“Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.”
____Henry David Thoreau, Walking[i]
On the Way: Torres del Río to Viana
Up in the dark, not quite yet the dawn, and off like a medieval pilgrim circa noctis crepuscula peregrinantium more. Out of Torres del Río with Eric and Randi. Once out of Torres, the path wound through orchards of short and squat dark green almond trees, silvery olive trees, rich vineyards, and fields of squat asparagus. The landscape was unfortunately marred; there was much trash, and the farm houses were not well-kept. When it grew light, Randi stopped to eat breakfast while Eric and I continued. We saw a hare in the field—haas Eric called it in his native Flemish. A group of three aggressive dogs barked at us close to the town of Cornava. (Later, we learned that one of them had attacked Randi who walked this way after us alone. The experience convinced her to buy a walking stick for her protection.) So we did we walk for many of the early morning hours.
At a park on the outskirts of Viana, Eric and I stopped and had a breakfast of cheese, chorizo, and bread. Randi caught up with us and stopped to chat with us as we ate. Then three pilgrims from France passed us and recommended a café which they said was open early. The pilgrims were a family: a lanky father, a short and quiet mother, and their teenage son. The father, who was called Jacques, had on a T-shirt which had the opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey in Greek on it:
Άνδρα μοι έννεπε, Μουΰσα, πολύτροπον, ός μάλα πολλα
πλάγχθη, έπεί Τροίης ίερον πτολίεθρον έπερσεν
We put up our cold breakfast and headed to the café. At the café I had some galletas María and a cafe con leche. The proprietor had greased-back silver-hair, and he was busy. The café was full of locals: simple laborers, full of life and talk. Pilgrims frequented this place—undoubtedly because it was the first café open in Viana. As we took a leisurely breakfast, many peregrinos went in and out.
I I I
Into Viana
Viana, was the “last toune certain” in Navarre. Here the three kings—of Navarre, Aragon, and Castille, all named Sancho—fought at the Battle of the Three Sanchos. The town straddles a low hill off the carretera. Refounded by Sancho el Fuerte in 1219, and made a principality by Carlos III el Noble, it was formerly known as Cuevas. So Aymeric Picaud takes a last jab at the Navarrese and their rivers calling the stream running through Cuevas deadly.
Couas
N
Santa María
Viana boasts a large church, built in the 15th and 16th centuries. A Baroque altar dedicated to Santiago Matamoros is found in it. The main retable is Plateresque and guilded. The south portal is the glory of the church. It is modeled after a triumphal arch, is Renaissance, almost a proto-Baroque, and has beautiful reliefs. Juan de Goyaz, a sculptor by profession not an architect, designed it in 1549 to good effect for the church. I gained admission to the church by walking through the portal, which is as it were in a niche, beneath a sculpture of the Crucifixion, including the two thieves, one of whom, Dismas (or if your prefer, Joathas), turned saint.
I I I
About the Way: What do Ceasar Borgia and Machiavelli
Have to Do With St. James?
At the church of Santa María in Viana was buried for a time Cesare Borgia, who was a lot of things, including son of a Pope, brother to Lucrezia, Duc of Valentine, Cardinal of Valencia, and Captain General of the Navarrese and Papal armies. One thing he wasn’t was a saint, for he moved about, and his heart was attached to, the things of this world. He was killed near here in 1507, in not altogether noble circumstances, at the young age of 32.
The young Borgia poured out his blood on the stones of the ancient way of the Apostle, not in martyrdom but in pursuit of worldly power. The worldly ambitions that drove Borgia were at odds with the the ambitions of St. James, the ambitions of the Gospel, and the ambition of the Way. Niccolo Macchiavelli contrasted Borgia to Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, as one of those who acquired power through fortune and, although did everything right to keep it, was unable to maintain it as a result of “the extraordinary and extreme malice of fortune.” His greatest mistake: not opposing Giuliano della Rovere, who would become Pope Julius II after the death of his father.[ii]
Having reviewed all the Duke’s actions, then, I see nothing to blame him for. Indeed, I think he should be proposed—as in fact I have—as an example to be imitated by all those who have come to power through the fortunes and arms of others.[iii]
Borgia may have been an ideal prince by Macchiavelli’s standards, but not by the standards of the Gospel or the standards of the good bishop of this town some years ago. Borgia’s tomb was violated, and his bones dispersed by the bishop, who thought them unworthy to grace the church. Though historians may stand aghast at the sacrilege, the bishop was likely right. We ought to throw out all the unclean and profane things from under the vaults of our churches. For unclean and profane things do not help clean the unclean soul, and the cleansing of the unclean soul is the reason for the Church.
