”That we are pilgrims from the Lord and seekers after our future homeland, that we all have sinned and have frequently abandoned the way of God's commandments and like foolish sheep have wandered astray, is well established.”
____ Pope Benedict XIV, Peregrinantes
Depart Logroño on the Rúa Barrio-cepo through the Revellín or puerto del Camino
By Vallejo and along the Embalse de la Granjera
On the Way: Logroño to Nájera
Richard and I left Logroño, in the madrugada—it was still quite dark. Young Spaniards remained in the streets, but they were drunk and sleepy. We walked under the ogee-arched 16th century gateway in the west part of the town. It bore the arms of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles, the fifth by that name, and so is called the puerta de Carlos V, though it is also called the Revellín and the puerta del Camino. Through the suburbs of Logroño we went (it took about an hour), and thence into the countryside which was lined with vines, orchards, and fields of grain.
Clavijo lies 17 kilometers south of Logroño. Clavijo is the scene of the famous legendary battle of May 23, 844, between Ramiro I of Asturias and the Moor, Abderraman II. It is here where St. James Matamorros, the milites Dei or soldier of God, is said to have appeared, on a white charger and wielding sword, to encourage and lead the Christian forces to victory. I would liked to have gone there, but time did not allow, and, as the scholars tell us, the battle actually was between Ramiro II and Abderraman III, and occurred in Simancas in 938, so perhaps there was nothing lost. Beyond Clavijo is the town of Albelda de Iruega where Arabic numerals and the concept of zero, brought to Spain by the Muslim scholars and foreign to the minds governed by Roman numerals, made their entry, thankfully, into Europe. This happened around the year CM.
Into Navarrete
k
Iglesia de la Asun-ción
We took the old road to the town Entrena and turned on a gravel road, passing by the reservoir called the Pantano de la Grajera, on the way to town of Navarette. At the Pantano we passed a group of German pilgrims, all middle-aged women and very friendly. They teased me, called my feet “Kaput,” and were full of motherly advice on how to alleviate the pain.
There were vineyards all about the road to Navarette, and their grapes are said to make an excellent Claret. The Camino winds about in semi-circular fashion through Navarette, and so it took us to the Church of the Assumption, a 16th century church of three aisles. It was square, and squat, and Renaissance in inspiration, with traces of Gothic, particularly in its spire. Within was a statute of Our Lady of Navarette, although I had no chance to see it because the Church was locked.
At the café by the church Richard and I had some coffee. We met Cheryl, a pilgrim from Lafayette, Louisiana, and two priests. Cheryl had some problems with blisters and with her feet (she had lost her toenails from the stress of walking) and Richard was not feeling well. So, at the café I made arrangements for Cheryl and Richard to take a bus into Nájera.
Walking out of Navarette alone, I passed the town’s cemetery on the right as I departed the town. The remains from the ancient 12th century hospital of the order of St. John of Acre, transferred here from the other side of town, now grace the entrance to the cemetery. On one capital, as is true on many a capital on the Camino, appeared Roland and Farragut, still fighting their legendary epic battle. Another capital has St. George and his battle with the Dragon. The archivolts of the old portal display simple, stark, and heavy geometrical carvings, mainly sharkstooth triangular, all having been long ago carved by the anonymous hand of a skilled stone craftsman.
Up to the Alto de San Antón
The Spanish pilgrims Manolo and Roberto caught up with me as I drew the ancient portal. I walked with them at their torrid pace until I could no more. (I later learned that Manolo was a marathon runner, and Roberto a long-distance runner.) From Navarette we followed in the main the N-120, until shortly before the Alto de San Antón. At this point I went left, by a copse of black poplars which surrounded the Alto de San Antón. Not quite a kilometer leftwards, I saw the town of Ventosa atop another hill. Here in the Alto de San Antón was at one time the monastery of St. Anthony, now in ruin.
