THE FIRST DAY

“We sigh for the beauty of the City of God while on pilgrimage.”
____St. Augustine, City of God[i]

On the Way: The Chemin de Compostelle

A restless night yielded to a nervous dawn. Richard and I breakfasted with three other pilgrims, a Puerto Rican named Enrique, and two Spaniards: one named Manolo (who although Galician lived in Barcelona) and the other Roberto (who was from Burgos).

Leave the parish church through the Porte Notre-Dame and cross the River Nive past the Port D'Espagne toward Saint-Michel. The farm Erreculuch.

After breakfast, Richard and I left our hostess, and looked west toward the Pyrenees. There are two ways across the Pyrenees from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, the Chemin de Compostelle route or the Valcarlos route. The weather looked clear as I thought about our choice.



So, the weather being fair, we decided to take the Chemin de Compostelle and not the Valcarlos route out of St. Jean-Pied-de-Port across the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles, the first stop in Spain.

The Valcarlos route has ties to Charlemagne (the name Valcarlos means Valley of Charles; it is the route he took out of Spain), but it generally follows the highway, the D-933, over the

The weather was fair and Picaud took the Chemin de Compostelle.

Pyrennes. I had resolved, if possible and without extreme inconvenience, to avoid any paved road where wheeled things frequent.

The alternative route across the Pyrenees, the Chemin de Compostelle, overcomes the Pyrenees by a different route more picturesque—through the towns of Untto, Pic d'Orisson, Chateau-Pignon, and thence over the Puerto de Ibañeta to Roncesvalles. The route is generally called the Route de Napoléon because it was the route selected and improved by Napoleon’s fearless Marshall, Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult, to take the French artillery over the Pyrennes into France during the Peninsular War. It is a track of Roman origin, appropriated by St. James, yet now popularly named after the Corsican general, whose armies entered into and later retreated out of Spain through here, not as pilgrims, but as looters and men of war. Going my direction, they brought their implements of war and their revolutionary ideas. Going the opposite direction, they took much of Santiago’s treasure with them through this pass. It is a path not recommended if the weather is bad.

Napoleon pillaged and destroyed much of Old Europe, not all of it to the bad, and, yet, not all to the good. And, despite his greatness, I thought it well, being on Christian pilgrimage and not on

Napoleon v. Santiago

cult of a man with great genius but little virtue, to reject Bonaparte’s appropriation of the route. It was a painless, mental act of defiance to the little but great general whose body lies in Paris, but whose soul’s whereabouts are unknown. The route, which I chose as so many others before me chose, has other names. I had seen it named on various maps as the Voie Romaine, the Route de l’Artillerie, Route du Maréchal Harrespe, or simply and more to the point for me that day, the Chemin de Compostelle, the way of Compostela.

And so, the weather being fair, I took the Chemin de Compostelle and not the Valcarlos route out of St. Jean-Pied-de-Port across the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles.

On the Way: Out of St. Jean Pied-de-Port

There are many obstacles in life, but for a tenderfooted, weak-limbed American pilgrim, there are none quite as serious as the Pyrenees. They are a trial to climb; they are oppressive in descent. Even if you are victorious over them, the aftereffect is crippling. They have separated the French from the Spaniards and the Spaniards from the French, and with a little help of Charles Martel at Poitiers, they generally served well to hinder the Spanish Moors from conquering the rest of Europe from the West.

Through Untto Past Orisson and Biakorre through Chateau-Pignon to the summit of Urdanaree (1240 m.) .

From St. Jean, Richard and I climbed and climbed, zigging and zagging up the steep ground. Though we frequently rested, there was no respite—only delay—of the climb. At first our climb was on paved road, but soon we left the paved surface and climbed on well-traveled dirt roads and paths. These passed through grassy gradients peppered with the soft and nuanced purple of the larkspur and the feathery purple of the thistles’ blooms. Purple is the liturgical color of choice for the Church’s seasons of penance, and well did this color tie in to the circumstances before us. We heard very little, and talked less, for we panted hard.

The Basques name their houses. Erreculuch and Arbosa de Saint-Michel were some of the names of the homes we passed. To a Basque, his family home—his etxea or echea—is a source of identity. It is of consummate importance, and so must be named, for only that which has a name can be said to be. The homes here house cowherds and shepherds, for there is much kine and there are many sheep on the way up the Pyrenees.

