“Life is a pilgrimage. . . . We are made ‘to know God, to love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in the next.’ This is the point of the pilgrimage.”
____ Cardinal Basil Hume, To Be a Pilgrim.[i]
On the Way: Frómista to Villovieco
Another morning and another early start. The air was cool and damp, and a wispy mist hovered over the fields. Our goal today was to walk to Carrión de los Condes. The land between Frómista and Sahagún, between the rivers Pisuerga and the Cea, through which I traveled the next two days, is refered to as the Tierra de Campos, land of the fields of grain. It is fitting, I suppose, that the Tierra de Campos starts with the town named after frumenta. In between Frómista and the next large town, Carrión de los Condes, the Camino generally follows the carretera.
To Población
de Campos, erstwhile bailiwick of Malta by the río Ucieza
k
Santa María
The first town outside of Frómista, three kilometers away and located on the banks of the río Ucieza, was Población de Campos. This humble place was once a bailiwick of the Order of Malta. Three churches are there, one dedicated to the Magdalene, one, a hermitage of el Socorro, and another, outside of town, dedicated to St. Michael. Not much further on from Población, indeed practically just ahead, is the small town of Revenga de Campos. Taking a break in the small plaza of that town, we ran into some young Spaniards just tying up the evening and groggily heading home. Everything was closed at the town of Revenga, so we marched on to the town of Villovieco. There was a church at Villovieco, dedicated to St. Mary, but it was still too early for anything to be open. I noticed about the place dovecotes or columbaries of rock, adobe, and tile, many in a state of disrepair. In Spanish they are called palomares, and they are frequently found about the Tierra del Campos.
I I I
Through Villovieco
Through Revenga de Campos
Through Villarmen-tero de Campos
Villasirga
On the Way: Villovieco to Villasirga
From Villovieco we went by Villarmentero de Campos, with its baroque church dedicated to St. Lawrence. Here we rejoined the carretera, which led us directly and straightly into Villalcázar de Sirga.
Villalcázar de Sirga means “the town of the alcázar, or fortress, on the way” (sirga in old Castillian was another word for camino, calzada, or senda), and it is known by the contracted form Villasirga. Villasirga is the Virgin’s town, and the Virgin in this town is white, not dark like Mary at Guadalupe or Mary at Monserrat. Whether white, black, or brown, Mary is beautiful, tota pulchra. But in this town, she is white. Without Santa María la Blanca, this town is nothing, and so with good reason the church of Santa María la Blanca is in the center of it. This is Villasirga, small in size, but large in history and larger still in song. It is also the only town in all of Spain in which I left a curse, and in which I dusted my feet, for there was a man in town who was a hater of pilgrims. Specifically, by the Virgin’s Church is a café, and this café and its proprietor were the subject of my curse. It is no mean thing to be subject to a pilgrim’s curse.
How we wanted a café con leche, and how I needed to go to the restroom! Imagine the relief when we got to Villasirga on a Sunday and the café had its lights on, its door open, and pilgrims within! Inside were some Brazilian pilgrims and I asked them somewhat needlessly if the café was open. They nodded yes. So I walked in, relieved myself of my pack, and marched into the restroom. Just as I was ready to shut the bathroom door, the proprietor collared me and threw me out of his establishment. As he led me out, he heaped all sorts of abuse on me, and accused me of coming in to his café while it was not yet open to the public and while he was still mopping the floor. What sort of behavior was this, I thought, so different from the hospitable woman in Cardeñuela and the man in Hornillos. Caught so unaware and by suprise, I weakly retorted that I did not need the likes of him and his café and I quit the premises.
On the way to a well in the middle of the square by the church, I was seized by the esprit de l’escalier. This abuse of a pilgrim, this minor sacrilege, could not go unaddressed, I thought. So I invoked a malediction, a clamor parvus upon that café. I wished that his sign would fall down, that pilgrims would shun his premises like the plague, and that his coffee would be forever cold and his milk spoiled. I recalled an old medieval curse that imprecated the malcontent drain out his bowels like the heretic Arius, and I thought that might be an appropriate and fitting revenge, a Dantean contrapasso for the proprietor who so abused the pilgrim. But my mind was boiling, and that still was not enough, for justice was not satisfied, and had I a piece of charcoal or chalk, I would have put a ban on the café, and written left to right, right to left, and left to right a Biblical herem above the lintel of its door thus:
ΑΝΑΘΗΜΑ
םרה
Anathema
I I I
k
Santa María la Blanca
Unless one is a masochist, the café at Villasirga is not to be visited at an early hour on Sunday. Nor can the church of Santa María la Blanca at Villasirga be visited at an early hour on Sunday, for it did not open till the noon hour. The Church is of Templar foundation of the 13th century. It was the order’s third foundation in Spain.
Structurally, the church appeared commodious: three naves, transept, and apsidal chapels. The front portico has a double frieze with fifty sculptures, Christ and the Magi and their retinue in the lower frieze; Christ and His apostles in the upper frieze. The Church is particularly memorable for its unusually tall porch, which designed to shield these elaborately carved portal and friezes. This church, King tells us, “if not precisely lilium inter spinas, yet surpassing as a palm tree in an orchard; so pure, so fine, so French.”[ii]
The Virgen Blanca who resides in the church is said to be a miraculous virgin, subject of so many of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and holy competitor to St. James for the affections of the pilgrims. This is the Virgin who, according to the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio, can trump St. James and give sight to her blind devotee. She can save those on the sea, commute the sentences of penance placed on the backs of the wicked, straighten the limbs of the crippled, and reveal false devotions.
Romeus que de Santiago Pilgrims heading to Santiago
Ya forun-lle contando Already were being told
Os miragres que a Virgen About the miracles which the Virgin
Faz en Villa-Sirga Worked in Villasirga
I, on the other hand, doubt that there is any dissension between the white Lady and the pilgrim James; they both are equally dedicated to Christ, and James seems dedicated to the Lady, and likewise the Lady to James. The intrigue in the heavens is a pagan thing, found among the gods of the Greeks and the Romans, for there is no dissension in the heavens of the Christians. For all are of one mind there, in Christ.
In any event, if either or both were to work a miracle for me, I would in no wise complain about it. But I did not at this point ask for one, or rather, I asked for a little favor, and that was that the wicked proprietor of the café at Villasirga may save his soul, and that I make it to the next café four kilometers away without embarrassment.
I I I
Past the hermitage of la Piedad to and through the puerta de Santa María into Carrión de los Condes
On the Way: Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes
We traveled from Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes at a brisk pace. We came upon Carrión as soon as we reached the arroyo del Valle. Picaud informs us that “Carrión . . . is a well-managed and industrious town, abundant in bread wine, meat, and all kinds of produce.”[iii] But that news is several centuries’ old, and Picaud was not wholly reliable then and certainly not reliable today. Besides, my only want since Villasirga was a good café with a clean restroom.
We arrived at the town of Carrión de los Condes through the puerta de Santa María, which took us to the old walled town. Taking the calle Santa María we headed toward the church of Santa María del Camino, which was built upon a hill. At an intersection was a café; it was open, abounded with coffee and sweetbreads, and a most accommodating proprietor. I ordered my coffee and took care of the demands of Brother Ass. Later, as I drank my coffee, I looked upon the church of Santa María, and heard its bells ring. I withdrew my curse on the proprietor of the café at Villasirga, and forgave him from the depths of my bowels.
Karrionus que est in villa abilis et obtima pane et vino et carne, et omni fertilitate felix
k
Santa María del Camino
The church was Romanesque in the main, but with other additions, and all rustic. It was decorated with billet mouldings, the heads of bulls, and other figures. The south portal, which faced the road, bore some worn and simple sculptures. These are said to be representations of the one hundred virgins, the cien doncellas of flesh pure and Christian, given to satisfy the lustful appetite of the rapacious Moor who had demanded them as tribute. What a humiliating price to pay for peace, for both the men and the women. This was a miserable and degrading arrangement, to be sure, thankfully put an end to.
I I I
We should have stopped for Mass, for it was Sunday and the church had noon Mass. But most towns have an evening Mass, and I was anxious to continue walking to avoid the heat of the day. I hoped to make it to Calzadilla de la Cueza by the early afternoon and go to evening Mass there. This reasoning was to be an error in judgment and a great folly as you shall see.
I I I
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Monas-tery of St. Zoyl
On the Way: The Monastery of St. Zoyl
Past the río Carrión but not quite out of the city was the old Benedictine monastery of St. Zoyl. This monastery was founded in the 12th century, but little remained of the old structure. The church is now largely baroque, keeping but a Romanesque window that may be found in the west façade of the church. The cloisters in the monastery are a marvel of stonework, a tour de force in Gothic form by Juan de Badajóz. The vault ribs are thick, ornate, and appear to be designed less to support the vault than the pendulant bosses that hang like rock chandeliers or inverted toadstools from the intersections of the ribs. What I saw here as nothing compared to the baroque Gothic ebullience at the cloisters of the cathedral in León, remodeled by the same Juan de Badajóz. Yet the ceiling of either cloister is enough to take your breath away. If you know Latin, you will have the additional recompense of learning of salvation History and about the great prophets and prophetesses of the Scriptures.