As I planned to beg leave of the Spaniards, I looked for a place to rest. I saw a copse of trees up ahead on the side of the Ventosa Highway and parted from the Spaniards. Under the shade of these trees I suprised and was surprised by two pilgrims. One, an Italian artist named Francesco, and another, a young Brazilian woman. The woman had planned to walk the Camino with her husband, but he had suffered an auto accident and could not go. He insisted that she walk alone. After she had met Francesco on the Camino, they had decided to walk together.
Francesco was a man in his mid-50s, and he was from the south of Italy. He had white stubble on his face, and his receeding hair and fair skin were protected by a floppy canvas hat upon which he had pinned a handkerchief to keep the sun off his neck. He looked like the pilgrim version of Lawrence of Arabia (as he called himself when he donned his hat). He was a painter, a philospher, and a social critic. We talked in Italian. At least he talked, and I tried.
We talked of the Camino de Santiago, and how unique it was. Oh that a footpath could have such meaning! He and I spoke of the demise of Western culture, its descent into decadence, and the need for Europe to reaffirm her roots and reject the shallow thrills of mass consumerism. We agreed that she needed to return to a simple life, informed by authentic human, religious values, the values that the Church gave her and calls her back to. The Camino is dotted with Romanesque and Gothic, and Europe had to find again the stuff that lay behind the Romanesque and Gothic. There was some urgency in this, for Francesco felt that in rejecting her past, Europe would not descend to a land of noble savages, but to a land of violent, grasping men. We hoped together that the Camino would be both a beacon and a means for this revitalization of Europe. The revitalization had to begin heart by heart.
In Francesco I had found a kindred spirit, and when we parted (for I still wanted rest), he kissed each of my cheeks, as the warm Italians are wont to do, and saluted me with the ancient pilgrim cry:
“Ultreia!” he said as he kissed my first cheeck.
“Suseia!” I responded as he kissed my other.
I say I found a kindred spirit, and this because we shared the Faith. Though years and miles separated us and our lives, we thought as one. Our hearts were bound together by the Faith universal, the light which enlightens a man and takes him out of darkness. During the pilgrim path we did not see each other again after this brief encounter. We were, however, to see each other again at the pilgrim’s Mass at the Cathedral in Santiago. Together there we wept. I shall meet with Francesco again in Heaven, I trust. I will recognize him because he will come to me and kiss my cheek and exclaim, “Ultreia!” I shall know how to respond. We will baske together in God’s glory, and be pilgrims no more.
I I I
Once I got back on the Camino I climbed a hill, and as I rounded a bend I came upon a wonderful sight. For here and there all around the earthen mounds about the path were piles of stones—cairns—stuff of the earth and work of pilgrim’s hands.
There was something marvelous, and it cut me to the quick of my heart, when I saw this monument to the wayfaring state, so simple, spontaneous, and uncontrived. Hundreds of little piles of stones, piled up by countless anonymous pilgrim hands, piled over untold years, casting shadows about the path in the light of the sun. It felt as if I had walked into a room full of the forgotten friends of my youth, familiar yet strange. It was the same feeling of wonder and mystery a child feels when he enters a wax museum and sees the famous dead as if they were alive. There came upon me the feeling akin to awe, and I felt as if I had seen something very holy.
Pass by north of Ventosa
For how else can we explain this act of stacking rocks? How else explain that soft flesh uses hard rock (they are both made of the same stuff: dust) to build in this sacrament of human doing? The ancient Egyptian sage stacked rocks and made the pyramid. The Jewish priest stacked rocks and made his Temple. The French monk stacked rocks and made his Romanesque church. The templar Knight stacked rocks and made his fortress. The wonder in this stacking of stones is in the interstices, where one may glean the divine spark of the human spirit as if it were a grin. The pilgrim to Compostela participates in this human liturgy of stones, this act of natural religion, which cries out to a personal God and the hope for life beyond this earth. Man (when he does it right) uses the earth to worship God and hope against his mortal frame. I suppose that is because God set apart dirt of the earth to make the Body of Man, and He Himself set some of it apart when He assumed human flesh. He also took that part of it to heaven in His glorified body.
