“Come wind, come weatherThere’s no discouragementShall make him once relentHis first avowed intentTo be a pilgrim.”
____John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress[i]
Leave Castrojeríz
Depart Castro-jeríz & over the río Odrilla
From the plain to the high meseta and fields of wheat
Down the valley and over the río Pisuerga
Burgos,
Castile y León
= = = = = = =
Palencia,
Castile y León
By Itero de la Vega
M
Ermita de la Piedad
On the Way: Castrojeríz to Itero de la Vega
After a good night at Castrojeríz, Richard, Randi and I had breakfast before we departed on our journey. All three of us traveled together as we left town, crossed over the highway, through some fields of grain, over the río Odrilla toward a sizeable hill called the alto de Mostelares. The way up the hill was a steady climb of more than 100 meters. Atop the hill it was flat: a meseta. We walked across it, and then traveled downhill, across fields of wheat, until we reached a road, on which we bore right. Richard’s leg was acting up severely, and he hobbled toward the town of Itero de la Vega. We could see ahead and to the right the town of Itero del Castillo, a fortress town far off, amidst fields of wheat. But we turned left at a side path over to the ruins of the hospital of San Nicolás at the Fuente del Piojo, the “Fountain of the Louse.”
Closeby the banks of the Pisuerga River was the imposing hermitage of St. Nicholas. It was rectangular and solid, with a large portal, and not much else but a few rectangular windows of diminutive size on the front and shallow hipped roof covered with tile and supported by a row of stone corbels. Italians occupy the hermitage. The Italian Confraternity dedicated to San Iacobo cares for it. The hermitage is now a vibrant refugio, full of the authentic medieval spirit of solicitude for the pilgrim. We made arrangements with the Italians to take Richard to the clinic at Frómista, so that a physician could attend to his leg. As we hung about the place, I read a handout available for pilgrims, and I was struck as with a plank when I read the words therein:
Io sonno il Cammino.
I am the Way. The words of Jesus. That was it! The Way of St. James is not merely a footpath between the Pyrenees and the relics of the Apostle. There are three levels of reality to it, each deeper and true. The first is the physical pilgrim path, the road that leads to the relics of the Apostle. That path is a symbol a mimesis of the pilgrim path of the life of St. James. St. James devoted his life and consecrated his death to the person of Jesus, and so, at the bottom of the Camino is the Lord, the Camino.
To limit the Camino to a simple path is a superficial thing, a grave mistake. One must not confuse the means for the goal. It is error to confuse the paradigm, the symbol, the icon for its subject. Only a fool confuses the pedagogical process with the thing to be learned. The Camino to Compostela is a pedagogical means to arrive or deepen one’s relationship with the Person of Jesus, The Camino. To discover this is the Mystery and the Meaning of the Camino. I learned this at the hermitage of St. Nicholas, by the Pisuerga river, and I carried it with me the rest of the way to Santiago. I carry it with me still.
I I I
After taking care of Richard’s needs, Randi and I crossed the Pisuerga river by means the puente Fitero. It is a bridge of eleven arches of stone built by order of Alfonso VI. The river was broad, and deep, dark green. Growth was lush on the riverbank, a welcome break from the gold, yellow, and browns of the meseta. The Pisuerga River, at one time boundary between Castille and León, is today the boundary between the provinces of Burgos and Palencia, both of the autonomous region of Castille and León. The river divides the city into sections Castillian and Leonese, the latter part into which we then entered on the way to our first town of Palencia, Itero de la Vega.
I I I
Pons Fiterie
By Itero de la Vega
Across the canal del Pisuerga
Into Boadilla del Camino
k
Santa María
To the edge of the Canal de Castilla
On the Way: Itero de la Vega to Boadilla del Camino
Itero de la Vega is in a sparse valley; the town is accordingly sparsely populated. But it had a café hosted by a friendly woman. We had madalenas caseras, that is home made, and café con leche served to us in a large beer mug. We left Itero de la Vega to head toward Frómista with an ice cream in hand.
From Itero de la Vega, we crossed the canal del Pisuerga, and headed toward the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño. It was hot and dry between Itero de la Vega and the hills, and there was not much to entertain the senses.
So Randi and I talked, and she told me how the discipline of the Camino had taught her that she should be less goal-oriented in terms of finding joy, that if joy was to be found, it had to be found in the present moment. It brought to my mind a book I had read many years earlier. A spiritual classic, this book by the Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre De Caussade is entitled Abandonment to Divine Providence. In it De Caussade speaks of our need to respond to the present grace given to us by God, and calls this duty, the “sacrament of the present moment.” This was the central element of De Caussade’s teaching, and Randi had learned it on her own through the tutelage of the Camino.
I I I
On the Way: The Battle of Love
In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims entertained themselves with stories. We behaved no differently. In the heat between the towns of Itero de la Vega and Boadilla, in the defile between the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño, I told Randi the story of the Great Battle of Love.
“This story,” I said, “is a story about a battle. But it was no ordinary battle, for this was a battle that was fought not with swords, but with words.”
“It was a battle,” I continued, “that was fought not between soldiers, but between friars. And the warriors who fought each other were both full of love and respect for each other and for God. One of these friars was named after the angels, the other after the seraphim. The warriors were two great catholic souls: St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.”
With that introduction, I proceeded with the tale of how in the 13th century, Pope Urban IV had issued a bull in which he had promulgated the Feast of Corpus Christi as a feast for the Universal Church. Pope Urban searched Christendom to find the person who could compose the Mass and the Office for this great Feast. The time was ripe in Christendom for such a feast, for this was the great age of Scholasticism and devotion to the Eucharist. It was an Age of Faith, and Urban found two candidates of equal merit: the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscan St. Bonaventure. He commissioned them both to write the liturgy for the Feast.
They both set themselves to write the liturgy. When finished, they both went before Urban to present their work. When St. Thomas completed his presentation, St. Bonaventure tore up his text, and conceded defeat. He told Thomas that the world had not ever known such a beautiful work, and that he would never stand in the way of such a divine tour de force in praise of the Holy Eucharist.
This feast and its hymns had special meaning for me, I told Randi, for there was a time in my foolish years that I had abandoned the Faith. At my brother’s invitation, I attended a Benediction service at a Church and heard the words of St. Thomas’ hymn, the Pange Lingua.
Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremur cernui
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui
These hounds of heaven left the church with me; they tracked me down, chased me, and needled me, until I learned of my hunger, the heavenly banquet, heard the invitation, and joined in the Last and Perpetual Supper.
Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred Host we hail,Lo! oe'r ancient forms departingNewer rites of grace prevail;Faith for all defects supplying,Where the feeble senses fail.
I I I
Onwards through the dirt road. We crossed the arroyo de Chamadillo and then the arroyo del Robriza and thus we entered Boadilla del Camino. In Boadilla, by the Church, we came upon the rollo gótico, a stone monument, Gothic in style, intended to be a jurisdictional marker. I looked for the iron ring used to tie criminals, like horses, to this stone pillory before they were taken for arraignment and trial before the magistrate in Castrojeríz. I could almost hear the jeers of the townspeople hurled on the poor unfortunates that were chained here and hoped and still hope—that at least in large measure—the poor souls tied here deserved the heckles of the townspeople and the punishment of the magistrates meted out to them.