The monastery houses the tombs of the sons of the infamous counts of Carrión, the Infantes de Carrión, whose treatment of Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, the daughters of El Cid, was both foolish and execrable. The tombs, of stone, are relatively simple and stoic. These sons of Benito Gomez deserve little honor and much disdain, for their ungentlemanly treatment of the daughters of the great man of Burgos and Conqueror of Valencia. Tying the stripped daughters of El Cid to trees and beating them senseless is not a way to win the heart of a great warrior. It was a dreadful imprudence and dreadfully did they pay for it. For their cruelty to fine women they died in shame. Though they would surely have died in any event, dying in shame is worse. But as it was, they died both young and in infamy from that day to this. And as long as there is the Poem of El Cid, and no poem of the sons of Beni Gomez, it shall so remain.
Grant es la bitança de infantes de Carrión;
Qui buena dueña escarnece e la dexa después
Atal le contesca o siquier peor.[iv]
I am fully in accord with this state of affairs. And I cursed their memory, yet prayed for their souls. Thankfully, the great Cid’s daughters’ disgrace was but temporary, and to their boon, for they were later joined in marriages—for the first marriages to the sons of Beni Gomez were surely null—to the princes of Navarre and Aragon. Would that all abandoned and beaten wives have a champion like El Cid.
I I I
Depart Carrión de los Condes
Over the río Carrión
To the ruins of the abbey of Bene-vívere
On the Way: Carrión to Calzada
We expected a long and difficulty afternoon of walking out of Carrión because we were forewarned about the rigors of the meseta which faced us. Many pilgrims we knew had opted to stay in the refugio in Carrión and face those difficulties in the morning. However, after a brief visit to the monastery of St. Zoyl, we left Carrión and crossed over the Carrión River. After passing the monastery, we went right, and headed toward the hamlet of Santa María de Benevívere. The Camino here followed a paved road, and the countryside was rich with the green of cornfields: the corn plants had rich, broad, dark green leaves about their stems, but no sign of any ears. After a time, we passed by a brick monastery to our right, and, as we prepared to take a left turn over a small stream, sat down on monastery property and had a snack.
The road past the monastery had capsized into the stream bed. It was a symbol of the great divide between the green regions of Spain that we had traversed, and the hot, dry, and demanding lands that lay ahead of us.
Once past the monastery at Benvivere the road was lonely. Until the next town a distance away, it remained lonely save for the greetings of the río Pozo Amargo and the río Sequillo, and they were well-nigh dry. Such is the meseta and such is the calzada de los peregrinos, the path of the pilgrims through it. The meseta is the Jacobean and peregrine equivalent to the Johannine and mystical dark night of the soul. For lack of change in the scene and the hot and weary drudgery, we fall into an anxiety that progress is vain, that our efforts unreal, that our goal is unreachable, that God and His Providence are no longer with us. It takes a naked act of faith, an act of the will unsupported by external consolation, to keep going as if things mattered, as if the real which is unseen was real, and the unreal which is seen unreal.
Due west down the meseta over two tributa-ries of the Carrión on the Calzada de los Pere-grinos
And so progress was made, one step at a time, without tangible proof of advance, across the lonely meseta. To add to the chore of walking in this stark region was pain, for the calzada was paved with stones, and the stones dug into my feet with little mercy.
Repetition of the repetitive of the rosary helped alleviate the monotony of the road. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Two times only do we invoke Mary’s help, at the recurring now, the present, and at the instant of death which one day will be the present. The now that follows us in our earthly life seems an eternity in time which we carry with us between past and future. At our death, that now intersects with a present that is no longer saddled by time. It is then, the moment for which we should our life prepare, that we shall encounter that great mystery of God’s Judgment, and, we hope, the greater mystery of God’s Mercy. That was the meaning of that strange experience, my ersatz death, in Santo Domingo. That religious concept, the eschaton, is the leitmotif on the tympana of the Romanesque churches on the way. You can look at the tympana above the portals on the Way, and smile at the medieval naivete, or you can be receptive and let it slap you in the face. The tympana are the pilgrim’s evangelical kerygma; they reveal infallible eschatological dogma. The tympana, like the Gospel, like a smack on your cheek, are meant to smart, for the shock is supposed to get our attention and make us turn if we are going the wrong way.
I I I
It was very hot. The horizon seemed never to change. Nothing could be seen save the horizon. Sky, flat parched land with light brown wheat, and the horizon. We ran out of water, and were forced to take frequent breaks because of the pain in our feet and the lack of any seeming progress which discouraged our spirit. There is no way to better describe the trip between Benevivere and Calzadilla de la Cueza: many, many steps, much suffering, and little change.
After much walking we descended from the meseta, and I saw the tower of the cemetery of Calzadilla de la Cueza, which thrust out of the dry shrubbery and wheat chaff of the meseta. This tower is the last surviving remnant of a church. It is now part of the town cemetery. The tower greeted me, as if familiarly, rising out of the fields of cultivated wheat with the same urgency of greeting that took hold of the prodigal son’s father. I supposed it fitting for I am part a prodigal pilgrim, foolishly spending some of my life in the pursuit of vain things.
Dies peregri-nationis meae . . . sunt parvi et mali, et non pervene-runt usque ad dies patrum meorum quibus peregrinati sunt.
Into Calzadilla de la Cueza
I returned the tower’s greeting with a prayer, for though I saw no town, I knew from my readings that the town was closeby though yet hidden from view. Only as Randi and I reached the tower did we see the town of Calzdilla de la Cueza ensconced in the shallows of a valley, springing between both sides of the Camino at the foot of the Casto Muza and by the banks of the arroyo Cabanas. It was not much of a town, but to a pilgrim who was footsore, hot, hungry, and out of water it appeared a paradise, an oasis for the soul and for the body. After we checked into the hotel, I went to the bar. I asked the bartendress about Mass. There was a church here, dedicated to St. Martin, but as I learned, it was closed, and, unusually, there was no evening Mass. The town was too small to have its own priest. And though it was Sunday, I would be unable to fulfill my Sunday obligation. I wished then I had gone to Mass at Carrión de los Condes, and, had I known then what I now knew, I certainly would have gone. But it was morally and physically impossible to do anything about it now. So I went up to my room to rest.
I I I
Later that evening, I went back to the bar and met José, the Basque pilgrim I had met at the fountain at Villamayor del Río, seated at the bar. I offered to buy him that beer I had promised him at the fountain, but he firmly declined.
“Absolutely not!” he said. “It is a well-established custom in Spain that the person at the bar buys the drink for the person who comes into the bar. The only limit is that the person coming to the bar must not take advantage of the custom, and should order simple, inexpensive drinks such as beer and wine.”
Who was I to buck tradition? And for what should I tackle the old, tough Basque? I complied with his directive.
“Una caña de cerveza,” he told the bartendress. She handed me a mug of beer.
I told him to drink up, then, so that I could buy him a beer and keep my promise. And he did.
“Dos cañas mas de cerveza, por favor,” I told the bartendress.
He flirted with the bartendress. She flirted back, as there was no risk to it. During the course of the conversation, it became clear that she was trying to talk him out of some hat pins the old Basque had collected and stuck into his hat. She was not pleased with the one he offered her, as it was too plain for her tastes. While she attended others at the bar, José and I talked. José talked of Basque independence, of Franco, of the Communist party and his membership in it in his youth for practical reasons, his quitting of the party, his life at the Legion, and his life at the mines of Belgium. He told me of the very recent death of his close friend who was to have been his pilgrim companion. At this, the old, tough Basque who in his youth had been eyeball to eyeball with death in the Spanish Foreign Legion, grew soft and teary-eyed.
He left to go eat with his companions, but before he left we embraced.
That evening, I had dinner with Randi and a French pilgrim named Christian who was traveling with a young American named James. James had just been discharged from the Army as a Captain. He had decided to begin his new life as a civilian by undertaking the pilgrimage. James began the pilgrimage in Le Puy in France, and had joined up with Christian at the town of Moissac. They had walked together ever since, though James knew little French, and Christian knew even less English. They talked of the Gallic branch of their pilgrimage as we ate a dinner of lentil soup and chicken. James told me how Christian grew frustrated with his failure to advance in French, and how ultimately he had learned his prepositions.
“Avant, Avant,” Christian would say while he would walk in front of James.
“Après, Après,” Christian would have James repeat as he would walk behind James.
“Àdroite, Àdroite,” while Christian walked on James’s right.
“À gauche, á gauche,” on James’s left.
Around us I heard a scattering of conversations in German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese in the air as the various groups of pilgrims talked of the adventures of the day and the course of their earthly lives. With the background murmur of different tongues, we ate our pilgrim meals. I thought of Pentecost.
k
[i] Basil Hume, To Be A Pilgrim, pp. 25-6 (1984), quoted in Martin Robinson, Sacred Places, Pilgrim Paths: An Anthology of Pilgrimage. London: Harper Collins. 1997.
[ii] King II.84-85
[iii] Melczer, Pilgrim’s Guide, at 86.