A short, stout Spanish pilgrim met me on the road. His name was Pepe.
“Did you place a stone among the others?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I replied, for the stones had raised an emotion that required a response, and the response was to do that which those before me had done. It would have been a form of sacrilege to do anything less or, for that matter, anything more.
I I I
By the Poyo de Roldán
Between vineyards and fields of wheat
On the Way: Nájera to Azofra
After my brief encounter with Pepe, I continued downhill. Soon, my feet began to hurt badly. I took yet another rest in the shade of some oak trees before descending into Nájera.
It is between the Poyo de Roldán and Nájera that Roland and Farragut fought their legendary battle recounted in the Codex Calixtinus. Roland, the victor, “pricked the poor gentle giant in the one spot vulnerable,” in the healed wound that once joined him to, I’m sure, his even more gentle mother. [i] Somewhere about these vineyards—I thought frivolously as I passed them—must lay the rock that chilvarous Roland slipped under the sleeping head of his enemy, the giant Farragut, as a pillow. I began to walk again, and travelled past some ugly, gray, and metal-framed furniture factories into Nájera . . . .
Roto-landus vero, ut erat iuvenis alacer, misit lapidem ad caput eius ut libencius dormiret
Into Nájera
Cross the bridge over the río Najerilla into old Nájera
Nájera sits nestled under some red, sandstone cliffs in a bend carved over much time but with little seeming effort by the río Najerilla, a tributary to the río Ebro. The kings of Navarre and those of Castille chose this place as the site of the royal residence and royal burial. More important than the choice of kings is the choice of a saint, for San Juan de Ortega once graced this town. Over the river Najerilla in the 12th century he built a bridge of seven arches. He built his hermitage at the east end of the bridge. The hermitage is now destroyed, and has been since the end of the 19th century, and his bridge replaced then too.
Below a bridge, at the park by the río Najerilla, I was hailed by Richard and Randi. We checked into a hotel, and I managed some rest. In the hotel room, I looked at my feet. I had now a total of five blisters on them. The blisters would become worse. There would be a time when I would bear more than 30 such blisters, and my feet would be more wounded than hale.
Nagera
k
Monas-terio Santa María la Real
In Nájera, directly under the red sandstone cliffs, is the monastery Santa María la Real. A tender legend is told about the cause of its founding by Don García III Sanchez el de Nájera, King of Navarre (1035-1054). It is told that this king worried greatly about the Muslim raids or razzias, and the safety of his subjects, who suffered so terribly from the violence of the Moor. One morning on a hunt with his falcon, the falcon unpredictably flew off to chase a white dove that was chasing a partridge. All three fowl entered a cave, into which the King followed. In the depth of the cave Don García came upon the birds, perched together in peace, admidst a lighted lamp, a clay jar full of white lilies, a bell, and a statute of the Virgin and Child. The King was at first unable to understand this prodigy, but later understood it to mean that he would win a great battle against the Moor. Days later, the Christians confronted the Moors in battle. The Christians routed them. In thanksgiving, the King ordered that a monastery to be built upon the site where this marvel occurred. The King also established a religious order of Knights of La Terraza or La Jarra, the symbol of which order is a pot of white lilies, a clear reference to this legend.[ii] The statue of the Virgin and Child may be found in the sanctuary of the monastery.
The legend being true in some regard or in no regard, it is quite certain that the monastery was founded around 1054. It became a dependency of Cluny in 1079, was rebuilt in 1453, and finally abandoned in 1835. In 1895 it was restored and since then occupied by the Capuchins, a branch of the Franciscans.[iii] The church, the royal pantheon, and the cloister are all of them marvelous. Outside, the church has giant turrets, of simple and military severity, which buttress the walls. The church is otherwise undecorated and of clean line. The exception is the Renaissance north portal, which is the grand entry into the church. The church interiorly is of ochre stone, quite pale, and of three aisles.