The cows wore bells; the bells clanked their hollow sound and gave away the cow hidden by the shrub or the tall ferns. The cows here are raised in the steep of the hills and are ripped with muscle. I saw some grooming themselves like cats. A

Izena duen guzia omen da

Basque woman dressed in a blue cotton dress, a blue sweater over her shoulders, wearing rubber boots fussed at her cows as she drove them down hill beside us to pasture. She begrudged us a greeting on her way by.

The sheep in the Pyrenees are black-faced and horned. Like the cows, they wear bells. Joined by long-haired and stocky brown and white horses, they grazed complacently on the rich, green grass, which on occasion was pierced by sun-bleached rocks tainted with light-green lichen. The sheep paid us no mind as we walked by them. Nor did they mind the white-haired mustachioed pilgrim, sitting on a rock and sunning himself. He was an Italian, and he was trying to dry out his socks in the sun. Like his ancestors from Genoa, who fished the Liguorian Sea, he was stripped to the waist and body was bronzed by the sun. He now lived inland from Genoa, in Piacenza, and marvelled at the sights of the Pyrenees. “Questa e’ una cosa estupenda!” I told him in the best Italian I could muster given my muddled mind. He agreed.

The sun broke through the thick clouds, or rather we climbed above the thick clouds toward the sun. For as I reached toward the summit and looked below, I saw the top of the clouds, thick below me in the valley, like a great white, rolling sea, lapping the mountain sides with slow, soporific waves. I thought of the words of Aymeric Picaud in this Pilgrim’s Guide as he described the sublime sights of this mountain pass:

Its ascent is eight miles long, and its descent, equally eight. In fact its height is such that it seems to touch the sky: to him who climbs it, it seems as if he was able to touch the sky with his hand. From its summit one can see the sea of Bretagne and that of the west, as well as the boundaries of three regions, that is to say, Castilla, Aragón, and France.[i]

This was hyperbole I suspected when I first read it, and my suspicions were confirmed, for I saw neither Castille, the sea of Bretagne, nor the Bay of Biscay from the heights of the pass. But there was a point a little later on past the Fountain of Roland where I did see the Basque Spain, and had I turned, I would have seen Basque France. Perhaps skies then were clearer; and, if eyes were not better, imaginations were certainly freer in the times of our medieval companion, the presbyter Picaud.

to the summit of Urdanares (1240 m.) towards the crest of Liezar-Atheka (1409 m.)

I found myself alone at the summit (for Richard, feeling poorly, had gone up ahead in a car we had stopped and was now far in front of me). Mountains are made for singing, Belloc says. The view was good and, seeing no man or woman around as far as the eye could see, I dared to sing out loud songs of penance and mercy, for they matched my mood and broken body. I refused to sing anything other than in Latin or Greek, for it did not seem right to travel on the ancient

Sublimitas namque eius tanta est, quod visa est usque ad celum tangere

pilgrim road and sing in any other languages. So I sang Asperges me and I sang Parce Domine, and I rounded it off with the Trisagion. As far as I know, no one heard me but God, the Angels, and the Saints. The Devil heard too and understood, for the Devil knows Latin (and I suppose Greek), and I hoped that he was bothered by it.

---

Beetles. I saw many beetles in the Pyrenees. I saw a long black beetle, with bright blue border. I saw a shiny copper one, about the size of a small June bug. A saw one that looked like a stink bug. Yet another that was striped brown and tan. It brought to my mind the words of the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane I had read in a book on Taxonomy that God must be inordinately fond of beetles because of their sheer number. A disordered affection does not exist in God, but I have no doubt there are a lot of beetles.

Somewhere in the French Pyrenees, I cannot tell you where, I encountered a fork in the road. I took a fork to the right to the Fountain of Roland and the Col de Bentartea. At the fountain I drank deeply of the cold water. It was so cold it hurt my teeth to drink it. Of the many fountains on the Camino, none offered water to the pilgrim as cool as Roland’s Fountain. At the fountain, I met a group of elderly Irish pilgrims from the city of Sligo, County Sligo. They shared with me a syrupy concoction of water, sugar, and salt. They swore it was an Irish recipe for a magic elixir, a sort of pilgrim’s ambrosia. I had my doubts. It tasted awful, but I was too polite to spit it out. So I quaffed it all down, and thanked them for their charity. I stiffled an urge to vomit. I did not ask for seconds.