The only memorial of Cesare Borgia now remaining is a bronze bust near the town hall and a stone slab at the floor of the atrium in the church. There is no tomb, which is fine, for this Borgia (unlike his relative St. Francis Borgia) ought not be venerated. Yet in some ways perhaps it is not fine, for this Borgia, like many other Borgias, wants our prayers—if, indeed, he is within the range of their efficacy, a question that is a matter reserved for God alone.
I I I
Past the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Poyo
Past a tributary of the río Ebro
Through Cornava
Between Viana and Logroño, which was to be our resting-place that night, there were nine kilometers. (In the days that measures were more ambivalent and parochial, the 17th century pilgrim Laffi tells us in his travelogue that the distance was just one league.)
The countryside changed as we travelled from the border of the province of Navarre to that part of Spain called La Rioja.
The red soil of the Pyrenean outliers below Pampeluna, tinged as though with Christian blood yet undried, has yielded to yellow earth and yellow rock, and the very dust is impalpable gold.[iv]
The gold soil of La Rioja in his area was fertile, dappled with the shades of green of vineyards, croplands, almond and olive groves, all well-groomed. It is no wonder that, before they were unified under one crown, the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castille fought long and bitter for this land. The boundary of Navarre extended one time into Nájera, about two kilometers west, until 1076, when the troops of Alfonso VI purchase the Castille-Navarre border back to Logroño and there maintained it. But the border was for many years unsettled. The border skirmishes between Castille and Navarre led to flux in the border, and confuses the pilgrim travelogues.
For example, Purchas, and English pilgrim to Santiago in 1425, butchers the name of the own of Logroño, but called it the last town of Navarre.[v] On the other hand, the Italian pilgrim Laffi calls it the first city of Old Castille. I suppose the issue has much less importance now; pilgrims in the past had to deal with sharp practices of the money changer when they changed their coronados, legal tender in Navarre, to maravedis, legal tender in Old Castille. They had to tolerate border guards and searches and tolls. The practical annexation of the Kingdom of Navarre into the Kingdom of Castille, achieved in 1515 during the regency of Cardinal Cisneros, vastly simplified the pilgrim jaunt through this neighborhood.
I I I
There to Gruon in Spayne. That is the last toune certain, Of the Realme of Naveron.
Navarra
====== La Rioja
along the Canta-brian hill
Descend into the Valley of the Ebro
On the Way: Viana to Logroño
We lost the path on our way to Logroño from Viana. We walked through some farm country and dubbed the way the via homo micheliniorum, for—bizzarely—some farmer had installed a Michelin Man on the roof of his farmhouse. A Riojan farmer who was watering his vegetable garden called out to us to tell us that we were travelling wrong. He directed us which way to go to get back to the Camino. His directions were good, for we came upon the Camino in about fifteen minutes’ time. The remaining three miles into Logroño were on the pavement of the carretera and were murder on the feet.
The town of Logroño is known for its spires, or agujas, which pierce the sky as if seeking to sew the earth and sky together. On our way into town, we could easily recognize the octagonal Gothic flèche of the church of Santa María del Palacio, and the twin Riojan-Baroque towers of the “concathedral” of Santa María de La Redonda. In the words of the great Lope de Vega, these towers reached to the stars:
Esa ciudad que superior preside
A estas amenidades,
Y con sus torres las estrellas mide,
Gloria de España, honor de las ciudades.[vi]
About the same time we were able to make out the spires of Logroño, we met the fig lady. This abuelita greets the pilgrims on their way to town, provides free dried figs and sells sundry merchandise. I bought a pilgrim’s shell from her and attached it to my pack. I bought a home-grown gourd (she showed me the plot of dirt where she grew them) and I attached it to my walking stick. I refused the figs because of the many flies on them.
Thus equipped with shell and gourd, I entered into Logroño, heart of La Rioja. If Bacchus has made a home in La Rioja, it may be found in the town Logroño. This frontier town that see-sawed realms, at one time it was under the Kingdom of Navarre, at another time the Kingdom of Castille, is a typical town of the frontera, heavily fortified with lines for fortifications and gates. It is now in the province of La Rioja, part of Navarre, part of Spain, una, grande, libre.