I I I
We went to Mass at a side chapel attached to the Church. I confessed. I took communion. In a message to pilgrims at the end of Mass, the priest told us that pilgrims walk not only to city of Santiago with their feet, but must walk all their lives, for they must learn to walk to a heavenly city all their lives with their hearts.
I made arrangements for Richard to confess in English to a Spanish-speaking Franciscan priest. Richard did not want me to act as interpreter, so I spoke to the priest about what to do. The Franciscan priest told me that he would hear the confession, though he knew only Spanish. Before hearing his confession, he told me what Richard’s penance would be. “In cases like this Ecclesia supplet,” he offered, and he told me of his missionary experience in Peru. There, he said, he heard confessions in Quecha, the native toungue of the Indians, and he understood not a word, and yet absolved them on the moral likelihood that they had confessed their sin.
I I I
At or about Nájera Pedro the Cruel confronted the equally evil Henry of Trastamara. In April 1360, Henry was defeated here. Seven years later, in April 1367, the confrontation, as related by the medieval chronicler Jean Froissart, was repeated. Pedro, King of Castille, aided by the Edward the Black Prince with troops from England, France, and Navarre, fought under the banner of St. George. Henry of Trastamara, supported by Bertrand de Guesclin and Don García Álvarez de Toledo, who was Master of the Order of Santiago, fought under the banner of Santiago. But only the banners were there, not the Saints, for though Christian was fighting Christian the motive was all worldly. As fate, then, and not the aid of saints would have it: Henry and du Guesclin were defeated, and soundly. Henry of Trastamara was finally to succeed against Pedro the Cruel, but he had to wait until 1369, when he and du Guesclin defeated Pedro the Cruel at the battle of Montiel. After his defeat, Pedro fled to a fortress, but was captured by trick and was stabbed by Henry over and over in the face and other soft spots. And so Henry gained the throne of Castille, and is known to us as Henry II of Castille. It is not a moment of greatness in the historical annals of Castille.
There is a little bit of Nájera in Geoffrey Chaucer, as there is a little of Compostela there, for in his Canterbury Tales his monk refers to this battle among brothers to show the variability of fortune:
O noble, o worthy Petro, glorie of Spayne,
Whom fortune heeld so hy in magestee,
Wel oughten men thy pitious deeth complayne!
Out of thy lond thy brother made thee flee;
And after, at a sege, by subtiltee,
Thou wert bitrayed, and lad un-to his tente,
Wher-as he with his owene hond slow thee,
Succeding in thy regne and in they rente![iv]
As a model, Pedro the Cruel’s life is not of much more use than to warn us of fortune’s fickle ways. Better, I should think, to take as a model the life of Fernando III, the Saint-King, from 1230, of the joint kingdom of Castille and León, and who in 1217 was crowned in the campo de San Fernando.
So it was that I mused to myself as Richard, Randi, and I took refreshment in the late afternoon by the statute of St. Ferdinand. It stood on a pedestal in the campo de San Fernando, by the bar to which we went after Mass. Once dinner time arrived, we left the bar and crossed the Najerilla river. At a Restaurant across the campo de San Fernando, we had an ample meal of pulpo with onions and pickles, a cocido de garbanzos, and trucha con jamón, all washed down with mineral water and commensurate glasses of red Riojan wine. There we saw the sun set and the light of the gibbous moon grow bold. When the sky grew dark, we trudged to the hotel and went to a well-deserved rest.
O Fortuna, velut Luna statu varia-bilis, semper crescis aut decrescis
De Petro Rege Ispannie
Q
Waxing gibbous moon
k
[i] King, I.394.
[ii] Starkie at 189.
[iii] Jacobs, Road, at 60.