Into España.

Not much further on, beech woods on my left, I passed a marker that showed I was leaving France and entering Spain.

“Vive le France,” I said as I inhaled.

“Viva España,” I said as I exhaled.

So it was that I climbed the Pyrenees on the French side, passed by the peaks of Hostateguy, Urdanasburu, Urdanare, and Liezar-Atheka and travelled through the Col de Bentartea and downhill into Spain.

---

There are times in life when one questions whether one is on the right way. Confirmation that one goes aright comes from meeting those that are on the wrong path. So it happened in Spain as I struggled down the Pyrenees into Roncesvalles. At times the beech woods were thick and the path ill-marked. For some time I had been taking a path which led down hill. I was walking alone. There were no pilgrims behind and none in front.

To the rise of Bentartea (1385 m.)

Now the pilgrim path to Compostela is marked with yellow arrows painted by anonymous hands. These are painted on trees, rocks, fence posts, telephone poles, or walls, or any other handy object. A pilgrim learns very early to recognize and follow these. I had followed what I thought were yellow arrows on trees down a lonely path. On my left was a steep hill, and through the beech trees, I heard and saw at the hill’s summit a number of pilgrims.

Monte Astobiscar is Picaud’s “excellentisimus mons.”

I’m on the wrong way,” I desperately thought. “The mass of pilgrims is up there. Maybe I should turn back.”

Then I heard the equally desperate question of a female pilgrim from atop the hill.

“Hay flechas amarillas alli abajo?” she asked for her group.

“Si,” I answered, “He visto por lo menos dos!”

They had erred; I had the arrows, they had none. I continued on the way, and I heard them scrambling down the steep slope to get to the path on which I trod.

Past the ruins at Elizachar and from Izandorre to the Monte Astobiscar (1506 m.) and the peak of Lepoder (1480 m.)

---

I skirted the north slope of Monte Txangoa, passing by and below the peaks of Changoá, Mendichipi, and headed toward the peaks of Astobizcar and Lepoder. At 1,506 meters Astobizcar is the higher of the two peaks. This excellentissimus mons of Astobizcar was the vantagepoint chosen by the Basques to view Charlemagne’s ignominious retreat from Zaragossa and Pamplona. It was also here that, at the opportune moment, the Basques attacked the emperor’s baggage train and rear guard led by Charlemagne’s nephew, Roland. There is no Basque army there today, I had done nothing to Pamplona, I had nothing but peaceful sentiments to the Basque, and so I had no fear in those parts.

Though I did not worry about the Basque, I worried about the Pyrenees. The going downhill was hard. I had no food, and had not eaten since breakfast. It was getting late. I learned it is foolish for a man to tackle the Pyrenees without food. My feet were tired and sore from the climb, and I felt the onset of blisters. I was desperate because I was fast reaching the limits of my body, and I had an uncertain distance yet to go. I decided to rest.

I found a place to rest by some marvelous beech trees, tall and stately. I found a spot carpeted with soft grass, by a beech tree with a venerable trunk splotched with lichen. I removed my boots. I took off my socks to dry them in the air. I drank deeply of my water. I covered my face with my brown canvas hat. The breeze made a silver sound through the trembling leaves above me. The birds chirped and warbled their carefree songs. I tried to sleep my dull headache away. I learned that a man can sleep a whole lot better on a hill if he finds a slight slope and puts one leg up. In such surroundings I fell asleep.

I did not sleep long, for the flies soon found me, as did some little black bugs. I also grew cold and shivered in the shade and mountain breeze, for my clothes were damp with sweat. I got up and resigned myself to exhaustion. The short nap revived my hope and relieved my desperation. I fashioned in my mind the belief that the

Into Roncesvalles (925 m.)

worst was over and Roncesvalles was but around the next bend. It was a false and idle thought, for I had to go uphill and downhill, around a number of heights for many a kilometer yet. Finally, I passed between the two peaks of Astobizcar and Lepoder through the Col of Leopoder and from the height, just to the r

Runciavallis

ight and beyond the colina de Don Simón. And just as I was about to give in to despair, I saw far away the roofs of Roncesvalles. Downhill on a mountain path, through dense trees, I hobbled toward the clearing and the town of Roncesvalles.