We have left the mountains and hills of Navarre, and have descended into the Valley of the Ebro, richly fed by the waters of numerous rivers. Since the terrain from here forward is relatively flat, the pilgrims of yore confronted not the obstacle of mountains, but the great obstacle of rivers and streams. This is the land where the great saints are Santo Domingo de la Calzada and San Juan de Quintanortuño, the road-building, bridge-building, church-building architect saints. These saints brought pilgrims to heaven by the waters of baptism, and brought pilgrims to Compostela over the waters of the Ebro valley.
Grugnus
Past the town of Ayón
Cross the puente de Piedra
Into the city of Logroño
N
Santa María la Redonda
We entered Logroño by passing the large and wide River Ebro over a massive 12-arched stone bridge called the puente de Piedra. Once across the river Ebro, I turned right on rua Vieja, which continued as the calle Barriocepo, and travelled through the heart of medieval Logroño.
There at the Plaza del Mercado, by the church of Santa María la Redonda, Eric, Randi, and I met Richard, and were joined by some pilgrims from New Jersey. In the shadows of the great cathedral of Santa María, we all had lunch. Once part of the order of the Holy Sepulchre, the church of Santa María was octagonal in shape, but the original construction is no longer to be seen. The church was rebuilt various times from the 15th century, most notably the west façade, begun in 1742 by Martín de Beratúa. So the Church has lost its shape, but kept the name. It is actually a concathedral, being a union of cathedrals, for until they were joined in 1956, the area was divided into the dioceses of Calahorra and Santo Domingo de la Calzada. The giant coffered and richly-decorated niche through which the pilgrim enters the church, contrasts starkly with the simple and unornate design of the lower part of the twin towers, which flank it. The upper parts of the towers are ornate. Two towers of the 18th century, known as the Gemelas, or twins, flank the façade, which is a Riojan Baroque. The interior is late Gothic, with a Churrigueresque high altar.
That evening, I attended Mass at this great Cathedral, and went early to sleep after shopping for foodstuffs for the next morning’s walk.
k
[i] Henry David Thoreau, Walking,, p.72.
[ii] Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Bantam Books: New York, 1981 (trans., Daniel Donno), p. 29
[iii] Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 34.
[iv] King, I..369.
[v] Starkie at 184.
[vi] Lope de Vega, quoted by King, I. 371.
____Henry David Thoreau, Walking[i]
On the Way: Torres del Río to Viana
Up in the dark, not quite yet the dawn, and off like a medieval pilgrim circa noctis crepuscula peregrinantium more. Out of Torres del Río with Eric and Randi. Once out of Torres, the path wound through orchards of short and squat dark green almond trees, silvery olive trees, rich vineyards, and fields of squat asparagus. The landscape was unfortunately marred; there was much trash, and the farm houses were not well-kept. When it grew light, Randi stopped to eat breakfast while Eric and I continued. We saw a hare in the field—haas Eric called it in his native Flemish. A group of three aggressive dogs barked at us close to the town of Cornava. (Later, we learned that one of them had attacked Randi who walked this way after us alone. The experience convinced her to buy a walking stick for her protection.) So we did we walk for many of the early morning hours.
At a park on the outskirts of Viana, Eric and I stopped and had a breakfast of cheese, chorizo, and bread. Randi caught up with us and stopped to chat with us as we ate. Then three pilgrims from France passed us and recommended a café which they said was open early. The pilgrims were a family: a lanky father, a short and quiet mother, and their teenage son. The father, who was called Jacques, had on a T-shirt which had the opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey in Greek on it:
Άνδρα μοι έννεπε, Μουΰσα, πολύτροπον, ός μάλα πολλα
πλάγχθη, έπεί Τροίης ίερον πτολίεθρον έπερσεν
We put up our cold breakfast and headed to the café. At the café I had some galletas María and a cafe con leche. The proprietor had greased-back silver-hair, and he was busy. The café was full of locals: simple laborers, full of life and talk. Pilgrims frequented this place—undoubtedly because it was the first café open in Viana. As we took a leisurely breakfast, many peregrinos went in and out.
I I I
Into Viana
Viana, was the “last toune certain” in Navarre. Here the three kings—of Navarre, Aragon, and Castille, all named Sancho—fought at the Battle of the Three Sanchos. The town straddles a low hill off the carretera. Refounded by Sancho el Fuerte in 1219, and made a principality by Carlos III el Noble, it was formerly known as Cuevas. So Aymeric Picaud takes a last jab at the Navarrese and their rivers calling the stream running through Cuevas deadly.