[iv] Skeat, Walter W., ed., Chaucer Complete Works. London: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 536
____ Pope Benedict XIV, Peregrinantes
Depart Logroño on the Rúa Barrio-cepo through the Revellín or puerto del Camino
By Vallejo and along the Embalse de la Granjera
On the Way: Logroño to Nájera
Richard and I left Logroño, in the madrugada—it was still quite dark. Young Spaniards remained in the streets, but they were drunk and sleepy. We walked under the ogee-arched 16th century gateway in the west part of the town. It bore the arms of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles, the fifth by that name, and so is called the puerta de Carlos V, though it is also called the Revellín and the puerta del Camino. Through the suburbs of Logroño we went (it took about an hour), and thence into the countryside which was lined with vines, orchards, and fields of grain.
Clavijo lies 17 kilometers south of Logroño. Clavijo is the scene of the famous legendary battle of May 23, 844, between Ramiro I of Asturias and the Moor, Abderraman II. It is here where St. James Matamorros, the milites Dei or soldier of God, is said to have appeared, on a white charger and wielding sword, to encourage and lead the Christian forces to victory. I would liked to have gone there, but time did not allow, and, as the scholars tell us, the battle actually was between Ramiro II and Abderraman III, and occurred in Simancas in 938, so perhaps there was nothing lost. Beyond Clavijo is the town of Albelda de Iruega where Arabic numerals and the concept of zero, brought to Spain by the Muslim scholars and foreign to the minds governed by Roman numerals, made their entry, thankfully, into Europe. This happened around the year CM.
Into Navarrete
k
Iglesia de la Asun-ción
We took the old road to the town Entrena and turned on a gravel road, passing by the reservoir called the Pantano de la Grajera, on the way to town of Navarette. At the Pantano we passed a group of German pilgrims, all middle-aged women and very friendly. They teased me, called my feet “Kaput,” and were full of motherly advice on how to alleviate the pain.
There were vineyards all about the road to Navarette, and their grapes are said to make an excellent Claret. The Camino winds about in semi-circular fashion through Navarette, and so it took us to the Church of the Assumption, a 16th century church of three aisles. It was square, and squat, and Renaissance in inspiration, with traces of Gothic, particularly in its spire. Within was a statute of Our Lady of Navarette, although I had no chance to see it because the Church was locked.
At the café by the church Richard and I had some coffee. We met Cheryl, a pilgrim from Lafayette, Louisiana, and two priests. Cheryl had some problems with blisters and with her feet (she had lost her toenails from the stress of walking) and Richard was not feeling well. So, at the café I made arrangements for Cheryl and Richard to take a bus into Nájera.
Walking out of Navarette alone, I passed the town’s cemetery on the right as I departed the town. The remains from the ancient 12th century hospital of the order of St. John of Acre, transferred here from the other side of town, now grace the entrance to the cemetery. On one capital, as is true on many a capital on the Camino, appeared Roland and Farragut, still fighting their legendary epic battle. Another capital has St. George and his battle with the Dragon. The archivolts of the old portal display simple, stark, and heavy geometrical carvings, mainly sharkstooth triangular, all having been long ago carved by the anonymous hand of a skilled stone craftsman.
Up to the Alto de San Antón
The Spanish pilgrims Manolo and Roberto caught up with me as I drew the ancient portal. I walked with them at their torrid pace until I could no more. (I later learned that Manolo was a marathon runner, and Roberto a long-distance runner.) From Navarette we followed in the main the N-120, until shortly before the Alto de San Antón. At this point I went left, by a copse of black poplars which surrounded the Alto de San Antón. Not quite a kilometer leftwards, I saw the town of Ventosa atop another hill. Here in the Alto de San Antón was at one time the monastery of St. Anthony, now in ruin.