[iv] El Cid, 212. “Life is a pilgrimage. . . . We are made ‘to know God, to love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in the next.’ This is the point of the pilgrimage.”
____ Cardinal Basil Hume, To Be a Pilgrim.[i]
On the Way: Frómista to Villovieco
Another morning and another early start. The air was cool and damp, and a wispy mist hovered over the fields. Our goal today was to walk to Carrión de los Condes. The land between Frómista and Sahagún, between the rivers Pisuerga and the Cea, through which I traveled the next two days, is refered to as the Tierra de Campos, land of the fields of grain. It is fitting, I suppose, that the Tierra de Campos starts with the town named after frumenta. In between Frómista and the next large town, Carrión de los Condes, the Camino generally follows the carretera.
To Población
de Campos, erstwhile bailiwick of Malta by the río Ucieza
k
Santa María
The first town outside of Frómista, three kilometers away and located on the banks of the río Ucieza, was Población de Campos. This humble place was once a bailiwick of the Order of Malta. Three churches are there, one dedicated to the Magdalene, one, a hermitage of el Socorro, and another, outside of town, dedicated to St. Michael. Not much further on from Población, indeed practically just ahead, is the small town of Revenga de Campos. Taking a break in the small plaza of that town, we ran into some young Spaniards just tying up the evening and groggily heading home. Everything was closed at the town of Revenga, so we marched on to the town of Villovieco. There was a church at Villovieco, dedicated to St. Mary, but it was still too early for anything to be open. I noticed about the place dovecotes or columbaries of rock, adobe, and tile, many in a state of disrepair. In Spanish they are called palomares, and they are frequently found about the Tierra del Campos.
I I I
Through Villovieco
Through Revenga de Campos
Through Villarmen-tero de Campos
Villasirga
On the Way: Villovieco to Villasirga
From Villovieco we went by Villarmentero de Campos, with its baroque church dedicated to St. Lawrence. Here we rejoined the carretera, which led us directly and straightly into Villalcázar de Sirga.
Villalcázar de Sirga means “the town of the alcázar, or fortress, on the way” (sirga in old Castillian was another word for camino, calzada, or senda), and it is known by the contracted form Villasirga. Villasirga is the Virgin’s town, and the Virgin in this town is white, not dark like Mary at Guadalupe or Mary at Monserrat. Whether white, black, or brown, Mary is beautiful, tota pulchra. But in this town, she is white. Without Santa María la Blanca, this town is nothing, and so with good reason the church of Santa María la Blanca is in the center of it. This is Villasirga, small in size, but large in history and larger still in song. It is also the only town in all of Spain in which I left a curse, and in which I dusted my feet, for there was a man in town who was a hater of pilgrims. Specifically, by the Virgin’s Church is a café, and this café and its proprietor were the subject of my curse. It is no mean thing to be subject to a pilgrim’s curse.
How we wanted a café con leche, and how I needed to go to the restroom! Imagine the relief when we got to Villasirga on a Sunday and the café had its lights on, its door open, and pilgrims within! Inside were some Brazilian pilgrims and I asked them somewhat needlessly if the café was open. They nodded yes. So I walked in, relieved myself of my pack, and marched into the restroom. Just as I was ready to shut the bathroom door, the proprietor collared me and threw me out of his establishment. As he led me out, he heaped all sorts of abuse on me, and accused me of coming in to his café while it was not yet open to the public and while he was still mopping the floor. What sort of behavior was this, I thought, so different from the hospitable woman in Cardeñuela and the man in Hornillos. Caught so unaware and by suprise, I weakly retorted that I did not need the likes of him and his café and I quit the premises.
On the way to a well in the middle of the square by the church, I was seized by the esprit de l’escalier. This abuse of a pilgrim, this minor sacrilege, could not go unaddressed, I thought. So I invoked a malediction, a clamor parvus upon that café. I wished that his sign would fall down, that pilgrims would shun his premises like the plague, and that his coffee would be forever cold and his milk spoiled. I recalled an old medieval curse that imprecated the malcontent drain out his bowels like the heretic Arius, and I thought that might be an appropriate and fitting revenge, a Dantean contrapasso for the proprietor who so abused the pilgrim. But my mind was boiling, and that still was not enough, for justice was not satisfied, and had I a piece of charcoal or chalk, I would have put a ban on the café, and written left to right, right to left, and left to right a Biblical herem above the lintel of its door thus:
ΑΝΑΘΗΜΑ
םרה
Anathema
I I I
k
Santa María la Blanca
Unless one is a masochist, the café at Villasirga is not to be visited at an early hour on Sunday. Nor can the church of Santa María la Blanca at Villasirga be visited at an early hour on Sunday, for it did not open till the noon hour. The Church is of Templar foundation of the 13th century. It was the order’s third foundation in Spain.
Structurally, the church appeared commodious: three naves, transept, and apsidal chapels. The front portico has a double frieze with fifty sculptures, Christ and the Magi and their retinue in the lower frieze; Christ and His apostles in the upper frieze. The Church is particularly memorable for its unusually tall porch, which designed to shield these elaborately carved portal and friezes. This church, King tells us, “if not precisely lilium inter spinas, yet surpassing as a palm tree in an orchard; so pure, so fine, so French.”[ii]
The Virgen Blanca who resides in the church is said to be a miraculous virgin, subject of so many of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and holy competitor to St. James for the affections of the pilgrims. This is the Virgin who, according to the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio, can trump St. James and give sight to her blind devotee. She can save those on the sea, commute the sentences of penance placed on the backs of the wicked, straighten the limbs of the crippled, and reveal false devotions.
Romeus que de Santiago Pilgrims heading to Santiago
Ya forun-lle contando Already were being told
Os miragres que a Virgen About the miracles which the Virgin
Faz en Villa-Sirga Worked in Villasirga
I, on the other hand, doubt that there is any dissension between the white Lady and the pilgrim James; they both are equally dedicated to Christ, and James seems dedicated to the Lady, and likewise the Lady to James. The intrigue in the heavens is a pagan thing, found among the gods of the Greeks and the Romans, for there is no dissension in the heavens of the Christians. For all are of one mind there, in Christ.
In any event, if either or both were to work a miracle for me, I would in no wise complain about it. But I did not at this point ask for one, or rather, I asked for a little favor, and that was that the wicked proprietor of the café at Villasirga may save his soul, and that I make it to the next café four kilometers away without embarrassment.
I I I
Past the hermitage of la Piedad to and through the puerta de Santa María into Carrión de los Condes
On the Way: Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes
We traveled from Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes at a brisk pace. We came upon Carrión as soon as we reached the arroyo del Valle. Picaud informs us that “Carrión . . . is a well-managed and industrious town, abundant in bread wine, meat, and all kinds of produce.”[iii] But that news is several centuries’ old, and Picaud was not wholly reliable then and certainly not reliable today. Besides, my only want since Villasirga was a good café with a clean restroom.
We arrived at the town of Carrión de los Condes through the puerta de Santa María, which took us to the old walled town. Taking the calle Santa María we headed toward the church of Santa María del Camino, which was built upon a hill. At an intersection was a café; it was open, abounded with coffee and sweetbreads, and a most accommodating proprietor. I ordered my coffee and took care of the demands of Brother Ass. Later, as I drank my coffee, I looked upon the church of Santa María, and heard its bells ring. I withdrew my curse on the proprietor of the café at Villasirga, and forgave him from the depths of my bowels.
Karrionus que est in villa abilis et obtima pane et vino et carne, et omni fertilitate felix
k
Santa María del Camino
The church was Romanesque in the main, but with other additions, and all rustic. It was decorated with billet mouldings, the heads of bulls, and other figures. The south portal, which faced the road, bore some worn and simple sculptures. These are said to be representations of the one hundred virgins, the cien doncellas of flesh pure and Christian, given to satisfy the lustful appetite of the rapacious Moor who had demanded them as tribute. What a humiliating price to pay for peace, for both the men and the women. This was a miserable and degrading arrangement, to be sure, thankfully put an end to.
I I I
We should have stopped for Mass, for it was Sunday and the church had noon Mass. But most towns have an evening Mass, and I was anxious to continue walking to avoid the heat of the day. I hoped to make it to Calzadilla de la Cueza by the early afternoon and go to evening Mass there. This reasoning was to be an error in judgment and a great folly as you shall see.
I I I
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Monas-tery of St. Zoyl
On the Way: The Monastery of St. Zoyl
Past the río Carrión but not quite out of the city was the old Benedictine monastery of St. Zoyl. This monastery was founded in the 12th century, but little remained of the old structure. The church is now largely baroque, keeping but a Romanesque window that may be found in the west façade of the church. The cloisters in the monastery are a marvel of stonework, a tour de force in Gothic form by Juan de Badajóz. The vault ribs are thick, ornate, and appear to be designed less to support the vault than the pendulant bosses that hang like rock chandeliers or inverted toadstools from the intersections of the ribs. What I saw here as nothing compared to the baroque Gothic ebullience at the cloisters of the cathedral in León, remodeled by the same Juan de Badajóz. Yet the ceiling of either cloister is enough to take your breath away. If you know Latin, you will have the additional recompense of learning of salvation History and about the great prophets and prophetesses of the Scriptures.