Couas
N
Santa María
Viana boasts a large church, built in the 15th and 16th centuries. A Baroque altar dedicated to Santiago Matamoros is found in it. The main retable is Plateresque and guilded. The south portal is the glory of the church. It is modeled after a triumphal arch, is Renaissance, almost a proto-Baroque, and has beautiful reliefs. Juan de Goyaz, a sculptor by profession not an architect, designed it in 1549 to good effect for the church. I gained admission to the church by walking through the portal, which is as it were in a niche, beneath a sculpture of the Crucifixion, including the two thieves, one of whom, Dismas (or if your prefer, Joathas), turned saint.
I I I
About the Way: What do Ceasar Borgia and Machiavelli
Have to Do With St. James?
At the church of Santa María in Viana was buried for a time Cesare Borgia, who was a lot of things, including son of a Pope, brother to Lucrezia, Duc of Valentine, Cardinal of Valencia, and Captain General of the Navarrese and Papal armies. One thing he wasn’t was a saint, for he moved about, and his heart was attached to, the things of this world. He was killed near here in 1507, in not altogether noble circumstances, at the young age of 32.
The young Borgia poured out his blood on the stones of the ancient way of the Apostle, not in martyrdom but in pursuit of worldly power. The worldly ambitions that drove Borgia were at odds with the the ambitions of St. James, the ambitions of the Gospel, and the ambition of the Way. Niccolo Macchiavelli contrasted Borgia to Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, as one of those who acquired power through fortune and, although did everything right to keep it, was unable to maintain it as a result of “the extraordinary and extreme malice of fortune.” His greatest mistake: not opposing Giuliano della Rovere, who would become Pope Julius II after the death of his father.[ii]
Having reviewed all the Duke’s actions, then, I see nothing to blame him for. Indeed, I think he should be proposed—as in fact I have—as an example to be imitated by all those who have come to power through the fortunes and arms of others.[iii]
Borgia may have been an ideal prince by Macchiavelli’s standards, but not by the standards of the Gospel or the standards of the good bishop of this town some years ago. Borgia’s tomb was violated, and his bones dispersed by the bishop, who thought them unworthy to grace the church. Though historians may stand aghast at the sacrilege, the bishop was likely right. We ought to throw out all the unclean and profane things from under the vaults of our churches. For unclean and profane things do not help clean the unclean soul, and the cleansing of the unclean soul is the reason for the Church.
The only memorial of Cesare Borgia now remaining is a bronze bust near the town hall and a stone slab at the floor of the atrium in the church. There is no tomb, which is fine, for this Borgia (unlike his relative St. Francis Borgia) ought not be venerated. Yet in some ways perhaps it is not fine, for this Borgia, like many other Borgias, wants our prayers—if, indeed, he is within the range of their efficacy, a question that is a matter reserved for God alone.
I I I
Past the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Poyo
Past a tributary of the río Ebro
Through Cornava
Between Viana and Logroño, which was to be our resting-place that night, there were nine kilometers. (In the days that measures were more ambivalent and parochial, the 17th century pilgrim Laffi tells us in his travelogue that the distance was just one league.)
The countryside changed as we travelled from the border of the province of Navarre to that part of Spain called La Rioja.
The red soil of the Pyrenean outliers below Pampeluna, tinged as though with Christian blood yet undried, has yielded to yellow earth and yellow rock, and the very dust is impalpable gold.[iv]
The gold soil of La Rioja in his area was fertile, dappled with the shades of green of vineyards, croplands, almond and olive groves, all well-groomed. It is no wonder that, before they were unified under one crown, the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castille fought long and bitter for this land. The boundary of Navarre extended one time into Nájera, about two kilometers west, until 1076, when the troops of Alfonso VI purchase the Castille-Navarre border back to Logroño and there maintained it. But the border was for many years unsettled. The border skirmishes between Castille and Navarre led to flux in the border, and confuses the pilgrim travelogues.
For example, Purchas, and English pilgrim to Santiago in 1425, butchers the name of the own of Logroño, but called it the last town of Navarre.[v] On the other hand, the Italian pilgrim Laffi calls it the first city of Old Castille. I suppose the issue has much less importance now; pilgrims in the past had to deal with sharp practices of the money changer when they changed their coronados, legal tender in Navarre, to maravedis, legal tender in Old Castille. They had to tolerate border guards and searches and tolls. The practical annexation of the Kingdom of Navarre into the Kingdom of Castille, achieved in 1515 during the regency of Cardinal Cisneros, vastly simplified the pilgrim jaunt through this neighborhood.