I washed my face at a cool stream, and trudged up the final hill to the Collegiate complex at Roncesvalles. My feet and joints were a wreck. I almost gave up (and considered it a cruelty) when the man in charge of the refugio made me walk up four flights of wooden stairs to show me my bunk.

On the Way: About the Way: The Chains of Miramamolín

Ne pois amer les voz; Devers vos est li orguilz e li torz.

Alfonso I el Batallador built a hospital in Roncesvalles to receive and care for the pilgrims traveling to Compostela. In praise of this hospital and the charity it dispensed pour l’amour de Dieu to any ill man or woman with respect to his or her bodily needs it was written many years ago in a Latin hymn called La Pretiosa:

Porta patet omnibus, infirmis et sanis
Non solum Catholicus verum et paganis
Judeis, hereticis, otiosis, vanis,
Et, ut dicam breviter, bonis et profanis.

These doors are open to all, to the well and the lame
Not only to Catholics, but to pagans the same,
And Jews, heretics, and both the lazy and vain,
Briefly stated, they’re open to the good and profane.[i]

Alfonso’s noble hospital, epitome of ecumenical charity, was nowhere to be seen, for in 1132 Alfonso I’s hospital was moved to the location of the Royal Collegiate Church of Our Lady of Roncesvalles, which was founded by the then-bishop of Pamplona, Sancho de Larrosa.

Collegiate Church

The Collegiate Church complex at Roncesvalles is a large group of buildings built of fine white stone, topped with steep grey metal roof throughout. It is composed of a church, a hospital, a residence for canons, a cloister, and what was once a capitular hall or chapter house—all under the custody and care of Basque monks of the Augustinian order.



The church itself was built during the reign of Sancho el Fuerte of Navarre in 1195-1215, but was rebuilt in 1400 after a fire destroyed it. In it we can admire and pray before the miraculous medieval statue of the Virgin of Roncesvalles, robed in bright silver and situated under a baldacchino above the high altar. It was cool and dank inside the cavernous church, and smelled of wet stone. Five bays I think I counted. To the right of the main altar was a side altar dedicated to Santiago.

The chapterhouse of the monastery is now a pantheon for the King of Navarre, Sancho VII el Fuerte, and his wife Doña Clemencia of Toulouse. Sancho VII el Fuerte was a giant of a king. His tomb here is from the 13th century, and depicts a life-size effigy of the king with a frame more than seven feet high.

This Sancho VII joined forces with Alfonso VIII of Castile, Pedro II of Aragon, and the Spanish military orders of Alacántara, Calatrava, and Santiago. The combined Christian armies joined battle with the Almohad emir Muhammad II al-Nasir (1199-1213). The Muslims called their leader amir al muminin, “prince of all believers,” which

Capilla de San Agustín Capilla de Santiago Capilla Sancti Spiritus

the Spaniards corrupted to Miramamolín. The battle took place in the year 1212 at Las Navas de Tolosa in northeastern al Andalus, just beyond the pass of Murandal and between the Guadalquivir and Guadiana rivers. The Archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, blessed the troops and prepared for battle.

“Live by Love and you will conquer always—even when you are defeated—in the Navas . . . of your interior life." The Way, No. 433.

In one of the great battles of the Spanish Reconquista, the Moors were routed, to save his skin Miramamolín took flight, and the power of the Almohads thereby broken. Miramamolín abandoned not only his courage, but also his standard, his troops, his tent, and all his campaign goods. A major turning point of the Spanish Reconquista, the battle gave control of the mountain passes that opened up to the valley of the Guadalquivir and the cities of Córdoba and Seville to the Christians. The sumptuous tapestry that hung at the opening of Miramamolín’s tent is far away, at the monastery in Las Huelgas, but here I saw the chains that surrounded Miramamolín’s compound. It was not enough for the pride of Navarre that it had Miramamolín’s chains here, however, for the chains now appear emblazoned all over Navarre on its coat of arms on a field gule, as a cross, saltire, and orle, all linked and or.
Miramamolin’s tent and standard were sent to Rome, accompanied by a letter from Alfonso VIII. Exulting in his great victory, the King wrote:

On their side 100,000 armed men or more fell in the battle, according to the estimate of the Saracens whom we captured. But of the army of the Lord . . . incredible though it may be, unless it be a miracle, hardly 25 or 30 Christians of our whole army fell. O what happiness! O what thanksgiving![i]

So was Innocent III informed of the happenings in the western front in the battle between the Faith of Christ and the Perfidy of Mohammed, and how his heart must have been warmed with the news. There below a sumptuous stained glass window lay the king that was the cause of it.