At Boadilla del Camino we stopped at the refugio. There we had a sandwich and I had a couple of beers—some San Miguels to offset symbolically any of the evil of the Belgian beer Duval, for Duval, Eric told me, meant devil in Flemish—in a café that was within the walls of the refugio. Any soporific effect of the beers was immediately squelched by chasers of espresso.
I I I
On the Way: Boadilla to Frómista
Transitu-rus de hoc mundo
From Boadilla del Camino we traveled to the canal de Castilla, which we followed—on its southern embankment on a dirt road—all the way to Frómista, the ancient Frumesta of the Visigoths and Romans, whose name betrays the abundant cereals (Latin frumenta) grown in the region from time immemorial, or at least from time Roman. The canal has a slight current, and the green water flowed peacefully with us toward Frómista. We periodically passed by gates that can be opened with grey valves to allow the waters of the canal to flow into irrigation channels and into the fields. River canes grew on the bank of the canal, and white flowers bloomed from vines that encircled the canes. The wind hissed as it sieved through the rushes, reeds, and the black poplar. Water birds whistled and frogs belched their songs as we walked by fields of wheat, hops, and sunflowers. For the first time since I had been in Spain, I saw cornfields. Immediately before Frómista we crossed over the canal, dropped downhill, hit a paved road, and traveled into the town.
We passed by a park full of school children on a picnic, and they all yelled with great cheer in their high-pitched voices: “Peregrinos! Animo! A Santiago y a Dios!” They do not know the joy they gave me. I thought of the Tolle, Lege of St. Augustine, for it is a property of children’s voices that their innocence spans the centuries.
I I I
Frómista, the city of cereal and the Tierra de Campos
k
San Martín Fromista
On the Way: Frómista
Finally we arrived at Frómista. By the refugio is a church. It is named after San Martín (for there is more than one Church in Frómista), is a lovely Romanesque design, of three aisles, four bays and three apses. The aisles are virtually the same height as the barrel-vaulted nave. The westworks of the church are bordered by two narrow, circular towers, looking almost like silos.
Frumesta
The church has included transepts, as they extend no further than the aisles. Up atop the crossing of the transepts is a short and squat octagonal tower, topped with a roof of tile. The church has all the articulations expected of a Romanesque church, including lessenes and billet moulding. The church sits surrounded by the modern streets, jealously defending, as it were, its own city block from the incursions of the modern world. Founded by queen Doña Mayor, the widow of Sancho III the Great of Navarre, in the early 11th century, the church was served by Benedictine monks, whose monastery, once by the church, is now gone. The church is of stone; the stone is of tan and gold hue, and beautiful.
There are, so I read, 315 corbels on the outside of the church which make up the various corbel tables—each corbel unique—holding up as if effortlessly, the church’s red-tiled roof. I saw the corbels, but did not bother to count them, for the number looked about right to me. A number of carvings were removed during a restoration in the late 19th century—they were considered, and I’m sure from descriptions of them were, lewd.
I I I
King tells the story of Pedro Fernandez de Teresa, steward of hospital of San Martin in Frómista, who rebuilt the hospital of San Martin after it burnt down, borrowing money from a Jew named Matutiel Salomon. When he defaulted on the debt, the Jew obtained an excommunication against the Christian. Ultimately, Fernandez paid back the debt, but neglected to dispose of the excommunication. On his deathbed (on St. Catherine's day), a priest brought him the viaticum, but the host stuck to the silver paten. Only after the priest learned of the outstanding excommunication, and absolved Fernandez of it, was Fernandez able to communicate.[ii] This way the Lord warned Fernandez to absolve and make right with the Church. We are not all so fortunate, and it would be presumptuous to expect such miraculous aid, and so we ought to live each day as it may be our last, fully shriven and in a state of Grace as far as our lights inform us.
\I I I
We checked into the pilgrim’s refuge, and I lay in the upper bunk that had been assigned to me. The refuge was large. My feet were in great pain, and as they recovered from the days’ walk, the pain throbbed and moved from area to area. Blisters were now a very grave problem. Over the last several days I have developed three serious blisters or ampollas on my left heel, each the circumference of a half-dollar. I had frequently had to pierce them. When I pierced them in Frómista, I drew three thimblefulls of fluid.
I I I
About the Way: Saint in the Tempest
There was a monument in Frómista to Pedro Gonzalez Telmo, born here in 1190 of a noble Castilian family and died in Tuy in 1246. His uncle on his maternal side was the Bishop of Astorga and had Pedro appointed canon of the cathedral. Pedro, on the road to Astorga, lost his way and ended up on the road to Damascus. Here’s how. Proud and vain, Pedro rode into Astorga to assume his title, but his horse stumbled and threw him into the mud, which drew the jeers of the crowd. A lesser man without grace would have grown angry, but Pedro learned that day of his own vanity, and his own vanity’s vanity. He resolved that day or not much later, that he would mock the world that mocked him. The man joined the Dominicans, and became Dean of Palencia and a confessor to St. Fernando III. He also attended to the spiritual and temporal needs of the seamen in Galicia and northern Portugal. His sanctity was recognized and he was canonized a saint. St. Telmo, in recognition of his life’s work to the sailors, is patron saint of the men of the sea. So also has he given name to the phenomenon known as “St. Elmo’s fire,” a natural electrical phenomenon, known as a corona or point discharge, common in the sea, where electric charges in luminous form travel up and down ship’s masts. The phenomenon is described, but the saint unnamed, by the spirit Ariel in Shakespere’s Tempest:
I boarded the King’s ship; now in the beak
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam’d amazement; sometime I’d divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards and boresprit, would I flame distinctly
Then meet and join.[iii]
An odd quirk of fate, this, where a man born in this hot and hostile meseta was called to be, not only patron to the mariners, but the eponymous saint of the heavenly and mysterious fire of the sea.
I I I
On the Way: The King of Puns
After resting and the refugio, we had dinner at a restaurant in Frómista. As we walked into the restaurant, we noticed a table full of pilgrims. They recognized us as pilgrims and invited us to sit with them. As I approached, I asked what the lingua franca was for the table. Paddy, an Irish pilgrim, answered that one side was French, and the other English. So we sat on the English side.
I took a chair next to Paddy. He was in his mid-40s, slighly overweight, with a goatee and graying hair. He had friendly eyes, an easy smile, and an Irish brogue that won over your confidence and your heart. There was, however, a bit of the irreverent in him, and, although I never explored it, an animus toward the Church. Whatever his ambivalent situation with regard to the Church, Paddy, I learned, was the King of Puns. There was neither a subject nor word he could not turn into a pun.
I challenged him, “Give me a pun about Riojan wine.”
“Wine not,” he answered.
“O Come on,” I said, “that’s obvious.”
“Ah, quit wining.”
And so on it went all dinner.
That evening as I was packing up my things, I noticed that some of my socks were missing. So Paddy made light of my situation, and started up his puns.
“That really socks,” he observed. “If I find the guy who took your socks, I’ll sock him one, I tell you.”
I climbed into bed, paused, and when Paddy grew quiet I said in a loud voice the pun I had been saving, “Sockre bleu.”
I heard the King of Puns chuckle, and I lay down satisfied that I had passed muster with the King of Puns. And with that and a prayer to St. James to help my feet, I fell asleep without much effort.
k
[i] John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, Book II, p. *.