As I planned to beg leave of the Spaniards, I looked for a place to rest. I saw a copse of trees up ahead on the side of the Ventosa Highway and parted from the Spaniards. Under the shade of these trees I suprised and was surprised by two pilgrims. One, an Italian artist named Francesco, and another, a young Brazilian woman. The woman had planned to walk the Camino with her husband, but he had suffered an auto accident and could not go. He insisted that she walk alone. After she had met Francesco on the Camino, they had decided to walk together.
Francesco was a man in his mid-50s, and he was from the south of Italy. He had white stubble on his face, and his receeding hair and fair skin were protected by a floppy canvas hat upon which he had pinned a handkerchief to keep the sun off his neck. He looked like the pilgrim version of Lawrence of Arabia (as he called himself when he donned his hat). He was a painter, a philospher, and a social critic. We talked in Italian. At least he talked, and I tried.
We talked of the Camino de Santiago, and how unique it was. Oh that a footpath could have such meaning! He and I spoke of the demise of Western culture, its descent into decadence, and the need for Europe to reaffirm her roots and reject the shallow thrills of mass consumerism. We agreed that she needed to return to a simple life, informed by authentic human, religious values, the values that the Church gave her and calls her back to. The Camino is dotted with Romanesque and Gothic, and Europe had to find again the stuff that lay behind the Romanesque and Gothic. There was some urgency in this, for Francesco felt that in rejecting her past, Europe would not descend to a land of noble savages, but to a land of violent, grasping men. We hoped together that the Camino would be both a beacon and a means for this revitalization of Europe. The revitalization had to begin heart by heart.
In Francesco I had found a kindred spirit, and when we parted (for I still wanted rest), he kissed each of my cheeks, as the warm Italians are wont to do, and saluted me with the ancient pilgrim cry:
“Ultreia!” he said as he kissed my first cheeck.
“Suseia!” I responded as he kissed my other.
I say I found a kindred spirit, and this because we shared the Faith. Though years and miles separated us and our lives, we thought as one. Our hearts were bound together by the Faith universal, the light which enlightens a man and takes him out of darkness. During the pilgrim path we did not see each other again after this brief encounter. We were, however, to see each other again at the pilgrim’s Mass at the Cathedral in Santiago. Together there we wept. I shall meet with Francesco again in Heaven, I trust. I will recognize him because he will come to me and kiss my cheek and exclaim, “Ultreia!” I shall know how to respond. We will baske together in God’s glory, and be pilgrims no more.
I I I
Once I got back on the Camino I climbed a hill, and as I rounded a bend I came upon a wonderful sight. For here and there all around the earthen mounds about the path were piles of stones—cairns—stuff of the earth and work of pilgrim’s hands.
There was something marvelous, and it cut me to the quick of my heart, when I saw this monument to the wayfaring state, so simple, spontaneous, and uncontrived. Hundreds of little piles of stones, piled up by countless anonymous pilgrim hands, piled over untold years, casting shadows about the path in the light of the sun. It felt as if I had walked into a room full of the forgotten friends of my youth, familiar yet strange. It was the same feeling of wonder and mystery a child feels when he enters a wax museum and sees the famous dead as if they were alive. There came upon me the feeling akin to awe, and I felt as if I had seen something very holy.
Pass by north of Ventosa
For how else can we explain this act of stacking rocks? How else explain that soft flesh uses hard rock (they are both made of the same stuff: dust) to build in this sacrament of human doing? The ancient Egyptian sage stacked rocks and made the pyramid. The Jewish priest stacked rocks and made his Temple. The French monk stacked rocks and made his Romanesque church. The templar Knight stacked rocks and made his fortress. The wonder in this stacking of stones is in the interstices, where one may glean the divine spark of the human spirit as if it were a grin. The pilgrim to Compostela participates in this human liturgy of stones, this act of natural religion, which cries out to a personal God and the hope for life beyond this earth. Man (when he does it right) uses the earth to worship God and hope against his mortal frame. I suppose that is because God set apart dirt of the earth to make the Body of Man, and He Himself set some of it apart when He assumed human flesh. He also took that part of it to heaven in His glorified body.