The monastery houses the tombs of the sons of the infamous counts of Carrión, the Infantes de Carrión, whose treatment of Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, the daughters of El Cid, was both foolish and execrable. The tombs, of stone, are relatively simple and stoic. These sons of Benito Gomez deserve little honor and much disdain, for their ungentlemanly treatment of the daughters of the great man of Burgos and Conqueror of Valencia. Tying the stripped daughters of El Cid to trees and beating them senseless is not a way to win the heart of a great warrior. It was a dreadful imprudence and dreadfully did they pay for it. For their cruelty to fine women they died in shame. Though they would surely have died in any event, dying in shame is worse. But as it was, they died both young and in infamy from that day to this. And as long as there is the Poem of El Cid, and no poem of the sons of Beni Gomez, it shall so remain.
Grant es la bitança de infantes de Carrión;
Qui buena dueña escarnece e la dexa después
Atal le contesca o siquier peor.[iv]
I am fully in accord with this state of affairs. And I cursed their memory, yet prayed for their souls. Thankfully, the great Cid’s daughters’ disgrace was but temporary, and to their boon, for they were later joined in marriages—for the first marriages to the sons of Beni Gomez were surely null—to the princes of Navarre and Aragon. Would that all abandoned and beaten wives have a champion like El Cid.
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Depart Carrión de los Condes
Over the río Carrión
To the ruins of the abbey of Bene-vívere
On the Way: Carrión to Calzada
We expected a long and difficulty afternoon of walking out of Carrión because we were forewarned about the rigors of the meseta which faced us. Many pilgrims we knew had opted to stay in the refugio in Carrión and face those difficulties in the morning. However, after a brief visit to the monastery of St. Zoyl, we left Carrión and crossed over the Carrión River. After passing the monastery, we went right, and headed toward the hamlet of Santa María de Benevívere. The Camino here followed a paved road, and the countryside was rich with the green of cornfields: the corn plants had rich, broad, dark green leaves about their stems, but no sign of any ears. After a time, we passed by a brick monastery to our right, and, as we prepared to take a left turn over a small stream, sat down on monastery property and had a snack.
The road past the monastery had capsized into the stream bed. It was a symbol of the great divide between the green regions of Spain that we had traversed, and the hot, dry, and demanding lands that lay ahead of us.
Once past the monastery at Benvivere the road was lonely. Until the next town a distance away, it remained lonely save for the greetings of the río Pozo Amargo and the río Sequillo, and they were well-nigh dry. Such is the meseta and such is the calzada de los peregrinos, the path of the pilgrims through it. The meseta is the Jacobean and peregrine equivalent to the Johannine and mystical dark night of the soul. For lack of change in the scene and the hot and weary drudgery, we fall into an anxiety that progress is vain, that our efforts unreal, that our goal is unreachable, that God and His Providence are no longer with us. It takes a naked act of faith, an act of the will unsupported by external consolation, to keep going as if things mattered, as if the real which is unseen was real, and the unreal which is seen unreal.
Due west down the meseta over two tributa-ries of the Carrión on the Calzada de los Pere-grinos
And so progress was made, one step at a time, without tangible proof of advance, across the lonely meseta. To add to the chore of walking in this stark region was pain, for the calzada was paved with stones, and the stones dug into my feet with little mercy.
Repetition of the repetitive of the rosary helped alleviate the monotony of the road. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Two times only do we invoke Mary’s help, at the recurring now, the present, and at the instant of death which one day will be the present. The now that follows us in our earthly life seems an eternity in time which we carry with us between past and future. At our death, that now intersects with a present that is no longer saddled by time. It is then, the moment for which we should our life prepare, that we shall encounter that great mystery of God’s Judgment, and, we hope, the greater mystery of God’s Mercy. That was the meaning of that strange experience, my ersatz death, in Santo Domingo. That religious concept, the eschaton, is the leitmotif on the tympana of the Romanesque churches on the way. You can look at the tympana above the portals on the Way, and smile at the medieval naivete, or you can be receptive and let it slap you in the face. The tympana are the pilgrim’s evangelical kerygma; they reveal infallible eschatological dogma. The tympana, like the Gospel, like a smack on your cheek, are meant to smart, for the shock is supposed to get our attention and make us turn if we are going the wrong way.
I I I
It was very hot. The horizon seemed never to change. Nothing could be seen save the horizon. Sky, flat parched land with light brown wheat, and the horizon. We ran out of water, and were forced to take frequent breaks because of the pain in our feet and the lack of any seeming progress which discouraged our spirit. There is no way to better describe the trip between Benevivere and Calzadilla de la Cueza: many, many steps, much suffering, and little change.
After much walking we descended from the meseta, and I saw the tower of the cemetery of Calzadilla de la Cueza, which thrust out of the dry shrubbery and wheat chaff of the meseta. This tower is the last surviving remnant of a church. It is now part of the town cemetery. The tower greeted me, as if familiarly, rising out of the fields of cultivated wheat with the same urgency of greeting that took hold of the prodigal son’s father. I supposed it fitting for I am part a prodigal pilgrim, foolishly spending some of my life in the pursuit of vain things.
Dies peregri-nationis meae . . . sunt parvi et mali, et non pervene-runt usque ad dies patrum meorum quibus peregrinati sunt.
Into Calzadilla de la Cueza
I returned the tower’s greeting with a prayer, for though I saw no town, I knew from my readings that the town was closeby though yet hidden from view. Only as Randi and I reached the tower did we see the town of Calzdilla de la Cueza ensconced in the shallows of a valley, springing between both sides of the Camino at the foot of the Casto Muza and by the banks of the arroyo Cabanas. It was not much of a town, but to a pilgrim who was footsore, hot, hungry, and out of water it appeared a paradise, an oasis for the soul and for the body. After we checked into the hotel, I went to the bar. I asked the bartendress about Mass. There was a church here, dedicated to St. Martin, but as I learned, it was closed, and, unusually, there was no evening Mass. The town was too small to have its own priest. And though it was Sunday, I would be unable to fulfill my Sunday obligation. I wished then I had gone to Mass at Carrión de los Condes, and, had I known then what I now knew, I certainly would have gone. But it was morally and physically impossible to do anything about it now. So I went up to my room to rest.
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Later that evening, I went back to the bar and met José, the Basque pilgrim I had met at the fountain at Villamayor del Río, seated at the bar. I offered to buy him that beer I had promised him at the fountain, but he firmly declined.
“Absolutely not!” he said. “It is a well-established custom in Spain that the person at the bar buys the drink for the person who comes into the bar. The only limit is that the person coming to the bar must not take advantage of the custom, and should order simple, inexpensive drinks such as beer and wine.”
Who was I to buck tradition? And for what should I tackle the old, tough Basque? I complied with his directive.
“Una caña de cerveza,” he told the bartendress. She handed me a mug of beer.
I told him to drink up, then, so that I could buy him a beer and keep my promise. And he did.
“Dos cañas mas de cerveza, por favor,” I told the bartendress.
He flirted with the bartendress. She flirted back, as there was no risk to it. During the course of the conversation, it became clear that she was trying to talk him out of some hat pins the old Basque had collected and stuck into his hat. She was not pleased with the one he offered her, as it was too plain for her tastes. While she attended others at the bar, José and I talked. José talked of Basque independence, of Franco, of the Communist party and his membership in it in his youth for practical reasons, his quitting of the party, his life at the Legion, and his life at the mines of Belgium. He told me of the very recent death of his close friend who was to have been his pilgrim companion. At this, the old, tough Basque who in his youth had been eyeball to eyeball with death in the Spanish Foreign Legion, grew soft and teary-eyed.
He left to go eat with his companions, but before he left we embraced.
That evening, I had dinner with Randi and a French pilgrim named Christian who was traveling with a young American named James. James had just been discharged from the Army as a Captain. He had decided to begin his new life as a civilian by undertaking the pilgrimage. James began the pilgrimage in Le Puy in France, and had joined up with Christian at the town of Moissac. They had walked together ever since, though James knew little French, and Christian knew even less English. They talked of the Gallic branch of their pilgrimage as we ate a dinner of lentil soup and chicken. James told me how Christian grew frustrated with his failure to advance in French, and how ultimately he had learned his prepositions.
“Avant, Avant,” Christian would say while he would walk in front of James.
“Après, Après,” Christian would have James repeat as he would walk behind James.
“Àdroite, Àdroite,” while Christian walked on James’s right.
“À gauche, á gauche,” on James’s left.
Around us I heard a scattering of conversations in German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese in the air as the various groups of pilgrims talked of the adventures of the day and the course of their earthly lives. With the background murmur of different tongues, we ate our pilgrim meals. I thought of Pentecost.
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[i] Basil Hume, To Be A Pilgrim, pp. 25-6 (1984), quoted in Martin Robinson, Sacred Places, Pilgrim Paths: An Anthology of Pilgrimage. London: Harper Collins. 1997.
[ii] King II.84-85
[iii] Melczer, Pilgrim’s Guide, at 86.