[ii] King, II.81
[iii] Shakespeare, Tempest, Act *, Scene *.“Come wind, come weatherThere’s no discouragementShall make him once relentHis first avowed intentTo be a pilgrim.”
____John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress[i]
Leave Castrojeríz
Depart Castro-jeríz & over the río Odrilla
From the plain to the high meseta and fields of wheat
Down the valley and over the río Pisuerga
Burgos,
Castile y León
= = = = = = =
Palencia,
Castile y León
By Itero de la Vega
M
Ermita de la Piedad
On the Way: Castrojeríz to Itero de la Vega
After a good night at Castrojeríz, Richard, Randi and I had breakfast before we departed on our journey. All three of us traveled together as we left town, crossed over the highway, through some fields of grain, over the río Odrilla toward a sizeable hill called the alto de Mostelares. The way up the hill was a steady climb of more than 100 meters. Atop the hill it was flat: a meseta. We walked across it, and then traveled downhill, across fields of wheat, until we reached a road, on which we bore right. Richard’s leg was acting up severely, and he hobbled toward the town of Itero de la Vega. We could see ahead and to the right the town of Itero del Castillo, a fortress town far off, amidst fields of wheat. But we turned left at a side path over to the ruins of the hospital of San Nicolás at the Fuente del Piojo, the “Fountain of the Louse.”
Closeby the banks of the Pisuerga River was the imposing hermitage of St. Nicholas. It was rectangular and solid, with a large portal, and not much else but a few rectangular windows of diminutive size on the front and shallow hipped roof covered with tile and supported by a row of stone corbels. Italians occupy the hermitage. The Italian Confraternity dedicated to San Iacobo cares for it. The hermitage is now a vibrant refugio, full of the authentic medieval spirit of solicitude for the pilgrim. We made arrangements with the Italians to take Richard to the clinic at Frómista, so that a physician could attend to his leg. As we hung about the place, I read a handout available for pilgrims, and I was struck as with a plank when I read the words therein:
Io sonno il Cammino.
I am the Way. The words of Jesus. That was it! The Way of St. James is not merely a footpath between the Pyrenees and the relics of the Apostle. There are three levels of reality to it, each deeper and true. The first is the physical pilgrim path, the road that leads to the relics of the Apostle. That path is a symbol a mimesis of the pilgrim path of the life of St. James. St. James devoted his life and consecrated his death to the person of Jesus, and so, at the bottom of the Camino is the Lord, the Camino.
To limit the Camino to a simple path is a superficial thing, a grave mistake. One must not confuse the means for the goal. It is error to confuse the paradigm, the symbol, the icon for its subject. Only a fool confuses the pedagogical process with the thing to be learned. The Camino to Compostela is a pedagogical means to arrive or deepen one’s relationship with the Person of Jesus, The Camino. To discover this is the Mystery and the Meaning of the Camino. I learned this at the hermitage of St. Nicholas, by the Pisuerga river, and I carried it with me the rest of the way to Santiago. I carry it with me still.
I I I
After taking care of Richard’s needs, Randi and I crossed the Pisuerga river by means the puente Fitero. It is a bridge of eleven arches of stone built by order of Alfonso VI. The river was broad, and deep, dark green. Growth was lush on the riverbank, a welcome break from the gold, yellow, and browns of the meseta. The Pisuerga River, at one time boundary between Castille and León, is today the boundary between the provinces of Burgos and Palencia, both of the autonomous region of Castille and León. The river divides the city into sections Castillian and Leonese, the latter part into which we then entered on the way to our first town of Palencia, Itero de la Vega.
I I I
Pons Fiterie
By Itero de la Vega
Across the canal del Pisuerga
Into Boadilla del Camino
k
Santa María
To the edge of the Canal de Castilla
On the Way: Itero de la Vega to Boadilla del Camino
Itero de la Vega is in a sparse valley; the town is accordingly sparsely populated. But it had a café hosted by a friendly woman. We had madalenas caseras, that is home made, and café con leche served to us in a large beer mug. We left Itero de la Vega to head toward Frómista with an ice cream in hand.
From Itero de la Vega, we crossed the canal del Pisuerga, and headed toward the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño. It was hot and dry between Itero de la Vega and the hills, and there was not much to entertain the senses.
So Randi and I talked, and she told me how the discipline of the Camino had taught her that she should be less goal-oriented in terms of finding joy, that if joy was to be found, it had to be found in the present moment. It brought to my mind a book I had read many years earlier. A spiritual classic, this book by the Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre De Caussade is entitled Abandonment to Divine Providence. In it De Caussade speaks of our need to respond to the present grace given to us by God, and calls this duty, the “sacrament of the present moment.” This was the central element of De Caussade’s teaching, and Randi had learned it on her own through the tutelage of the Camino.
I I I
On the Way: The Battle of Love
In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims entertained themselves with stories. We behaved no differently. In the heat between the towns of Itero de la Vega and Boadilla, in the defile between the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño, I told Randi the story of the Great Battle of Love.
“This story,” I said, “is a story about a battle. But it was no ordinary battle, for this was a battle that was fought not with swords, but with words.”
“It was a battle,” I continued, “that was fought not between soldiers, but between friars. And the warriors who fought each other were both full of love and respect for each other and for God. One of these friars was named after the angels, the other after the seraphim. The warriors were two great catholic souls: St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.”
With that introduction, I proceeded with the tale of how in the 13th century, Pope Urban IV had issued a bull in which he had promulgated the Feast of Corpus Christi as a feast for the Universal Church. Pope Urban searched Christendom to find the person who could compose the Mass and the Office for this great Feast. The time was ripe in Christendom for such a feast, for this was the great age of Scholasticism and devotion to the Eucharist. It was an Age of Faith, and Urban found two candidates of equal merit: the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscan St. Bonaventure. He commissioned them both to write the liturgy for the Feast.
They both set themselves to write the liturgy. When finished, they both went before Urban to present their work. When St. Thomas completed his presentation, St. Bonaventure tore up his text, and conceded defeat. He told Thomas that the world had not ever known such a beautiful work, and that he would never stand in the way of such a divine tour de force in praise of the Holy Eucharist.
This feast and its hymns had special meaning for me, I told Randi, for there was a time in my foolish years that I had abandoned the Faith. At my brother’s invitation, I attended a Benediction service at a Church and heard the words of St. Thomas’ hymn, the Pange Lingua.
Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremur cernui
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui
These hounds of heaven left the church with me; they tracked me down, chased me, and needled me, until I learned of my hunger, the heavenly banquet, heard the invitation, and joined in the Last and Perpetual Supper.
Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred Host we hail,Lo! oe'r ancient forms departingNewer rites of grace prevail;Faith for all defects supplying,Where the feeble senses fail.
I I I
Onwards through the dirt road. We crossed the arroyo de Chamadillo and then the arroyo del Robriza and thus we entered Boadilla del Camino. In Boadilla, by the Church, we came upon the rollo gótico, a stone monument, Gothic in style, intended to be a jurisdictional marker. I looked for the iron ring used to tie criminals, like horses, to this stone pillory before they were taken for arraignment and trial before the magistrate in Castrojeríz. I could almost hear the jeers of the townspeople hurled on the poor unfortunates that were chained here and hoped and still hope—that at least in large measure—the poor souls tied here deserved the heckles of the townspeople and the punishment of the magistrates meted out to them.