A short, stout Spanish pilgrim met me on the road. His name was Pepe.
“Did you place a stone among the others?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I replied, for the stones had raised an emotion that required a response, and the response was to do that which those before me had done. It would have been a form of sacrilege to do anything less or, for that matter, anything more.
I I I
By the Poyo de Roldán
Between vineyards and fields of wheat
On the Way: Nájera to Azofra
After my brief encounter with Pepe, I continued downhill. Soon, my feet began to hurt badly. I took yet another rest in the shade of some oak trees before descending into Nájera.
It is between the Poyo de Roldán and Nájera that Roland and Farragut fought their legendary battle recounted in the Codex Calixtinus. Roland, the victor, “pricked the poor gentle giant in the one spot vulnerable,” in the healed wound that once joined him to, I’m sure, his even more gentle mother. [i] Somewhere about these vineyards—I thought frivolously as I passed them—must lay the rock that chilvarous Roland slipped under the sleeping head of his enemy, the giant Farragut, as a pillow. I began to walk again, and travelled past some ugly, gray, and metal-framed furniture factories into Nájera . . . .
Roto-landus vero, ut erat iuvenis alacer, misit lapidem ad caput eius ut libencius dormiret
Into Nájera
Cross the bridge over the río Najerilla into old Nájera
Nájera sits nestled under some red, sandstone cliffs in a bend carved over much time but with little seeming effort by the río Najerilla, a tributary to the río Ebro. The kings of Navarre and those of Castille chose this place as the site of the royal residence and royal burial. More important than the choice of kings is the choice of a saint, for San Juan de Ortega once graced this town. Over the river Najerilla in the 12th century he built a bridge of seven arches. He built his hermitage at the east end of the bridge. The hermitage is now destroyed, and has been since the end of the 19th century, and his bridge replaced then too.
Below a bridge, at the park by the río Najerilla, I was hailed by Richard and Randi. We checked into a hotel, and I managed some rest. In the hotel room, I looked at my feet. I had now a total of five blisters on them. The blisters would become worse. There would be a time when I would bear more than 30 such blisters, and my feet would be more wounded than hale.
Nagera
k
Monas-terio Santa María la Real
In Nájera, directly under the red sandstone cliffs, is the monastery Santa María la Real. A tender legend is told about the cause of its founding by Don García III Sanchez el de Nájera, King of Navarre (1035-1054). It is told that this king worried greatly about the Muslim raids or razzias, and the safety of his subjects, who suffered so terribly from the violence of the Moor. One morning on a hunt with his falcon, the falcon unpredictably flew off to chase a white dove that was chasing a partridge. All three fowl entered a cave, into which the King followed. In the depth of the cave Don García came upon the birds, perched together in peace, admidst a lighted lamp, a clay jar full of white lilies, a bell, and a statute of the Virgin and Child. The King was at first unable to understand this prodigy, but later understood it to mean that he would win a great battle against the Moor. Days later, the Christians confronted the Moors in battle. The Christians routed them. In thanksgiving, the King ordered that a monastery to be built upon the site where this marvel occurred. The King also established a religious order of Knights of La Terraza or La Jarra, the symbol of which order is a pot of white lilies, a clear reference to this legend.[ii] The statue of the Virgin and Child may be found in the sanctuary of the monastery.
The legend being true in some regard or in no regard, it is quite certain that the monastery was founded around 1054. It became a dependency of Cluny in 1079, was rebuilt in 1453, and finally abandoned in 1835. In 1895 it was restored and since then occupied by the Capuchins, a branch of the Franciscans.[iii] The church, the royal pantheon, and the cloister are all of them marvelous. Outside, the church has giant turrets, of simple and military severity, which buttress the walls. The church is otherwise undecorated and of clean line. The exception is the Renaissance north portal, which is the grand entry into the church. The church interiorly is of ochre stone, quite pale, and of three aisles.