There was a Mass for pilgrims at 8 p.m. at the collegiate church and I was fortunate—because of

Waxing crescent moon

good weather, an early start, and legs stout enough (but barely)—to attend it. This was good, because as Belloc has noted, it is a wicked pilgrimage that is not joined to the Mass.

I arrived fifteen minutes early to Mass, as the Rosary was being prayed. The priest leading the Rosary in Spanish, had a deep, respectful voice. He sounded like a Spanish Johnny Cash. The congregation responded antiphonally. The women responded quickly, with emotion. The men responded slowly, in a monotone. The result was a marvelous spontaneous polyphony worthy of Peritin or Leonin, an organum, for the cantus firmus of the men sounded like a drone.
It was the Feast of St. John, and Vespers in Latin was said before Mass. I heard the Dixit Dominus, Beatus vir, and never heard the third psalm, for I looked to my left and saw a confessional manned by a white-haired priest who looked severe and foreboding. I left the pew, and confessed to him in Spanish. How I had misjudged him! For he in fact was a welcoming priest, warm and kind. And he absolved me—to my surprise and delight—in the ancient formula and in the Latin tongue of the Church of Rome:

Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat, et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo ab omni vinculo excommunicationis, suspensionis et interdicti, in quantum possum et tut indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

Absolved then of all excommunications, suspensions, interdicts as far as able (although there was none of which I was aware), and of all sin (of which there were many I was aware), I attended Mass and received Communion.

Salve Regina Mater Misercordiae . . . et IESUM, benedictum fructum ventris tui ad nos converte.

After Mass, a canon blessed the pilgrims in French and Spanish. We were asked to sing the Salve Regina to Our Lady of Roncesvalles, which many pilgrims did. It is apropos to pray a Salve Regina at the beginning of the Way. This very prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary has ties to Santiago, for some say the one time bishop of Compostela, St. Pedro de Mezonzo, was inspired to compose it, although I have read elsewhere that a certain Hermann Contractus is responsible for it. In any event, the prayer is beautiful and old. The Salve Regina reminds us of our state as pilgrims, exiled in this vale of tears. But we do not languish here, for we ought to have firm confidence in the Mercy that was virginally ushered into history through the virginal womb of this humble Jewess-made-Queen. She was made queen solely for her virtue, for her perfect fiat to her God. There is no other queen like this, and she is the Queen of pilgrimage.


Night came. The first day of the pilgrimage was done, and done well. With my two feet I had conquered the Pyrenees, and with tongue and heart I had communed with the Lord. The peace of the Lord was with the good Basque Augustian monks, all pilgrims, and me that night in Roncesvalles. Quite tired and pleased, I lay down to sleep, and did. AOI.


The wind and trees of this deep Valley still harbor memories of the great and tragic battle of Roncesvalles. For if one lies very quiet in this Valley, in the silence of the night, they will yield them to the pilgrim. As I slept in the refugio that evening, I swore I could faintly apprehend the snort and whinney of foam-flecked Vellaintif, and the steely clanging of the blade of Durandal, the latter only slightly muffled by a red and warm veneer of Moorish blood.

PAX VOBISCUM PAX DOMINI

But it was a dream of a foolish romantic and a brain fevered by the exertion of the day. For what I heard when I awoke in the dark refugio, lit only by the dull light of the waxing crescent moon, was a vulgar symphony of the sounds of humanity—of pilgrims burping, snoring, and sighing. Amidst the noise that impeded sleep I thought how it was that man was not meant to sleep in common.

[i] Augustine, City of God, Book V, Chp. 16.
[i] Melczer, Pilgrim’s Guide, at 93.
[i] Latin poem (written 1199-1215) praises the hospital at Roncesvalles. The unliteral translation mine, but the source for the poem is Starkie, at 165.
[i] O’Callaghan, at 248.