At Boadilla del Camino we stopped at the refugio. There we had a sandwich and I had a couple of beers—some San Miguels to offset symbolically any of the evil of the Belgian beer Duval, for Duval, Eric told me, meant devil in Flemish—in a café that was within the walls of the refugio. Any soporific effect of the beers was immediately squelched by chasers of espresso.
I I I
On the Way: Boadilla to Frómista
Transitu-rus de hoc mundo
From Boadilla del Camino we traveled to the canal de Castilla, which we followed—on its southern embankment on a dirt road—all the way to Frómista, the ancient Frumesta of the Visigoths and Romans, whose name betrays the abundant cereals (Latin frumenta) grown in the region from time immemorial, or at least from time Roman. The canal has a slight current, and the green water flowed peacefully with us toward Frómista. We periodically passed by gates that can be opened with grey valves to allow the waters of the canal to flow into irrigation channels and into the fields. River canes grew on the bank of the canal, and white flowers bloomed from vines that encircled the canes. The wind hissed as it sieved through the rushes, reeds, and the black poplar. Water birds whistled and frogs belched their songs as we walked by fields of wheat, hops, and sunflowers. For the first time since I had been in Spain, I saw cornfields. Immediately before Frómista we crossed over the canal, dropped downhill, hit a paved road, and traveled into the town.
We passed by a park full of school children on a picnic, and they all yelled with great cheer in their high-pitched voices: “Peregrinos! Animo! A Santiago y a Dios!” They do not know the joy they gave me. I thought of the Tolle, Lege of St. Augustine, for it is a property of children’s voices that their innocence spans the centuries.
I I I
Frómista, the city of cereal and the Tierra de Campos
k
San Martín Fromista
On the Way: Frómista
Finally we arrived at Frómista. By the refugio is a church. It is named after San Martín (for there is more than one Church in Frómista), is a lovely Romanesque design, of three aisles, four bays and three apses. The aisles are virtually the same height as the barrel-vaulted nave. The westworks of the church are bordered by two narrow, circular towers, looking almost like silos.
Frumesta
The church has included transepts, as they extend no further than the aisles. Up atop the crossing of the transepts is a short and squat octagonal tower, topped with a roof of tile. The church has all the articulations expected of a Romanesque church, including lessenes and billet moulding. The church sits surrounded by the modern streets, jealously defending, as it were, its own city block from the incursions of the modern world. Founded by queen Doña Mayor, the widow of Sancho III the Great of Navarre, in the early 11th century, the church was served by Benedictine monks, whose monastery, once by the church, is now gone. The church is of stone; the stone is of tan and gold hue, and beautiful.
There are, so I read, 315 corbels on the outside of the church which make up the various corbel tables—each corbel unique—holding up as if effortlessly, the church’s red-tiled roof. I saw the corbels, but did not bother to count them, for the number looked about right to me. A number of carvings were removed during a restoration in the late 19th century—they were considered, and I’m sure from descriptions of them were, lewd.
I I I
King tells the story of Pedro Fernandez de Teresa, steward of hospital of San Martin in Frómista, who rebuilt the hospital of San Martin after it burnt down, borrowing money from a Jew named Matutiel Salomon. When he defaulted on the debt, the Jew obtained an excommunication against the Christian. Ultimately, Fernandez paid back the debt, but neglected to dispose of the excommunication. On his deathbed (on St. Catherine's day), a priest brought him the viaticum, but the host stuck to the silver paten. Only after the priest learned of the outstanding excommunication, and absolved Fernandez of it, was Fernandez able to communicate.[ii] This way the Lord warned Fernandez to absolve and make right with the Church. We are not all so fortunate, and it would be presumptuous to expect such miraculous aid, and so we ought to live each day as it may be our last, fully shriven and in a state of Grace as far as our lights inform us.
\I I I
We checked into the pilgrim’s refuge, and I lay in the upper bunk that had been assigned to me. The refuge was large. My feet were in great pain, and as they recovered from the days’ walk, the pain throbbed and moved from area to area. Blisters were now a very grave problem. Over the last several days I have developed three serious blisters or ampollas on my left heel, each the circumference of a half-dollar. I had frequently had to pierce them. When I pierced them in Frómista, I drew three thimblefulls of fluid.
I I I
About the Way: Saint in the Tempest
There was a monument in Frómista to Pedro Gonzalez Telmo, born here in 1190 of a noble Castilian family and died in Tuy in 1246. His uncle on his maternal side was the Bishop of Astorga and had Pedro appointed canon of the cathedral. Pedro, on the road to Astorga, lost his way and ended up on the road to Damascus. Here’s how. Proud and vain, Pedro rode into Astorga to assume his title, but his horse stumbled and threw him into the mud, which drew the jeers of the crowd. A lesser man without grace would have grown angry, but Pedro learned that day of his own vanity, and his own vanity’s vanity. He resolved that day or not much later, that he would mock the world that mocked him. The man joined the Dominicans, and became Dean of Palencia and a confessor to St. Fernando III. He also attended to the spiritual and temporal needs of the seamen in Galicia and northern Portugal. His sanctity was recognized and he was canonized a saint. St. Telmo, in recognition of his life’s work to the sailors, is patron saint of the men of the sea. So also has he given name to the phenomenon known as “St. Elmo’s fire,” a natural electrical phenomenon, known as a corona or point discharge, common in the sea, where electric charges in luminous form travel up and down ship’s masts. The phenomenon is described, but the saint unnamed, by the spirit Ariel in Shakespere’s Tempest:
I boarded the King’s ship; now in the beak
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam’d amazement; sometime I’d divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards and boresprit, would I flame distinctly
Then meet and join.[iii]
An odd quirk of fate, this, where a man born in this hot and hostile meseta was called to be, not only patron to the mariners, but the eponymous saint of the heavenly and mysterious fire of the sea.
I I I
On the Way: The King of Puns
After resting and the refugio, we had dinner at a restaurant in Frómista. As we walked into the restaurant, we noticed a table full of pilgrims. They recognized us as pilgrims and invited us to sit with them. As I approached, I asked what the lingua franca was for the table. Paddy, an Irish pilgrim, answered that one side was French, and the other English. So we sat on the English side.
I took a chair next to Paddy. He was in his mid-40s, slighly overweight, with a goatee and graying hair. He had friendly eyes, an easy smile, and an Irish brogue that won over your confidence and your heart. There was, however, a bit of the irreverent in him, and, although I never explored it, an animus toward the Church. Whatever his ambivalent situation with regard to the Church, Paddy, I learned, was the King of Puns. There was neither a subject nor word he could not turn into a pun.
I challenged him, “Give me a pun about Riojan wine.”
“Wine not,” he answered.
“O Come on,” I said, “that’s obvious.”
“Ah, quit wining.”
And so on it went all dinner.
That evening as I was packing up my things, I noticed that some of my socks were missing. So Paddy made light of my situation, and started up his puns.
“That really socks,” he observed. “If I find the guy who took your socks, I’ll sock him one, I tell you.”
I climbed into bed, paused, and when Paddy grew quiet I said in a loud voice the pun I had been saving, “Sockre bleu.”
I heard the King of Puns chuckle, and I lay down satisfied that I had passed muster with the King of Puns. And with that and a prayer to St. James to help my feet, I fell asleep without much effort.
k
[i] John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, Book II, p. *.