[iv] El Cid, 212.
____ Cardinal Basil Hume, To Be a Pilgrim.[i]
On the Way: Frómista to Villovieco
Another morning and another early start. The air was cool and damp, and a wispy mist hovered over the fields. Our goal today was to walk to Carrión de los Condes. The land between Frómista and Sahagún, between the rivers Pisuerga and the Cea, through which I traveled the next two days, is refered to as the Tierra de Campos, land of the fields of grain. It is fitting, I suppose, that the Tierra de Campos starts with the town named after frumenta. In between Frómista and the next large town, Carrión de los Condes, the Camino generally follows the carretera.
To Población
de Campos, erstwhile bailiwick of Malta by the río Ucieza
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Santa María
The first town outside of Frómista, three kilometers away and located on the banks of the río Ucieza, was Población de Campos. This humble place was once a bailiwick of the Order of Malta. Three churches are there, one dedicated to the Magdalene, one, a hermitage of el Socorro, and another, outside of town, dedicated to St. Michael. Not much further on from Población, indeed practically just ahead, is the small town of Revenga de Campos. Taking a break in the small plaza of that town, we ran into some young Spaniards just tying up the evening and groggily heading home. Everything was closed at the town of Revenga, so we marched on to the town of Villovieco. There was a church at Villovieco, dedicated to St. Mary, but it was still too early for anything to be open. I noticed about the place dovecotes or columbaries of rock, adobe, and tile, many in a state of disrepair. In Spanish they are called palomares, and they are frequently found about the Tierra del Campos.
I I I
Through Villovieco
Through Revenga de Campos
Through Villarmen-tero de Campos
Villasirga
On the Way: Villovieco to Villasirga
From Villovieco we went by Villarmentero de Campos, with its baroque church dedicated to St. Lawrence. Here we rejoined the carretera, which led us directly and straightly into Villalcázar de Sirga.
Villalcázar de Sirga means “the town of the alcázar, or fortress, on the way” (sirga in old Castillian was another word for camino, calzada, or senda), and it is known by the contracted form Villasirga. Villasirga is the Virgin’s town, and the Virgin in this town is white, not dark like Mary at Guadalupe or Mary at Monserrat. Whether white, black, or brown, Mary is beautiful, tota pulchra. But in this town, she is white. Without Santa María la Blanca, this town is nothing, and so with good reason the church of Santa María la Blanca is in the center of it. This is Villasirga, small in size, but large in history and larger still in song. It is also the only town in all of Spain in which I left a curse, and in which I dusted my feet, for there was a man in town who was a hater of pilgrims. Specifically, by the Virgin’s Church is a café, and this café and its proprietor were the subject of my curse. It is no mean thing to be subject to a pilgrim’s curse.
How we wanted a café con leche, and how I needed to go to the restroom! Imagine the relief when we got to Villasirga on a Sunday and the café had its lights on, its door open, and pilgrims within! Inside were some Brazilian pilgrims and I asked them somewhat needlessly if the café was open. They nodded yes. So I walked in, relieved myself of my pack, and marched into the restroom. Just as I was ready to shut the bathroom door, the proprietor collared me and threw me out of his establishment. As he led me out, he heaped all sorts of abuse on me, and accused me of coming in to his café while it was not yet open to the public and while he was still mopping the floor. What sort of behavior was this, I thought, so different from the hospitable woman in Cardeñuela and the man in Hornillos. Caught so unaware and by suprise, I weakly retorted that I did not need the likes of him and his café and I quit the premises.
On the way to a well in the middle of the square by the church, I was seized by the esprit de l’escalier. This abuse of a pilgrim, this minor sacrilege, could not go unaddressed, I thought. So I invoked a malediction, a clamor parvus upon that café. I wished that his sign would fall down, that pilgrims would shun his premises like the plague, and that his coffee would be forever cold and his milk spoiled. I recalled an old medieval curse that imprecated the malcontent drain out his bowels like the heretic Arius, and I thought that might be an appropriate and fitting revenge, a Dantean contrapasso for the proprietor who so abused the pilgrim. But my mind was boiling, and that still was not enough, for justice was not satisfied, and had I a piece of charcoal or chalk, I would have put a ban on the café, and written left to right, right to left, and left to right a Biblical herem above the lintel of its door thus:
ΑΝΑΘΗΜΑ
םרה
Anathema
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Santa María la Blanca
Unless one is a masochist, the café at Villasirga is not to be visited at an early hour on Sunday. Nor can the church of Santa María la Blanca at Villasirga be visited at an early hour on Sunday, for it did not open till the noon hour. The Church is of Templar foundation of the 13th century. It was the order’s third foundation in Spain.
Structurally, the church appeared commodious: three naves, transept, and apsidal chapels. The front portico has a double frieze with fifty sculptures, Christ and the Magi and their retinue in the lower frieze; Christ and His apostles in the upper frieze. The Church is particularly memorable for its unusually tall porch, which designed to shield these elaborately carved portal and friezes. This church, King tells us, “if not precisely lilium inter spinas, yet surpassing as a palm tree in an orchard; so pure, so fine, so French.”[ii]
The Virgen Blanca who resides in the church is said to be a miraculous virgin, subject of so many of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and holy competitor to St. James for the affections of the pilgrims. This is the Virgin who, according to the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio, can trump St. James and give sight to her blind devotee. She can save those on the sea, commute the sentences of penance placed on the backs of the wicked, straighten the limbs of the crippled, and reveal false devotions.
Romeus que de Santiago Pilgrims heading to Santiago
Ya forun-lle contando Already were being told
Os miragres que a Virgen About the miracles which the Virgin
Faz en Villa-Sirga Worked in Villasirga
I, on the other hand, doubt that there is any dissension between the white Lady and the pilgrim James; they both are equally dedicated to Christ, and James seems dedicated to the Lady, and likewise the Lady to James. The intrigue in the heavens is a pagan thing, found among the gods of the Greeks and the Romans, for there is no dissension in the heavens of the Christians. For all are of one mind there, in Christ.
In any event, if either or both were to work a miracle for me, I would in no wise complain about it. But I did not at this point ask for one, or rather, I asked for a little favor, and that was that the wicked proprietor of the café at Villasirga may save his soul, and that I make it to the next café four kilometers away without embarrassment.
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Past the hermitage of la Piedad to and through the puerta de Santa María into Carrión de los Condes
On the Way: Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes
We traveled from Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes at a brisk pace. We came upon Carrión as soon as we reached the arroyo del Valle. Picaud informs us that “Carrión . . . is a well-managed and industrious town, abundant in bread wine, meat, and all kinds of produce.”[iii] But that news is several centuries’ old, and Picaud was not wholly reliable then and certainly not reliable today. Besides, my only want since Villasirga was a good café with a clean restroom.
We arrived at the town of Carrión de los Condes through the puerta de Santa María, which took us to the old walled town. Taking the calle Santa María we headed toward the church of Santa María del Camino, which was built upon a hill. At an intersection was a café; it was open, abounded with coffee and sweetbreads, and a most accommodating proprietor. I ordered my coffee and took care of the demands of Brother Ass. Later, as I drank my coffee, I looked upon the church of Santa María, and heard its bells ring. I withdrew my curse on the proprietor of the café at Villasirga, and forgave him from the depths of my bowels.
Karrionus que est in villa abilis et obtima pane et vino et carne, et omni fertilitate felix
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Santa María del Camino
The church was Romanesque in the main, but with other additions, and all rustic. It was decorated with billet mouldings, the heads of bulls, and other figures. The south portal, which faced the road, bore some worn and simple sculptures. These are said to be representations of the one hundred virgins, the cien doncellas of flesh pure and Christian, given to satisfy the lustful appetite of the rapacious Moor who had demanded them as tribute. What a humiliating price to pay for peace, for both the men and the women. This was a miserable and degrading arrangement, to be sure, thankfully put an end to.
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We should have stopped for Mass, for it was Sunday and the church had noon Mass. But most towns have an evening Mass, and I was anxious to continue walking to avoid the heat of the day. I hoped to make it to Calzadilla de la Cueza by the early afternoon and go to evening Mass there. This reasoning was to be an error in judgment and a great folly as you shall see.
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Monas-tery of St. Zoyl
On the Way: The Monastery of St. Zoyl
Past the río Carrión but not quite out of the city was the old Benedictine monastery of St. Zoyl. This monastery was founded in the 12th century, but little remained of the old structure. The church is now largely baroque, keeping but a Romanesque window that may be found in the west façade of the church. The cloisters in the monastery are a marvel of stonework, a tour de force in Gothic form by Juan de Badajóz. The vault ribs are thick, ornate, and appear to be designed less to support the vault than the pendulant bosses that hang like rock chandeliers or inverted toadstools from the intersections of the ribs. What I saw here as nothing compared to the baroque Gothic ebullience at the cloisters of the cathedral in León, remodeled by the same Juan de Badajóz. Yet the ceiling of either cloister is enough to take your breath away. If you know Latin, you will have the additional recompense of learning of salvation History and about the great prophets and prophetesses of the Scriptures.
