Ferro
(1490 m.)
On the Way: Rabanal to Ponferrada
From Rabanal we traveled up a narrow dirt path through the brush of the mountains. The more we climbed, the more beauty the Camino yielded our eyes. The air was cool, and, as expected, rain began to fall. We donned our ponchos, and I kept walking in my sandals. My feet quickly turned cold and numb—which neutralized to some degree the pain. We traveled on the east side of the monte Irago and came upon the town of Foncebadón. It is described in the guides as abandoned, but it was not abandoned, as we saw much sign of permanent life. Outside the town, by some ruins, some young French pilgrims were packing up their tents. We were later to meet these pilgrims and befriend them in Santiago.
We continued past Foncebadón through the puerto Irago, the port or pass of Irago, which is 1504 meters in altitude. The path flirted with the winding carretera as it climbed up by outcrops of slate, woods of oak and pine, and undergrowth of broom and brush. The brush scratched my legs as I walked by, and dumped cold water on my feet. The sky was overcast, foggy, and the weather alternated between fine drizzle and outright rain. The wind was likewise fickle, and changed from calm to tempestuous. The temperature was in the low 50s.
After a bitter and cold walk, we caught sight of the hermitage of Santiago and the famed Cruz de Ferro, the simple monument of the iron cross atop a wooden mast of oak decorated with ribbons and other pilgrim votives. It traditionally marks the division between the Maragatería and the Bierzo regions.
Portus montis Yraci
The Cruz de Ferro was surrounded by a pile of stones thrown here by pilgrims perennial. Perhaps, as they say, the tradition is of pagan origin—a cult devoted to Mercury. I don’t know. What rocks have to do with Mercury I do not know either. What I do know is that there was no paganism, latent or patent, in my mind when I participated in the custom. My sentiments here were by paganism unsullied, and my intendment wholly Christian and Catholic.
Two stones here are not from Spain, but from the New World. I threw two stones here ex voto, in remembrance of each of my parents now dead and each bearing one of my parents’ initials and my prayers for them: D.K.G.-R.I.P. and M.D.G.-R.I.P. Though the heavy rocks fell back to earth as expected (that is a law of Nature), the prayers written on them which are in my mind rise to Heaven (that is a law of Grace). You may search for these stones among the thousands there, and if you are lucky you shall find one of them and if you are luckier still you shall find them both. But under the penalty of my personal anathema and all principles of human decency leave them there. And whether you search for them or whether you don’t, I bid you say a prayer for the souls of my parents. Requiescant in pacem. But do not pray to Mercury, who is unreal and capable neither of judgment nor of mercy, but to the God of Jacob who Is.
After praying for the souls of my parents, I paused to thank God for the beauty of the Bierzo, the privilege to be alive and on pilgrimage here, and the chance to pray for the repose of my parents’ souls. We shielded ourselves from the wind by crouching by the wall of the tiny hermitage, and ate cookies, cherries, almonds and hazelnuts to fortify our tired, wet and cold bodies. We also talked to some Danish pilgrims who shared our plight. But it was a weak formula against the cold and the wet, for the rain and cold bothered us and hunger gnawed on us until we walked under a roof and ate a hot meal at El Acebo, some hours ahead.
I I I
D.K.G. et M.D.G.
Pie Iesu, Domine, Dona eis requiem
Deus Iacob
On the Way: Cruz de Ferro to Manjarín
and the Templar Knight Errant
From the Cruz de Ferro we descended to the village of Manjarín, abandoned and in ruins now, although it boasted a sizeable pilgrim hospital in the past. It did, however, have a somewhat nonconformist refugio for the pilgrim disposed to spend the night here. We stopped inside to get out of the rain, for the refugio had a fire, but felt unsettled in the place. The hospitaller, a man named Tomás, thinks himself a Templar Knight. He was dressed in fatigues and boots, and wore a dirty white tunic emblazoned with the red Templar cross. The Beau Seant waved on a flag pole in the entrance.
This man is a Knight Templar errant, for the Knights Templar were supressed by the Pope. The Pope gave them life through his legate Matthew of Albano at the Council of Troye in 1129. The Pope killed them when Clement V suppressed the order in 1312 by the bull Vox in excelso. And whether it right or wrong the Pope gave and the Pope took away. And it will take another act of the Pope to make the Templars live. For a Templar has no life outside of the Church. Besides, I read that this man left a wife and two teenage daughters in the lurch, to go about his errant way, which makes him an infidel in my book, a cad and a foolish dreamer, and certainly not a Poor Soldier of Christ. As we walked in and as we walked out the refugio, the Knight Templar Errant did not greet us, for he appeared busy flirting with a gaggle of foolish and gullible Spanish women who were on vacation.
From the height of Manjarín we began our descent into the verdant Bierzo valley, which was still before us a distance, and into the village of El Acebo. The Bierzo was considered to be the narthex to Galicia, the sanctuary of St. James. It was a beautiful and fertile land, filled with every shade and hue of green. On the left slightly ahead of the Camino we observed Monte de Compludo where the monastery of Compludo is located, one of a string of monasteries in the Bierzo region founded by San Fructuoso in the 7th century. We walked through and between outcrops of slate, dark gray and dull auburn in color.
Into aban-doned Manjarín
Descent
To El Acebo
(1145 m.)
We entered the town of El Acebo, passing by the río Poijol and the fuente de la Trucha. This hamlet’s homes are of gray stone and have painted wooden balconies that extend past the boundaries of the house over the streets. Their roofs are shingled with black, silver, and brown slate.
At a restaurant in El Acebo I had sopa del Bierzo, a rich vegetable soup, and some veal with some red wine. The red wine was a grevious mistake, a great folly, for it stole any resolve to face the storm, and even the strong coffee could not re-inspire in me any pilgrim fortitude. So around two o’clock, the wine having stolen all our determination, we quit for the day, and settled in the city by the restaurant that had so bountifully fed us for a fair price, yet robbed us of our hardihood.
That night I slept horribly. I had to resort to cigarette butts because of the snorers. My body was cold and never felt warmth. The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable. My feet hurt in a manner I cannot describe. Their constant throbbing kept me awake. I may have been able to lull myself to sleep had I been able to moan. But being that I was in a common bedroom, I could not moan as an anodyne to pain. Instead I had to suffer in a stoic, wakeful silence.
k
[i] quoted by Francis Bourdeau, “Pilgrimage, Eucharist, Reconciliation”, Lumen Vitae 39 (1984), 403, quoted in Robinson, Anthology, p. 42.
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