[ii] King, II.81
[iii] Shakespeare, Tempest, Act *, Scene *.
____John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress[i]
Leave Castrojeríz
Depart Castro-jeríz & over the río Odrilla
From the plain to the high meseta and fields of wheat
Down the valley and over the río Pisuerga
Burgos,
Castile y León
= = = = = = =
Palencia,
Castile y León
By Itero de la Vega
M
Ermita de la Piedad
On the Way: Castrojeríz to Itero de la Vega
After a good night at Castrojeríz, Richard, Randi and I had breakfast before we departed on our journey. All three of us traveled together as we left town, crossed over the highway, through some fields of grain, over the río Odrilla toward a sizeable hill called the alto de Mostelares. The way up the hill was a steady climb of more than 100 meters. Atop the hill it was flat: a meseta. We walked across it, and then traveled downhill, across fields of wheat, until we reached a road, on which we bore right. Richard’s leg was acting up severely, and he hobbled toward the town of Itero de la Vega. We could see ahead and to the right the town of Itero del Castillo, a fortress town far off, amidst fields of wheat. But we turned left at a side path over to the ruins of the hospital of San Nicolás at the Fuente del Piojo, the “Fountain of the Louse.”
Closeby the banks of the Pisuerga River was the imposing hermitage of St. Nicholas. It was rectangular and solid, with a large portal, and not much else but a few rectangular windows of diminutive size on the front and shallow hipped roof covered with tile and supported by a row of stone corbels. Italians occupy the hermitage. The Italian Confraternity dedicated to San Iacobo cares for it. The hermitage is now a vibrant refugio, full of the authentic medieval spirit of solicitude for the pilgrim. We made arrangements with the Italians to take Richard to the clinic at Frómista, so that a physician could attend to his leg. As we hung about the place, I read a handout available for pilgrims, and I was struck as with a plank when I read the words therein:
Io sonno il Cammino.
I am the Way. The words of Jesus. That was it! The Way of St. James is not merely a footpath between the Pyrenees and the relics of the Apostle. There are three levels of reality to it, each deeper and true. The first is the physical pilgrim path, the road that leads to the relics of the Apostle. That path is a symbol a mimesis of the pilgrim path of the life of St. James. St. James devoted his life and consecrated his death to the person of Jesus, and so, at the bottom of the Camino is the Lord, the Camino.
To limit the Camino to a simple path is a superficial thing, a grave mistake. One must not confuse the means for the goal. It is error to confuse the paradigm, the symbol, the icon for its subject. Only a fool confuses the pedagogical process with the thing to be learned. The Camino to Compostela is a pedagogical means to arrive or deepen one’s relationship with the Person of Jesus, The Camino. To discover this is the Mystery and the Meaning of the Camino. I learned this at the hermitage of St. Nicholas, by the Pisuerga river, and I carried it with me the rest of the way to Santiago. I carry it with me still.
I I I
After taking care of Richard’s needs, Randi and I crossed the Pisuerga river by means the puente Fitero. It is a bridge of eleven arches of stone built by order of Alfonso VI. The river was broad, and deep, dark green. Growth was lush on the riverbank, a welcome break from the gold, yellow, and browns of the meseta. The Pisuerga River, at one time boundary between Castille and León, is today the boundary between the provinces of Burgos and Palencia, both of the autonomous region of Castille and León. The river divides the city into sections Castillian and Leonese, the latter part into which we then entered on the way to our first town of Palencia, Itero de la Vega.
I I I
Pons Fiterie
By Itero de la Vega
Across the canal del Pisuerga
Into Boadilla del Camino
k
Santa María
To the edge of the Canal de Castilla
On the Way: Itero de la Vega to Boadilla del Camino
Itero de la Vega is in a sparse valley; the town is accordingly sparsely populated. But it had a café hosted by a friendly woman. We had madalenas caseras, that is home made, and café con leche served to us in a large beer mug. We left Itero de la Vega to head toward Frómista with an ice cream in hand.
From Itero de la Vega, we crossed the canal del Pisuerga, and headed toward the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño. It was hot and dry between Itero de la Vega and the hills, and there was not much to entertain the senses.
So Randi and I talked, and she told me how the discipline of the Camino had taught her that she should be less goal-oriented in terms of finding joy, that if joy was to be found, it had to be found in the present moment. It brought to my mind a book I had read many years earlier. A spiritual classic, this book by the Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre De Caussade is entitled Abandonment to Divine Providence. In it De Caussade speaks of our need to respond to the present grace given to us by God, and calls this duty, the “sacrament of the present moment.” This was the central element of De Caussade’s teaching, and Randi had learned it on her own through the tutelage of the Camino.
I I I
On the Way: The Battle of Love
In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims entertained themselves with stories. We behaved no differently. In the heat between the towns of Itero de la Vega and Boadilla, in the defile between the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño, I told Randi the story of the Great Battle of Love.
“This story,” I said, “is a story about a battle. But it was no ordinary battle, for this was a battle that was fought not with swords, but with words.”
“It was a battle,” I continued, “that was fought not between soldiers, but between friars. And the warriors who fought each other were both full of love and respect for each other and for God. One of these friars was named after the angels, the other after the seraphim. The warriors were two great catholic souls: St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.”
With that introduction, I proceeded with the tale of how in the 13th century, Pope Urban IV had issued a bull in which he had promulgated the Feast of Corpus Christi as a feast for the Universal Church. Pope Urban searched Christendom to find the person who could compose the Mass and the Office for this great Feast. The time was ripe in Christendom for such a feast, for this was the great age of Scholasticism and devotion to the Eucharist. It was an Age of Faith, and Urban found two candidates of equal merit: the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscan St. Bonaventure. He commissioned them both to write the liturgy for the Feast.
They both set themselves to write the liturgy. When finished, they both went before Urban to present their work. When St. Thomas completed his presentation, St. Bonaventure tore up his text, and conceded defeat. He told Thomas that the world had not ever known such a beautiful work, and that he would never stand in the way of such a divine tour de force in praise of the Holy Eucharist.
This feast and its hymns had special meaning for me, I told Randi, for there was a time in my foolish years that I had abandoned the Faith. At my brother’s invitation, I attended a Benediction service at a Church and heard the words of St. Thomas’ hymn, the Pange Lingua.
Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremur cernui
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui
These hounds of heaven left the church with me; they tracked me down, chased me, and needled me, until I learned of my hunger, the heavenly banquet, heard the invitation, and joined in the Last and Perpetual Supper.
Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred Host we hail,Lo! oe'r ancient forms departingNewer rites of grace prevail;Faith for all defects supplying,Where the feeble senses fail.
I I I
Onwards through the dirt road. We crossed the arroyo de Chamadillo and then the arroyo del Robriza and thus we entered Boadilla del Camino. In Boadilla, by the Church, we came upon the rollo gótico, a stone monument, Gothic in style, intended to be a jurisdictional marker. I looked for the iron ring used to tie criminals, like horses, to this stone pillory before they were taken for arraignment and trial before the magistrate in Castrojeríz. I could almost hear the jeers of the townspeople hurled on the poor unfortunates that were chained here and hoped and still hope—that at least in large measure—the poor souls tied here deserved the heckles of the townspeople and the punishment of the magistrates meted out to them.