The monastery houses the tombs of the sons of the infamous counts of Carrión, the Infantes de Carrión, whose treatment of Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, the daughters of El Cid, was both foolish and execrable. The tombs, of stone, are relatively simple and stoic. These sons of Benito Gomez deserve little honor and much disdain, for their ungentlemanly treatment of the daughters of the great man of Burgos and Conqueror of Valencia. Tying the stripped daughters of El Cid to trees and beating them senseless is not a way to win the heart of a great warrior. It was a dreadful imprudence and dreadfully did they pay for it. For their cruelty to fine women they died in shame. Though they would surely have died in any event, dying in shame is worse. But as it was, they died both young and in infamy from that day to this. And as long as there is the Poem of El Cid, and no poem of the sons of Beni Gomez, it shall so remain.
Grant es la bitança de infantes de Carrión;
Qui buena dueña escarnece e la dexa después
Atal le contesca o siquier peor.[iv]
I am fully in accord with this state of affairs. And I cursed their memory, yet prayed for their souls. Thankfully, the great Cid’s daughters’ disgrace was but temporary, and to their boon, for they were later joined in marriages—for the first marriages to the sons of Beni Gomez were surely null—to the princes of Navarre and Aragon. Would that all abandoned and beaten wives have a champion like El Cid.
I I I
Depart Carrión de los Condes
Over the río Carrión
To the ruins of the abbey of Bene-vívere
On the Way: Carrión to Calzada
We expected a long and difficulty afternoon of walking out of Carrión because we were forewarned about the rigors of the meseta which faced us. Many pilgrims we knew had opted to stay in the refugio in Carrión and face those difficulties in the morning. However, after a brief visit to the monastery of St. Zoyl, we left Carrión and crossed over the Carrión River. After passing the monastery, we went right, and headed toward the hamlet of Santa María de Benevívere. The Camino here followed a paved road, and the countryside was rich with the green of cornfields: the corn plants had rich, broad, dark green leaves about their stems, but no sign of any ears. After a time, we passed by a brick monastery to our right, and, as we prepared to take a left turn over a small stream, sat down on monastery property and had a snack.
The road past the monastery had capsized into the stream bed. It was a symbol of the great divide between the green regions of Spain that we had traversed, and the hot, dry, and demanding lands that lay ahead of us.
Once past the monastery at Benvivere the road was lonely. Until the next town a distance away, it remained lonely save for the greetings of the río Pozo Amargo and the río Sequillo, and they were well-nigh dry. Such is the meseta and such is the calzada de los peregrinos, the path of the pilgrims through it. The meseta is the Jacobean and peregrine equivalent to the Johannine and mystical dark night of the soul. For lack of change in the scene and the hot and weary drudgery, we fall into an anxiety that progress is vain, that our efforts unreal, that our goal is unreachable, that God and His Providence are no longer with us. It takes a naked act of faith, an act of the will unsupported by external consolation, to keep going as if things mattered, as if the real which is unseen was real, and the unreal which is seen unreal.
Due west down the meseta over two tributa-ries of the Carrión on the Calzada de los Pere-grinos
And so progress was made, one step at a time, without tangible proof of advance, across the lonely meseta. To add to the chore of walking in this stark region was pain, for the calzada was paved with stones, and the stones dug into my feet with little mercy.
Repetition of the repetitive of the rosary helped alleviate the monotony of the road. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Two times only do we invoke Mary’s help, at the recurring now, the present, and at the instant of death which one day will be the present. The now that follows us in our earthly life seems an eternity in time which we carry with us between past and future. At our death, that now intersects with a present that is no longer saddled by time. It is then, the moment for which we should our life prepare, that we shall encounter that great mystery of God’s Judgment, and, we hope, the greater mystery of God’s Mercy. That was the meaning of that strange experience, my ersatz death, in Santo Domingo. That religious concept, the eschaton, is the leitmotif on the tympana of the Romanesque churches on the way. You can look at the tympana above the portals on the Way, and smile at the medieval naivete, or you can be receptive and let it slap you in the face. The tympana are the pilgrim’s evangelical kerygma; they reveal infallible eschatological dogma. The tympana, like the Gospel, like a smack on your cheek, are meant to smart, for the shock is supposed to get our attention and make us turn if we are going the wrong way.
I I I
It was very hot. The horizon seemed never to change. Nothing could be seen save the horizon. Sky, flat parched land with light brown wheat, and the horizon. We ran out of water, and were forced to take frequent breaks because of the pain in our feet and the lack of any seeming progress which discouraged our spirit. There is no way to better describe the trip between Benevivere and Calzadilla de la Cueza: many, many steps, much suffering, and little change.
After much walking we descended from the meseta, and I saw the tower of the cemetery of Calzadilla de la Cueza, which thrust out of the dry shrubbery and wheat chaff of the meseta. This tower is the last surviving remnant of a church. It is now part of the town cemetery. The tower greeted me, as if familiarly, rising out of the fields of cultivated wheat with the same urgency of greeting that took hold of the prodigal son’s father. I supposed it fitting for I am part a prodigal pilgrim, foolishly spending some of my life in the pursuit of vain things.
Dies peregri-nationis meae . . . sunt parvi et mali, et non pervene-runt usque ad dies patrum meorum quibus peregrinati sunt.
Into Calzadilla de la Cueza
I returned the tower’s greeting with a prayer, for though I saw no town, I knew from my readings that the town was closeby though yet hidden from view. Only as Randi and I reached the tower did we see the town of Calzdilla de la Cueza ensconced in the shallows of a valley, springing between both sides of the Camino at the foot of the Casto Muza and by the banks of the arroyo Cabanas. It was not much of a town, but to a pilgrim who was footsore, hot, hungry, and out of water it appeared a paradise, an oasis for the soul and for the body. After we checked into the hotel, I went to the bar. I asked the bartendress about Mass. There was a church here, dedicated to St. Martin, but as I learned, it was closed, and, unusually, there was no evening Mass. The town was too small to have its own priest. And though it was Sunday, I would be unable to fulfill my Sunday obligation. I wished then I had gone to Mass at Carrión de los Condes, and, had I known then what I now knew, I certainly would have gone. But it was morally and physically impossible to do anything about it now. So I went up to my room to rest.
I I I
Later that evening, I went back to the bar and met José, the Basque pilgrim I had met at the fountain at Villamayor del Río, seated at the bar. I offered to buy him that beer I had promised him at the fountain, but he firmly declined.
“Absolutely not!” he said. “It is a well-established custom in Spain that the person at the bar buys the drink for the person who comes into the bar. The only limit is that the person coming to the bar must not take advantage of the custom, and should order simple, inexpensive drinks such as beer and wine.”
Who was I to buck tradition? And for what should I tackle the old, tough Basque? I complied with his directive.
“Una caña de cerveza,” he told the bartendress. She handed me a mug of beer.
I told him to drink up, then, so that I could buy him a beer and keep my promise. And he did.
“Dos cañas mas de cerveza, por favor,” I told the bartendress.
He flirted with the bartendress. She flirted back, as there was no risk to it. During the course of the conversation, it became clear that she was trying to talk him out of some hat pins the old Basque had collected and stuck into his hat. She was not pleased with the one he offered her, as it was too plain for her tastes. While she attended others at the bar, José and I talked. José talked of Basque independence, of Franco, of the Communist party and his membership in it in his youth for practical reasons, his quitting of the party, his life at the Legion, and his life at the mines of Belgium. He told me of the very recent death of his close friend who was to have been his pilgrim companion. At this, the old, tough Basque who in his youth had been eyeball to eyeball with death in the Spanish Foreign Legion, grew soft and teary-eyed.
He left to go eat with his companions, but before he left we embraced.
That evening, I had dinner with Randi and a French pilgrim named Christian who was traveling with a young American named James. James had just been discharged from the Army as a Captain. He had decided to begin his new life as a civilian by undertaking the pilgrimage. James began the pilgrimage in Le Puy in France, and had joined up with Christian at the town of Moissac. They had walked together ever since, though James knew little French, and Christian knew even less English. They talked of the Gallic branch of their pilgrimage as we ate a dinner of lentil soup and chicken. James told me how Christian grew frustrated with his failure to advance in French, and how ultimately he had learned his prepositions.
“Avant, Avant,” Christian would say while he would walk in front of James.
“Après, Après,” Christian would have James repeat as he would walk behind James.
“Àdroite, Àdroite,” while Christian walked on James’s right.
“À gauche, á gauche,” on James’s left.
Around us I heard a scattering of conversations in German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese in the air as the various groups of pilgrims talked of the adventures of the day and the course of their earthly lives. With the background murmur of different tongues, we ate our pilgrim meals. I thought of Pentecost.
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[i] Basil Hume, To Be A Pilgrim, pp. 25-6 (1984), quoted in Martin Robinson, Sacred Places, Pilgrim Paths: An Anthology of Pilgrimage. London: Harper Collins. 1997.
[ii] King II.84-85
[iii] Melczer, Pilgrim’s Guide, at 86.
[iv] El Cid, 212. “Life is a pilgrimage. . . . We are made ‘to know God, to love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in the next.’ This is the point of the pilgrimage.”