I I I
We went to Mass at a side chapel attached to the Church. I confessed. I took communion. In a message to pilgrims at the end of Mass, the priest told us that pilgrims walk not only to city of Santiago with their feet, but must walk all their lives, for they must learn to walk to a heavenly city all their lives with their hearts.
I made arrangements for Richard to confess in English to a Spanish-speaking Franciscan priest. Richard did not want me to act as interpreter, so I spoke to the priest about what to do. The Franciscan priest told me that he would hear the confession, though he knew only Spanish. Before hearing his confession, he told me what Richard’s penance would be. “In cases like this Ecclesia supplet,” he offered, and he told me of his missionary experience in Peru. There, he said, he heard confessions in Quecha, the native toungue of the Indians, and he understood not a word, and yet absolved them on the moral likelihood that they had confessed their sin.
I I I
At or about Nájera Pedro the Cruel confronted the equally evil Henry of Trastamara. In April 1360, Henry was defeated here. Seven years later, in April 1367, the confrontation, as related by the medieval chronicler Jean Froissart, was repeated. Pedro, King of Castille, aided by the Edward the Black Prince with troops from England, France, and Navarre, fought under the banner of St. George. Henry of Trastamara, supported by Bertrand de Guesclin and Don García Álvarez de Toledo, who was Master of the Order of Santiago, fought under the banner of Santiago. But only the banners were there, not the Saints, for though Christian was fighting Christian the motive was all worldly. As fate, then, and not the aid of saints would have it: Henry and du Guesclin were defeated, and soundly. Henry of Trastamara was finally to succeed against Pedro the Cruel, but he had to wait until 1369, when he and du Guesclin defeated Pedro the Cruel at the battle of Montiel. After his defeat, Pedro fled to a fortress, but was captured by trick and was stabbed by Henry over and over in the face and other soft spots. And so Henry gained the throne of Castille, and is known to us as Henry II of Castille. It is not a moment of greatness in the historical annals of Castille.
There is a little bit of Nájera in Geoffrey Chaucer, as there is a little of Compostela there, for in his Canterbury Tales his monk refers to this battle among brothers to show the variability of fortune:
O noble, o worthy Petro, glorie of Spayne,
Whom fortune heeld so hy in magestee,
Wel oughten men thy pitious deeth complayne!
Out of thy lond thy brother made thee flee;
And after, at a sege, by subtiltee,
Thou wert bitrayed, and lad un-to his tente,
Wher-as he with his owene hond slow thee,
Succeding in thy regne and in they rente![iv]
As a model, Pedro the Cruel’s life is not of much more use than to warn us of fortune’s fickle ways. Better, I should think, to take as a model the life of Fernando III, the Saint-King, from 1230, of the joint kingdom of Castille and León, and who in 1217 was crowned in the campo de San Fernando.
So it was that I mused to myself as Richard, Randi, and I took refreshment in the late afternoon by the statute of St. Ferdinand. It stood on a pedestal in the campo de San Fernando, by the bar to which we went after Mass. Once dinner time arrived, we left the bar and crossed the Najerilla river. At a Restaurant across the campo de San Fernando, we had an ample meal of pulpo with onions and pickles, a cocido de garbanzos, and trucha con jamón, all washed down with mineral water and commensurate glasses of red Riojan wine. There we saw the sun set and the light of the gibbous moon grow bold. When the sky grew dark, we trudged to the hotel and went to a well-deserved rest.
O Fortuna, velut Luna statu varia-bilis, semper crescis aut decrescis
De Petro Rege Ispannie
Q
Waxing gibbous moon
k
[i] King, I.394.
[ii] Starkie at 189.
[iii] Jacobs, Road, at 60.
[iv] Skeat, Walter W., ed., Chaucer Complete Works. London: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 536
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