At Boadilla del Camino we stopped at the refugio. There we had a sandwich and I had a couple of beers—some San Miguels to offset symbolically any of the evil of the Belgian beer Duval, for Duval, Eric told me, meant devil in Flemish—in a café that was within the walls of the refugio. Any soporific effect of the beers was immediately squelched by chasers of espresso.
I I I
On the Way: Boadilla to Frómista
Transitu-rus de hoc mundo
From Boadilla del Camino we traveled to the canal de Castilla, which we followed—on its southern embankment on a dirt road—all the way to Frómista, the ancient Frumesta of the Visigoths and Romans, whose name betrays the abundant cereals (Latin frumenta) grown in the region from time immemorial, or at least from time Roman. The canal has a slight current, and the green water flowed peacefully with us toward Frómista. We periodically passed by gates that can be opened with grey valves to allow the waters of the canal to flow into irrigation channels and into the fields. River canes grew on the bank of the canal, and white flowers bloomed from vines that encircled the canes. The wind hissed as it sieved through the rushes, reeds, and the black poplar. Water birds whistled and frogs belched their songs as we walked by fields of wheat, hops, and sunflowers. For the first time since I had been in Spain, I saw cornfields. Immediately before Frómista we crossed over the canal, dropped downhill, hit a paved road, and traveled into the town.
We passed by a park full of school children on a picnic, and they all yelled with great cheer in their high-pitched voices: “Peregrinos! Animo! A Santiago y a Dios!” They do not know the joy they gave me. I thought of the Tolle, Lege of St. Augustine, for it is a property of children’s voices that their innocence spans the centuries.
I I I
Frómista, the city of cereal and the Tierra de Campos
k
San Martín Fromista
On the Way: Frómista
Finally we arrived at Frómista. By the refugio is a church. It is named after San Martín (for there is more than one Church in Frómista), is a lovely Romanesque design, of three aisles, four bays and three apses. The aisles are virtually the same height as the barrel-vaulted nave. The westworks of the church are bordered by two narrow, circular towers, looking almost like silos.
Frumesta
The church has included transepts, as they extend no further than the aisles. Up atop the crossing of the transepts is a short and squat octagonal tower, topped with a roof of tile. The church has all the articulations expected of a Romanesque church, including lessenes and billet moulding. The church sits surrounded by the modern streets, jealously defending, as it were, its own city block from the incursions of the modern world. Founded by queen Doña Mayor, the widow of Sancho III the Great of Navarre, in the early 11th century, the church was served by Benedictine monks, whose monastery, once by the church, is now gone. The church is of stone; the stone is of tan and gold hue, and beautiful.
There are, so I read, 315 corbels on the outside of the church which make up the various corbel tables—each corbel unique—holding up as if effortlessly, the church’s red-tiled roof. I saw the corbels, but did not bother to count them, for the number looked about right to me. A number of carvings were removed during a restoration in the late 19th century—they were considered, and I’m sure from descriptions of them were, lewd.
I I I
King tells the story of Pedro Fernandez de Teresa, steward of hospital of San Martin in Frómista, who rebuilt the hospital of San Martin after it burnt down, borrowing money from a Jew named Matutiel Salomon. When he defaulted on the debt, the Jew obtained an excommunication against the Christian. Ultimately, Fernandez paid back the debt, but neglected to dispose of the excommunication. On his deathbed (on St. Catherine's day), a priest brought him the viaticum, but the host stuck to the silver paten. Only after the priest learned of the outstanding excommunication, and absolved Fernandez of it, was Fernandez able to communicate.[ii] This way the Lord warned Fernandez to absolve and make right with the Church. We are not all so fortunate, and it would be presumptuous to expect such miraculous aid, and so we ought to live each day as it may be our last, fully shriven and in a state of Grace as far as our lights inform us.
\I I I
We checked into the pilgrim’s refuge, and I lay in the upper bunk that had been assigned to me. The refuge was large. My feet were in great pain, and as they recovered from the days’ walk, the pain throbbed and moved from area to area. Blisters were now a very grave problem. Over the last several days I have developed three serious blisters or ampollas on my left heel, each the circumference of a half-dollar. I had frequently had to pierce them. When I pierced them in Frómista, I drew three thimblefulls of fluid.
I I I
About the Way: Saint in the Tempest
There was a monument in Frómista to Pedro Gonzalez Telmo, born here in 1190 of a noble Castilian family and died in Tuy in 1246. His uncle on his maternal side was the Bishop of Astorga and had Pedro appointed canon of the cathedral. Pedro, on the road to Astorga, lost his way and ended up on the road to Damascus. Here’s how. Proud and vain, Pedro rode into Astorga to assume his title, but his horse stumbled and threw him into the mud, which drew the jeers of the crowd. A lesser man without grace would have grown angry, but Pedro learned that day of his own vanity, and his own vanity’s vanity. He resolved that day or not much later, that he would mock the world that mocked him. The man joined the Dominicans, and became Dean of Palencia and a confessor to St. Fernando III. He also attended to the spiritual and temporal needs of the seamen in Galicia and northern Portugal. His sanctity was recognized and he was canonized a saint. St. Telmo, in recognition of his life’s work to the sailors, is patron saint of the men of the sea. So also has he given name to the phenomenon known as “St. Elmo’s fire,” a natural electrical phenomenon, known as a corona or point discharge, common in the sea, where electric charges in luminous form travel up and down ship’s masts. The phenomenon is described, but the saint unnamed, by the spirit Ariel in Shakespere’s Tempest:
I boarded the King’s ship; now in the beak
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam’d amazement; sometime I’d divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards and boresprit, would I flame distinctly
Then meet and join.[iii]
An odd quirk of fate, this, where a man born in this hot and hostile meseta was called to be, not only patron to the mariners, but the eponymous saint of the heavenly and mysterious fire of the sea.
I I I
On the Way: The King of Puns
After resting and the refugio, we had dinner at a restaurant in Frómista. As we walked into the restaurant, we noticed a table full of pilgrims. They recognized us as pilgrims and invited us to sit with them. As I approached, I asked what the lingua franca was for the table. Paddy, an Irish pilgrim, answered that one side was French, and the other English. So we sat on the English side.
I took a chair next to Paddy. He was in his mid-40s, slighly overweight, with a goatee and graying hair. He had friendly eyes, an easy smile, and an Irish brogue that won over your confidence and your heart. There was, however, a bit of the irreverent in him, and, although I never explored it, an animus toward the Church. Whatever his ambivalent situation with regard to the Church, Paddy, I learned, was the King of Puns. There was neither a subject nor word he could not turn into a pun.
I challenged him, “Give me a pun about Riojan wine.”
“Wine not,” he answered.
“O Come on,” I said, “that’s obvious.”
“Ah, quit wining.”
And so on it went all dinner.
That evening as I was packing up my things, I noticed that some of my socks were missing. So Paddy made light of my situation, and started up his puns.
“That really socks,” he observed. “If I find the guy who took your socks, I’ll sock him one, I tell you.”
I climbed into bed, paused, and when Paddy grew quiet I said in a loud voice the pun I had been saving, “Sockre bleu.”
I heard the King of Puns chuckle, and I lay down satisfied that I had passed muster with the King of Puns. And with that and a prayer to St. James to help my feet, I fell asleep without much effort.
k
[i] John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, Book II, p. *.
[ii] King, II.81
[iii] Shakespeare, Tempest, Act *, Scene *.“Come wind, come weatherThere’s no discouragementShall make him once relentHis first avowed intentTo be a pilgrim.”