I I I
There to Gruon in Spayne. That is the last toune certain, Of the Realme of Naveron.
Navarra
====== La Rioja
along the Canta-brian hill
Descend into the Valley of the Ebro
On the Way: Viana to Logroño
We lost the path on our way to Logroño from Viana. We walked through some farm country and dubbed the way the via homo micheliniorum, for—bizzarely—some farmer had installed a Michelin Man on the roof of his farmhouse. A Riojan farmer who was watering his vegetable garden called out to us to tell us that we were travelling wrong. He directed us which way to go to get back to the Camino. His directions were good, for we came upon the Camino in about fifteen minutes’ time. The remaining three miles into Logroño were on the pavement of the carretera and were murder on the feet.
The town of Logroño is known for its spires, or agujas, which pierce the sky as if seeking to sew the earth and sky together. On our way into town, we could easily recognize the octagonal Gothic flèche of the church of Santa María del Palacio, and the twin Riojan-Baroque towers of the “concathedral” of Santa María de La Redonda. In the words of the great Lope de Vega, these towers reached to the stars:
Esa ciudad que superior preside
A estas amenidades,
Y con sus torres las estrellas mide,
Gloria de España, honor de las ciudades.[vi]
About the same time we were able to make out the spires of Logroño, we met the fig lady. This abuelita greets the pilgrims on their way to town, provides free dried figs and sells sundry merchandise. I bought a pilgrim’s shell from her and attached it to my pack. I bought a home-grown gourd (she showed me the plot of dirt where she grew them) and I attached it to my walking stick. I refused the figs because of the many flies on them.
Thus equipped with shell and gourd, I entered into Logroño, heart of La Rioja. If Bacchus has made a home in La Rioja, it may be found in the town Logroño. This frontier town that see-sawed realms, at one time it was under the Kingdom of Navarre, at another time the Kingdom of Castille, is a typical town of the frontera, heavily fortified with lines for fortifications and gates. It is now in the province of La Rioja, part of Navarre, part of Spain, una, grande, libre.
We have left the mountains and hills of Navarre, and have descended into the Valley of the Ebro, richly fed by the waters of numerous rivers. Since the terrain from here forward is relatively flat, the pilgrims of yore confronted not the obstacle of mountains, but the great obstacle of rivers and streams. This is the land where the great saints are Santo Domingo de la Calzada and San Juan de Quintanortuño, the road-building, bridge-building, church-building architect saints. These saints brought pilgrims to heaven by the waters of baptism, and brought pilgrims to Compostela over the waters of the Ebro valley.
Grugnus
Past the town of Ayón
Cross the puente de Piedra
Into the city of Logroño
N
Santa María la Redonda
We entered Logroño by passing the large and wide River Ebro over a massive 12-arched stone bridge called the puente de Piedra. Once across the river Ebro, I turned right on rua Vieja, which continued as the calle Barriocepo, and travelled through the heart of medieval Logroño.
There at the Plaza del Mercado, by the church of Santa María la Redonda, Eric, Randi, and I met Richard, and were joined by some pilgrims from New Jersey. In the shadows of the great cathedral of Santa María, we all had lunch. Once part of the order of the Holy Sepulchre, the church of Santa María was octagonal in shape, but the original construction is no longer to be seen. The church was rebuilt various times from the 15th century, most notably the west façade, begun in 1742 by Martín de Beratúa. So the Church has lost its shape, but kept the name. It is actually a concathedral, being a union of cathedrals, for until they were joined in 1956, the area was divided into the dioceses of Calahorra and Santo Domingo de la Calzada. The giant coffered and richly-decorated niche through which the pilgrim enters the church, contrasts starkly with the simple and unornate design of the lower part of the twin towers, which flank it. The upper parts of the towers are ornate. Two towers of the 18th century, known as the Gemelas, or twins, flank the façade, which is a Riojan Baroque. The interior is late Gothic, with a Churrigueresque high altar.
That evening, I attended Mass at this great Cathedral, and went early to sleep after shopping for foodstuffs for the next morning’s walk.
k
[i] Henry David Thoreau, Walking,, p.72.
[ii] Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Bantam Books: New York, 1981 (trans., Daniel Donno), p. 29
[iii] Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 34.
[iv] King, I..369.
[v] Starkie at 184.
[vi] Lope de Vega, quoted by King, I. 371.
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