____ Cardinal Basil Hume, To Be a Pilgrim.[i]
On the Way: Frómista to Villovieco
Another morning and another early start. The air was cool and damp, and a wispy mist hovered over the fields. Our goal today was to walk to Carrión de los Condes. The land between Frómista and Sahagún, between the rivers Pisuerga and the Cea, through which I traveled the next two days, is refered to as the Tierra de Campos, land of the fields of grain. It is fitting, I suppose, that the Tierra de Campos starts with the town named after frumenta. In between Frómista and the next large town, Carrión de los Condes, the Camino generally follows the carretera.
To Población
de Campos, erstwhile bailiwick of Malta by the río Ucieza
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Santa María
The first town outside of Frómista, three kilometers away and located on the banks of the río Ucieza, was Población de Campos. This humble place was once a bailiwick of the Order of Malta. Three churches are there, one dedicated to the Magdalene, one, a hermitage of el Socorro, and another, outside of town, dedicated to St. Michael. Not much further on from Población, indeed practically just ahead, is the small town of Revenga de Campos. Taking a break in the small plaza of that town, we ran into some young Spaniards just tying up the evening and groggily heading home. Everything was closed at the town of Revenga, so we marched on to the town of Villovieco. There was a church at Villovieco, dedicated to St. Mary, but it was still too early for anything to be open. I noticed about the place dovecotes or columbaries of rock, adobe, and tile, many in a state of disrepair. In Spanish they are called palomares, and they are frequently found about the Tierra del Campos.
I I I
Through Villovieco
Through Revenga de Campos
Through Villarmen-tero de Campos
Villasirga
On the Way: Villovieco to Villasirga
From Villovieco we went by Villarmentero de Campos, with its baroque church dedicated to St. Lawrence. Here we rejoined the carretera, which led us directly and straightly into Villalcázar de Sirga.
Villalcázar de Sirga means “the town of the alcázar, or fortress, on the way” (sirga in old Castillian was another word for camino, calzada, or senda), and it is known by the contracted form Villasirga. Villasirga is the Virgin’s town, and the Virgin in this town is white, not dark like Mary at Guadalupe or Mary at Monserrat. Whether white, black, or brown, Mary is beautiful, tota pulchra. But in this town, she is white. Without Santa María la Blanca, this town is nothing, and so with good reason the church of Santa María la Blanca is in the center of it. This is Villasirga, small in size, but large in history and larger still in song. It is also the only town in all of Spain in which I left a curse, and in which I dusted my feet, for there was a man in town who was a hater of pilgrims. Specifically, by the Virgin’s Church is a café, and this café and its proprietor were the subject of my curse. It is no mean thing to be subject to a pilgrim’s curse.
How we wanted a café con leche, and how I needed to go to the restroom! Imagine the relief when we got to Villasirga on a Sunday and the café had its lights on, its door open, and pilgrims within! Inside were some Brazilian pilgrims and I asked them somewhat needlessly if the café was open. They nodded yes. So I walked in, relieved myself of my pack, and marched into the restroom. Just as I was ready to shut the bathroom door, the proprietor collared me and threw me out of his establishment. As he led me out, he heaped all sorts of abuse on me, and accused me of coming in to his café while it was not yet open to the public and while he was still mopping the floor. What sort of behavior was this, I thought, so different from the hospitable woman in Cardeñuela and the man in Hornillos. Caught so unaware and by suprise, I weakly retorted that I did not need the likes of him and his café and I quit the premises.
On the way to a well in the middle of the square by the church, I was seized by the esprit de l’escalier. This abuse of a pilgrim, this minor sacrilege, could not go unaddressed, I thought. So I invoked a malediction, a clamor parvus upon that café. I wished that his sign would fall down, that pilgrims would shun his premises like the plague, and that his coffee would be forever cold and his milk spoiled. I recalled an old medieval curse that imprecated the malcontent drain out his bowels like the heretic Arius, and I thought that might be an appropriate and fitting revenge, a Dantean contrapasso for the proprietor who so abused the pilgrim. But my mind was boiling, and that still was not enough, for justice was not satisfied, and had I a piece of charcoal or chalk, I would have put a ban on the café, and written left to right, right to left, and left to right a Biblical herem above the lintel of its door thus:
ΑΝΑΘΗΜΑ
םרה
Anathema
I I I
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Santa María la Blanca
Unless one is a masochist, the café at Villasirga is not to be visited at an early hour on Sunday. Nor can the church of Santa María la Blanca at Villasirga be visited at an early hour on Sunday, for it did not open till the noon hour. The Church is of Templar foundation of the 13th century. It was the order’s third foundation in Spain.
Structurally, the church appeared commodious: three naves, transept, and apsidal chapels. The front portico has a double frieze with fifty sculptures, Christ and the Magi and their retinue in the lower frieze; Christ and His apostles in the upper frieze. The Church is particularly memorable for its unusually tall porch, which designed to shield these elaborately carved portal and friezes. This church, King tells us, “if not precisely lilium inter spinas, yet surpassing as a palm tree in an orchard; so pure, so fine, so French.”[ii]
The Virgen Blanca who resides in the church is said to be a miraculous virgin, subject of so many of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and holy competitor to St. James for the affections of the pilgrims. This is the Virgin who, according to the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio, can trump St. James and give sight to her blind devotee. She can save those on the sea, commute the sentences of penance placed on the backs of the wicked, straighten the limbs of the crippled, and reveal false devotions.
Romeus que de Santiago Pilgrims heading to Santiago
Ya forun-lle contando Already were being told
Os miragres que a Virgen About the miracles which the Virgin
Faz en Villa-Sirga Worked in Villasirga
I, on the other hand, doubt that there is any dissension between the white Lady and the pilgrim James; they both are equally dedicated to Christ, and James seems dedicated to the Lady, and likewise the Lady to James. The intrigue in the heavens is a pagan thing, found among the gods of the Greeks and the Romans, for there is no dissension in the heavens of the Christians. For all are of one mind there, in Christ.
In any event, if either or both were to work a miracle for me, I would in no wise complain about it. But I did not at this point ask for one, or rather, I asked for a little favor, and that was that the wicked proprietor of the café at Villasirga may save his soul, and that I make it to the next café four kilometers away without embarrassment.
I I I
Past the hermitage of la Piedad to and through the puerta de Santa María into Carrión de los Condes
On the Way: Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes
We traveled from Villasirga to Carrión de los Condes at a brisk pace. We came upon Carrión as soon as we reached the arroyo del Valle. Picaud informs us that “Carrión . . . is a well-managed and industrious town, abundant in bread wine, meat, and all kinds of produce.”[iii] But that news is several centuries’ old, and Picaud was not wholly reliable then and certainly not reliable today. Besides, my only want since Villasirga was a good café with a clean restroom.
We arrived at the town of Carrión de los Condes through the puerta de Santa María, which took us to the old walled town. Taking the calle Santa María we headed toward the church of Santa María del Camino, which was built upon a hill. At an intersection was a café; it was open, abounded with coffee and sweetbreads, and a most accommodating proprietor. I ordered my coffee and took care of the demands of Brother Ass. Later, as I drank my coffee, I looked upon the church of Santa María, and heard its bells ring. I withdrew my curse on the proprietor of the café at Villasirga, and forgave him from the depths of my bowels.
Karrionus que est in villa abilis et obtima pane et vino et carne, et omni fertilitate felix
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Santa María del Camino
The church was Romanesque in the main, but with other additions, and all rustic. It was decorated with billet mouldings, the heads of bulls, and other figures. The south portal, which faced the road, bore some worn and simple sculptures. These are said to be representations of the one hundred virgins, the cien doncellas of flesh pure and Christian, given to satisfy the lustful appetite of the rapacious Moor who had demanded them as tribute. What a humiliating price to pay for peace, for both the men and the women. This was a miserable and degrading arrangement, to be sure, thankfully put an end to.
I I I
We should have stopped for Mass, for it was Sunday and the church had noon Mass. But most towns have an evening Mass, and I was anxious to continue walking to avoid the heat of the day. I hoped to make it to Calzadilla de la Cueza by the early afternoon and go to evening Mass there. This reasoning was to be an error in judgment and a great folly as you shall see.
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Monas-tery of St. Zoyl
On the Way: The Monastery of St. Zoyl
Past the río Carrión but not quite out of the city was the old Benedictine monastery of St. Zoyl. This monastery was founded in the 12th century, but little remained of the old structure. The church is now largely baroque, keeping but a Romanesque window that may be found in the west façade of the church. The cloisters in the monastery are a marvel of stonework, a tour de force in Gothic form by Juan de Badajóz. The vault ribs are thick, ornate, and appear to be designed less to support the vault than the pendulant bosses that hang like rock chandeliers or inverted toadstools from the intersections of the ribs. What I saw here as nothing compared to the baroque Gothic ebullience at the cloisters of the cathedral in León, remodeled by the same Juan de Badajóz. Yet the ceiling of either cloister is enough to take your breath away. If you know Latin, you will have the additional recompense of learning of salvation History and about the great prophets and prophetesses of the Scriptures.