____John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress[i]
Leave Castrojeríz
Depart Castro-jeríz & over the río Odrilla
From the plain to the high meseta and fields of wheat
Down the valley and over the río Pisuerga
Burgos,
Castile y León
= = = = = = =
Palencia,
Castile y León
By Itero de la Vega
M
Ermita de la Piedad
On the Way: Castrojeríz to Itero de la Vega
After a good night at Castrojeríz, Richard, Randi and I had breakfast before we departed on our journey. All three of us traveled together as we left town, crossed over the highway, through some fields of grain, over the río Odrilla toward a sizeable hill called the alto de Mostelares. The way up the hill was a steady climb of more than 100 meters. Atop the hill it was flat: a meseta. We walked across it, and then traveled downhill, across fields of wheat, until we reached a road, on which we bore right. Richard’s leg was acting up severely, and he hobbled toward the town of Itero de la Vega. We could see ahead and to the right the town of Itero del Castillo, a fortress town far off, amidst fields of wheat. But we turned left at a side path over to the ruins of the hospital of San Nicolás at the Fuente del Piojo, the “Fountain of the Louse.”
Closeby the banks of the Pisuerga River was the imposing hermitage of St. Nicholas. It was rectangular and solid, with a large portal, and not much else but a few rectangular windows of diminutive size on the front and shallow hipped roof covered with tile and supported by a row of stone corbels. Italians occupy the hermitage. The Italian Confraternity dedicated to San Iacobo cares for it. The hermitage is now a vibrant refugio, full of the authentic medieval spirit of solicitude for the pilgrim. We made arrangements with the Italians to take Richard to the clinic at Frómista, so that a physician could attend to his leg. As we hung about the place, I read a handout available for pilgrims, and I was struck as with a plank when I read the words therein:
Io sonno il Cammino.
I am the Way. The words of Jesus. That was it! The Way of St. James is not merely a footpath between the Pyrenees and the relics of the Apostle. There are three levels of reality to it, each deeper and true. The first is the physical pilgrim path, the road that leads to the relics of the Apostle. That path is a symbol a mimesis of the pilgrim path of the life of St. James. St. James devoted his life and consecrated his death to the person of Jesus, and so, at the bottom of the Camino is the Lord, the Camino.
To limit the Camino to a simple path is a superficial thing, a grave mistake. One must not confuse the means for the goal. It is error to confuse the paradigm, the symbol, the icon for its subject. Only a fool confuses the pedagogical process with the thing to be learned. The Camino to Compostela is a pedagogical means to arrive or deepen one’s relationship with the Person of Jesus, The Camino. To discover this is the Mystery and the Meaning of the Camino. I learned this at the hermitage of St. Nicholas, by the Pisuerga river, and I carried it with me the rest of the way to Santiago. I carry it with me still.
I I I
After taking care of Richard’s needs, Randi and I crossed the Pisuerga river by means the puente Fitero. It is a bridge of eleven arches of stone built by order of Alfonso VI. The river was broad, and deep, dark green. Growth was lush on the riverbank, a welcome break from the gold, yellow, and browns of the meseta. The Pisuerga River, at one time boundary between Castille and León, is today the boundary between the provinces of Burgos and Palencia, both of the autonomous region of Castille and León. The river divides the city into sections Castillian and Leonese, the latter part into which we then entered on the way to our first town of Palencia, Itero de la Vega.
I I I
Pons Fiterie
By Itero de la Vega
Across the canal del Pisuerga
Into Boadilla del Camino
k
Santa María
To the edge of the Canal de Castilla
On the Way: Itero de la Vega to Boadilla del Camino
Itero de la Vega is in a sparse valley; the town is accordingly sparsely populated. But it had a café hosted by a friendly woman. We had madalenas caseras, that is home made, and café con leche served to us in a large beer mug. We left Itero de la Vega to head toward Frómista with an ice cream in hand.
From Itero de la Vega, we crossed the canal del Pisuerga, and headed toward the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño. It was hot and dry between Itero de la Vega and the hills, and there was not much to entertain the senses.
So Randi and I talked, and she told me how the discipline of the Camino had taught her that she should be less goal-oriented in terms of finding joy, that if joy was to be found, it had to be found in the present moment. It brought to my mind a book I had read many years earlier. A spiritual classic, this book by the Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre De Caussade is entitled Abandonment to Divine Providence. In it De Caussade speaks of our need to respond to the present grace given to us by God, and calls this duty, the “sacrament of the present moment.” This was the central element of De Caussade’s teaching, and Randi had learned it on her own through the tutelage of the Camino.
I I I
On the Way: The Battle of Love
In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims entertained themselves with stories. We behaved no differently. In the heat between the towns of Itero de la Vega and Boadilla, in the defile between the hills of Otero Largo and Cotorro Pequeño, I told Randi the story of the Great Battle of Love.
“This story,” I said, “is a story about a battle. But it was no ordinary battle, for this was a battle that was fought not with swords, but with words.”
“It was a battle,” I continued, “that was fought not between soldiers, but between friars. And the warriors who fought each other were both full of love and respect for each other and for God. One of these friars was named after the angels, the other after the seraphim. The warriors were two great catholic souls: St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.”
With that introduction, I proceeded with the tale of how in the 13th century, Pope Urban IV had issued a bull in which he had promulgated the Feast of Corpus Christi as a feast for the Universal Church. Pope Urban searched Christendom to find the person who could compose the Mass and the Office for this great Feast. The time was ripe in Christendom for such a feast, for this was the great age of Scholasticism and devotion to the Eucharist. It was an Age of Faith, and Urban found two candidates of equal merit: the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscan St. Bonaventure. He commissioned them both to write the liturgy for the Feast.
They both set themselves to write the liturgy. When finished, they both went before Urban to present their work. When St. Thomas completed his presentation, St. Bonaventure tore up his text, and conceded defeat. He told Thomas that the world had not ever known such a beautiful work, and that he would never stand in the way of such a divine tour de force in praise of the Holy Eucharist.
This feast and its hymns had special meaning for me, I told Randi, for there was a time in my foolish years that I had abandoned the Faith. At my brother’s invitation, I attended a Benediction service at a Church and heard the words of St. Thomas’ hymn, the Pange Lingua.
Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremur cernui
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui
These hounds of heaven left the church with me; they tracked me down, chased me, and needled me, until I learned of my hunger, the heavenly banquet, heard the invitation, and joined in the Last and Perpetual Supper.
Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred Host we hail,Lo! oe'r ancient forms departingNewer rites of grace prevail;Faith for all defects supplying,Where the feeble senses fail.
I I I
Onwards through the dirt road. We crossed the arroyo de Chamadillo and then the arroyo del Robriza and thus we entered Boadilla del Camino. In Boadilla, by the Church, we came upon the rollo gótico, a stone monument, Gothic in style, intended to be a jurisdictional marker. I looked for the iron ring used to tie criminals, like horses, to this stone pillory before they were taken for arraignment and trial before the magistrate in Castrojeríz. I could almost hear the jeers of the townspeople hurled on the poor unfortunates that were chained here and hoped and still hope—that at least in large measure—the poor souls tied here deserved the heckles of the townspeople and the punishment of the magistrates meted out to them.