The monastery houses the tombs of the sons of the infamous counts of Carrión, the Infantes de Carrión, whose treatment of Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, the daughters of El Cid, was both foolish and execrable. The tombs, of stone, are relatively simple and stoic. These sons of Benito Gomez deserve little honor and much disdain, for their ungentlemanly treatment of the daughters of the great man of Burgos and Conqueror of Valencia. Tying the stripped daughters of El Cid to trees and beating them senseless is not a way to win the heart of a great warrior. It was a dreadful imprudence and dreadfully did they pay for it. For their cruelty to fine women they died in shame. Though they would surely have died in any event, dying in shame is worse. But as it was, they died both young and in infamy from that day to this. And as long as there is the Poem of El Cid, and no poem of the sons of Beni Gomez, it shall so remain.
Grant es la bitança de infantes de Carrión;
Qui buena dueña escarnece e la dexa después
Atal le contesca o siquier peor.[iv]
I am fully in accord with this state of affairs. And I cursed their memory, yet prayed for their souls. Thankfully, the great Cid’s daughters’ disgrace was but temporary, and to their boon, for they were later joined in marriages—for the first marriages to the sons of Beni Gomez were surely null—to the princes of Navarre and Aragon. Would that all abandoned and beaten wives have a champion like El Cid.
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Depart Carrión de los Condes
Over the río Carrión
To the ruins of the abbey of Bene-vívere
On the Way: Carrión to Calzada
We expected a long and difficulty afternoon of walking out of Carrión because we were forewarned about the rigors of the meseta which faced us. Many pilgrims we knew had opted to stay in the refugio in Carrión and face those difficulties in the morning. However, after a brief visit to the monastery of St. Zoyl, we left Carrión and crossed over the Carrión River. After passing the monastery, we went right, and headed toward the hamlet of Santa María de Benevívere. The Camino here followed a paved road, and the countryside was rich with the green of cornfields: the corn plants had rich, broad, dark green leaves about their stems, but no sign of any ears. After a time, we passed by a brick monastery to our right, and, as we prepared to take a left turn over a small stream, sat down on monastery property and had a snack.
The road past the monastery had capsized into the stream bed. It was a symbol of the great divide between the green regions of Spain that we had traversed, and the hot, dry, and demanding lands that lay ahead of us.
Once past the monastery at Benvivere the road was lonely. Until the next town a distance away, it remained lonely save for the greetings of the río Pozo Amargo and the río Sequillo, and they were well-nigh dry. Such is the meseta and such is the calzada de los peregrinos, the path of the pilgrims through it. The meseta is the Jacobean and peregrine equivalent to the Johannine and mystical dark night of the soul. For lack of change in the scene and the hot and weary drudgery, we fall into an anxiety that progress is vain, that our efforts unreal, that our goal is unreachable, that God and His Providence are no longer with us. It takes a naked act of faith, an act of the will unsupported by external consolation, to keep going as if things mattered, as if the real which is unseen was real, and the unreal which is seen unreal.
Due west down the meseta over two tributa-ries of the Carrión on the Calzada de los Pere-grinos
And so progress was made, one step at a time, without tangible proof of advance, across the lonely meseta. To add to the chore of walking in this stark region was pain, for the calzada was paved with stones, and the stones dug into my feet with little mercy.
Repetition of the repetitive of the rosary helped alleviate the monotony of the road. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave Maria gratia plena . . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Two times only do we invoke Mary’s help, at the recurring now, the present, and at the instant of death which one day will be the present. The now that follows us in our earthly life seems an eternity in time which we carry with us between past and future. At our death, that now intersects with a present that is no longer saddled by time. It is then, the moment for which we should our life prepare, that we shall encounter that great mystery of God’s Judgment, and, we hope, the greater mystery of God’s Mercy. That was the meaning of that strange experience, my ersatz death, in Santo Domingo. That religious concept, the eschaton, is the leitmotif on the tympana of the Romanesque churches on the way. You can look at the tympana above the portals on the Way, and smile at the medieval naivete, or you can be receptive and let it slap you in the face. The tympana are the pilgrim’s evangelical kerygma; they reveal infallible eschatological dogma. The tympana, like the Gospel, like a smack on your cheek, are meant to smart, for the shock is supposed to get our attention and make us turn if we are going the wrong way.
I I I
It was very hot. The horizon seemed never to change. Nothing could be seen save the horizon. Sky, flat parched land with light brown wheat, and the horizon. We ran out of water, and were forced to take frequent breaks because of the pain in our feet and the lack of any seeming progress which discouraged our spirit. There is no way to better describe the trip between Benevivere and Calzadilla de la Cueza: many, many steps, much suffering, and little change.
After much walking we descended from the meseta, and I saw the tower of the cemetery of Calzadilla de la Cueza, which thrust out of the dry shrubbery and wheat chaff of the meseta. This tower is the last surviving remnant of a church. It is now part of the town cemetery. The tower greeted me, as if familiarly, rising out of the fields of cultivated wheat with the same urgency of greeting that took hold of the prodigal son’s father. I supposed it fitting for I am part a prodigal pilgrim, foolishly spending some of my life in the pursuit of vain things.
Dies peregri-nationis meae . . . sunt parvi et mali, et non pervene-runt usque ad dies patrum meorum quibus peregrinati sunt.
Into Calzadilla de la Cueza
I returned the tower’s greeting with a prayer, for though I saw no town, I knew from my readings that the town was closeby though yet hidden from view. Only as Randi and I reached the tower did we see the town of Calzdilla de la Cueza ensconced in the shallows of a valley, springing between both sides of the Camino at the foot of the Casto Muza and by the banks of the arroyo Cabanas. It was not much of a town, but to a pilgrim who was footsore, hot, hungry, and out of water it appeared a paradise, an oasis for the soul and for the body. After we checked into the hotel, I went to the bar. I asked the bartendress about Mass. There was a church here, dedicated to St. Martin, but as I learned, it was closed, and, unusually, there was no evening Mass. The town was too small to have its own priest. And though it was Sunday, I would be unable to fulfill my Sunday obligation. I wished then I had gone to Mass at Carrión de los Condes, and, had I known then what I now knew, I certainly would have gone. But it was morally and physically impossible to do anything about it now. So I went up to my room to rest.
I I I
Later that evening, I went back to the bar and met José, the Basque pilgrim I had met at the fountain at Villamayor del Río, seated at the bar. I offered to buy him that beer I had promised him at the fountain, but he firmly declined.
“Absolutely not!” he said. “It is a well-established custom in Spain that the person at the bar buys the drink for the person who comes into the bar. The only limit is that the person coming to the bar must not take advantage of the custom, and should order simple, inexpensive drinks such as beer and wine.”
Who was I to buck tradition? And for what should I tackle the old, tough Basque? I complied with his directive.
“Una caña de cerveza,” he told the bartendress. She handed me a mug of beer.
I told him to drink up, then, so that I could buy him a beer and keep my promise. And he did.
“Dos cañas mas de cerveza, por favor,” I told the bartendress.
He flirted with the bartendress. She flirted back, as there was no risk to it. During the course of the conversation, it became clear that she was trying to talk him out of some hat pins the old Basque had collected and stuck into his hat. She was not pleased with the one he offered her, as it was too plain for her tastes. While she attended others at the bar, José and I talked. José talked of Basque independence, of Franco, of the Communist party and his membership in it in his youth for practical reasons, his quitting of the party, his life at the Legion, and his life at the mines of Belgium. He told me of the very recent death of his close friend who was to have been his pilgrim companion. At this, the old, tough Basque who in his youth had been eyeball to eyeball with death in the Spanish Foreign Legion, grew soft and teary-eyed.
He left to go eat with his companions, but before he left we embraced.
That evening, I had dinner with Randi and a French pilgrim named Christian who was traveling with a young American named James. James had just been discharged from the Army as a Captain. He had decided to begin his new life as a civilian by undertaking the pilgrimage. James began the pilgrimage in Le Puy in France, and had joined up with Christian at the town of Moissac. They had walked together ever since, though James knew little French, and Christian knew even less English. They talked of the Gallic branch of their pilgrimage as we ate a dinner of lentil soup and chicken. James told me how Christian grew frustrated with his failure to advance in French, and how ultimately he had learned his prepositions.
“Avant, Avant,” Christian would say while he would walk in front of James.
“Après, Après,” Christian would have James repeat as he would walk behind James.
“Àdroite, Àdroite,” while Christian walked on James’s right.
“À gauche, á gauche,” on James’s left.
Around us I heard a scattering of conversations in German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese in the air as the various groups of pilgrims talked of the adventures of the day and the course of their earthly lives. With the background murmur of different tongues, we ate our pilgrim meals. I thought of Pentecost.
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[i] Basil Hume, To Be A Pilgrim, pp. 25-6 (1984), quoted in Martin Robinson, Sacred Places, Pilgrim Paths: An Anthology of Pilgrimage. London: Harper Collins. 1997.
[ii] King II.84-85
[iii] Melczer, Pilgrim’s Guide, at 86.
[iv] El Cid, 212.
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