At Boadilla del Camino we stopped at the refugio. There we had a sandwich and I had a couple of beers—some San Miguels to offset symbolically any of the evil of the Belgian beer Duval, for Duval, Eric told me, meant devil in Flemish—in a café that was within the walls of the refugio. Any soporific effect of the beers was immediately squelched by chasers of espresso.
I I I
On the Way: Boadilla to Frómista
Transitu-rus de hoc mundo
From Boadilla del Camino we traveled to the canal de Castilla, which we followed—on its southern embankment on a dirt road—all the way to Frómista, the ancient Frumesta of the Visigoths and Romans, whose name betrays the abundant cereals (Latin frumenta) grown in the region from time immemorial, or at least from time Roman. The canal has a slight current, and the green water flowed peacefully with us toward Frómista. We periodically passed by gates that can be opened with grey valves to allow the waters of the canal to flow into irrigation channels and into the fields. River canes grew on the bank of the canal, and white flowers bloomed from vines that encircled the canes. The wind hissed as it sieved through the rushes, reeds, and the black poplar. Water birds whistled and frogs belched their songs as we walked by fields of wheat, hops, and sunflowers. For the first time since I had been in Spain, I saw cornfields. Immediately before Frómista we crossed over the canal, dropped downhill, hit a paved road, and traveled into the town.
We passed by a park full of school children on a picnic, and they all yelled with great cheer in their high-pitched voices: “Peregrinos! Animo! A Santiago y a Dios!” They do not know the joy they gave me. I thought of the Tolle, Lege of St. Augustine, for it is a property of children’s voices that their innocence spans the centuries.
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Frómista, the city of cereal and the Tierra de Campos
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San Martín Fromista
On the Way: Frómista
Finally we arrived at Frómista. By the refugio is a church. It is named after San Martín (for there is more than one Church in Frómista), is a lovely Romanesque design, of three aisles, four bays and three apses. The aisles are virtually the same height as the barrel-vaulted nave. The westworks of the church are bordered by two narrow, circular towers, looking almost like silos.
Frumesta
The church has included transepts, as they extend no further than the aisles. Up atop the crossing of the transepts is a short and squat octagonal tower, topped with a roof of tile. The church has all the articulations expected of a Romanesque church, including lessenes and billet moulding. The church sits surrounded by the modern streets, jealously defending, as it were, its own city block from the incursions of the modern world. Founded by queen Doña Mayor, the widow of Sancho III the Great of Navarre, in the early 11th century, the church was served by Benedictine monks, whose monastery, once by the church, is now gone. The church is of stone; the stone is of tan and gold hue, and beautiful.
There are, so I read, 315 corbels on the outside of the church which make up the various corbel tables—each corbel unique—holding up as if effortlessly, the church’s red-tiled roof. I saw the corbels, but did not bother to count them, for the number looked about right to me. A number of carvings were removed during a restoration in the late 19th century—they were considered, and I’m sure from descriptions of them were, lewd.
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King tells the story of Pedro Fernandez de Teresa, steward of hospital of San Martin in Frómista, who rebuilt the hospital of San Martin after it burnt down, borrowing money from a Jew named Matutiel Salomon. When he defaulted on the debt, the Jew obtained an excommunication against the Christian. Ultimately, Fernandez paid back the debt, but neglected to dispose of the excommunication. On his deathbed (on St. Catherine's day), a priest brought him the viaticum, but the host stuck to the silver paten. Only after the priest learned of the outstanding excommunication, and absolved Fernandez of it, was Fernandez able to communicate.[ii] This way the Lord warned Fernandez to absolve and make right with the Church. We are not all so fortunate, and it would be presumptuous to expect such miraculous aid, and so we ought to live each day as it may be our last, fully shriven and in a state of Grace as far as our lights inform us.
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We checked into the pilgrim’s refuge, and I lay in the upper bunk that had been assigned to me. The refuge was large. My feet were in great pain, and as they recovered from the days’ walk, the pain throbbed and moved from area to area. Blisters were now a very grave problem. Over the last several days I have developed three serious blisters or ampollas on my left heel, each the circumference of a half-dollar. I had frequently had to pierce them. When I pierced them in Frómista, I drew three thimblefulls of fluid.
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About the Way: Saint in the Tempest
There was a monument in Frómista to Pedro Gonzalez Telmo, born here in 1190 of a noble Castilian family and died in Tuy in 1246. His uncle on his maternal side was the Bishop of Astorga and had Pedro appointed canon of the cathedral. Pedro, on the road to Astorga, lost his way and ended up on the road to Damascus. Here’s how. Proud and vain, Pedro rode into Astorga to assume his title, but his horse stumbled and threw him into the mud, which drew the jeers of the crowd. A lesser man without grace would have grown angry, but Pedro learned that day of his own vanity, and his own vanity’s vanity. He resolved that day or not much later, that he would mock the world that mocked him. The man joined the Dominicans, and became Dean of Palencia and a confessor to St. Fernando III. He also attended to the spiritual and temporal needs of the seamen in Galicia and northern Portugal. His sanctity was recognized and he was canonized a saint. St. Telmo, in recognition of his life’s work to the sailors, is patron saint of the men of the sea. So also has he given name to the phenomenon known as “St. Elmo’s fire,” a natural electrical phenomenon, known as a corona or point discharge, common in the sea, where electric charges in luminous form travel up and down ship’s masts. The phenomenon is described, but the saint unnamed, by the spirit Ariel in Shakespere’s Tempest:
I boarded the King’s ship; now in the beak
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam’d amazement; sometime I’d divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards and boresprit, would I flame distinctly
Then meet and join.[iii]
An odd quirk of fate, this, where a man born in this hot and hostile meseta was called to be, not only patron to the mariners, but the eponymous saint of the heavenly and mysterious fire of the sea.
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On the Way: The King of Puns
After resting and the refugio, we had dinner at a restaurant in Frómista. As we walked into the restaurant, we noticed a table full of pilgrims. They recognized us as pilgrims and invited us to sit with them. As I approached, I asked what the lingua franca was for the table. Paddy, an Irish pilgrim, answered that one side was French, and the other English. So we sat on the English side.
I took a chair next to Paddy. He was in his mid-40s, slighly overweight, with a goatee and graying hair. He had friendly eyes, an easy smile, and an Irish brogue that won over your confidence and your heart. There was, however, a bit of the irreverent in him, and, although I never explored it, an animus toward the Church. Whatever his ambivalent situation with regard to the Church, Paddy, I learned, was the King of Puns. There was neither a subject nor word he could not turn into a pun.
I challenged him, “Give me a pun about Riojan wine.”
“Wine not,” he answered.
“O Come on,” I said, “that’s obvious.”
“Ah, quit wining.”
And so on it went all dinner.
That evening as I was packing up my things, I noticed that some of my socks were missing. So Paddy made light of my situation, and started up his puns.
“That really socks,” he observed. “If I find the guy who took your socks, I’ll sock him one, I tell you.”
I climbed into bed, paused, and when Paddy grew quiet I said in a loud voice the pun I had been saving, “Sockre bleu.”
I heard the King of Puns chuckle, and I lay down satisfied that I had passed muster with the King of Puns. And with that and a prayer to St. James to help my feet, I fell asleep without much effort.
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[i] John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, Book II, p. *.
[ii] King, II.81
[iii] Shakespeare, Tempest, Act *, Scene *.
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